Joe Biden's presidency will end at noon on Monday and so will, by many accounts, his disastrous foreign policy. Or was it? Much ink has been spilled about how President Biden handled the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and while we know how many of his decisions played out almost in real time, in some respects, the true outcomes of other choices he made in those conflicts won't be known for some time.
Biden's foreign policy wasn't all bad though. And a lot happened in the world during the last 4 years beyond the aforementioned conflicts. So we asked nearly two dozen experts a question: "Outside of Gaza and Ukraine, name one consequential U.S. foreign policy decision, good or bad, that Joe Biden made as president." See their answers below.
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Brandan Buck; Dan DePetris; Ben Friedman; Julia Gledhill; Dan Grazier; Jennifer Kavanagh; Charles Kupchan; Lora Lumpe; Sumantra Maitra; Eldar Mamedov; A.J. Manuzzi; Rajan Menon; Arta Moeini; Negar Mortazavi;Chris Preble; Sam Ratner; Mark Reading-Smith; Annelle Sheline; Sarang Shidore; Sina Toossi; Michael Swaine; Jake Werner; Sarah Leah Whitson
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Brandan Buck, Research Fellow, Cato Institute: The most consequential and best foreign policy decision President Joe Biden made during his presidency was to maintain his predecessor's determination to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan. While there was clearly a failure to foresee and, therefore, prepare for the implosion of the Kabul government, Biden's decision to follow through on withdrawal was a needed, if inglorious, and tragic ending to a 20-year war. Had Biden wanted to reverse course, he would have enjoyed some institutional support. Instead, he stuck with the bipartisan and popular position and endured opprobrium when it all went sideways. That took courage and is commendable.
Dan DePetris, Fellow at Defense Priorities and columnist at the Chicago Tribune: One of President Biden’s most confusing (and useless) diplomatic initiatives was the Summit for Democracy. While this grand project was designed to be an outgrowth of the administration’s wider “democracy vs autocracy” foreign policy framework, it failed to produce anything of substance and turned out to be a counterproductive demonstration of just how hypocritical Washington is on these matters overall. The summits never really had clear goals and quickly descended into talk-a-thons that were preaching to the converted.
On a practical level, it was hard to see why the project was needed in the first place; the U.S., after all, retains fairly strong diplomatic and security relationships with some highly repressive countries (Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Rwanda to name a few), so if Biden hoped to sing the wonders of political pluralism, the words likely went in one year and out the other. The fact that the same South Korean president who eagerly hosted the 2024 summit is now arrested and charged with insurrection is a fitting end to a meaningless act of diplomatic showmanship.
Ben Friedman, Policy Director at Defense Priorities: President Biden insisted that the United States was leading a global struggle of democracies against autocracies. Layered with standard presidential talk about a liberal international order and human rights, this piffle became especially hypocritical when the administration began enthusiastically funding Israel's war in Gaza. But the trouble was worse than hypocrisy. The administration seemed to believe its own hyperbole. By juicing military competition with China, serially expanding support for Ukraine, and leaving relations with Iran in a post-Iran Deal straits, it seemed to be trying to maximize antagonists and to unify them against the United States.
Julia Gledhill, Research Associate, Stimson Center: President Biden failed miserably to advance a so-called foreign policy for the middle class. Much like the liberal hawks before him, Biden instead wasted precious national resources on the war industry. Indeed, his requests for national security spending increased by 19% during his four years in office. The Biden administration also proudly introduced the first ever “National Defense Industrial Strategy” designed to invest generations of Americans in weapon production only to further enrich an industry in which executive compensation exceeds $20 million annually.
Yet in his farewell address, Biden cautioned against the “dangerous consequences” of an oligarchy “taking shape in America.” His warning rings empty after four years of unfettered military spending, which has strengthened oligarchs’ death grip on U.S. foreign policy. As a result, Biden has exacerbated security dilemmas, increasing the risk of great power conflict and threatening prospects of peace. The world will suffer the consequences long after Biden departs from the White House.
Dan Grazier, Senior Fellow, Stimson Center: Joe Biden’s presidency will be remembered as a tumultuous era characterized by a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. One spot on the globe remained largely quiet, however. For years, the American people have heard almost daily warnings of the existential military threat posed by China. The specter of an invasion of Taiwan has become the main justification for the largest peacetime defense budgets in American history. Record spending has been squandered on a slew of failing weapons programs like the Littoral Combat Ship, the F-35, the Sentinel Program, and several others.
The Biden administration did little to calm the rhetoric despite a growing body of evidence that China is no longer the growing colossus official Washington claims it is. According to the World Bank, China’s economy has slowed significantly from its peak and the country’s population is in decline. Those factors combined with a brewing debt crisis will further disincentivize China’s leaders from launching a costly military adventure. The Biden administration should have adjusted its China strategy in light of these developments, but it persisted as only a bloated national security establishment can.
Jennifer Kavanagh, Senior Fellow and Director of Military Analysis at Defense Priorities: As president, Joe Biden eroded the “strategic ambiguity” that the United States has traditionally maintained toward Taiwan by declaring four times that he would send troops to defend the island if China were to attack. This repeated commitment pushed Taiwan to the center of U.S. military strategy in Asia and raised tensions with China, which ratcheted up its military activity nearby.
Worse, Biden’s assurances over-valued the island’s strategic and economic importance to the United States while under-estimating the devastating costs such a conflict would bring — even if the United States emerged as the winner, an outcome that is far from guaranteed. He leaves with the risk of war in the Taiwan Strait higher and U.S. position in the region more tenuous than when he arrived.
Charles Kupchan, Professor of International Affairs, Georgetown University: Biden came into office well aware that strength abroad requires strength at home; good policy requires good politics. He pursued a “foreign policy for the middle class” that entailed a combination of strategic retrenchment and domestic investment aimed at getting working Americans back up on their feet and fueling economic competitiveness. Rebuilding the nation’s political center is the starting point for anchoring a steady and purposeful statecraft. Regrettably, Biden fell short of finishing the job, one of the reasons that Trump is returning to office.
Lora Lumpe, CEO, Quincy Institute: President Biden's decision in April 2021 to end the U.S. war in Afghanistan was the pinnacle of his administration’s foreign policy. It took a good deal of bravery to buck the conventional wisdom in Washington that the war could and should continue at its current levels.
He understood that if his administration didn't take the off ramp the Trump administration had negotiated, however imperfectly, the Taliban would start shooting at U.S. soldiers and contractors again after May 1, and once one of of the 2,000 soldiers or thousands of contractors was killed, the U.S. would be boxed into sending more troops, and we'd be mired in an unwinnable war for possibly another 10 or 20 years.
In announcing his decision, he said: "I’m now the fourth United States president to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan: two Republicans, two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth." He seemed at that moment to understand that it was much easier to start a war than to end one.
Sumantra Maitra, the American Conservative: President Biden's singularly good foreign policy decision was to follow through with the withdrawal deal in Afghanistan. He deserves credit for that. Politicians will do politics, but the responsibility for the disaster of the withdrawal falls neither on Trump's negotiation team, nor Biden himself, as it was the responsibility of the military brass, who had ample notice of over three years, but slow-rolled the process with the hope that the decision would be eventually reversed.
Biden also had the basic cold-war equilibrium instinct intact about avoiding a direct conflict with a nuclear peer power (Russia), unfortunately, he had no control over his hawkish cabinet and his military leadership. It could have been much worse under a President Clinton or Harris. His faults, however, are too numerous to elaborate, including devastation in Gaza and giving in to European free-riding on Ukraine at the cost of domestic politics.
Eldar Mamedov, Brussels-based foreign policy expert: Withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan was one consequential foreign policy decision that the Biden administration got right. While the implementation of the decision was far from flawless, the decision itself was strategically sound. Twenty years of American military presence and $2.3 trillion spent in operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001 failed to fundamentally transform the society along the liberal, pro-Western lines. The Taliban, however deplorable their practices, proved to have staying power, while the pro-Western government in Kabul was often incompetent and corrupt. In that context, continued U.S. commitment became a strategic liability. The main U.S. interest in Afghanistan is to prevent its relapse to a terrorist base threatening the U.S. However, today the main terrorist threat stemming from Afghanistan is not the Taliban, but the Islamic State, which the Taliban is committed to fighting.
A.J. Manuzzi, Program Assistant, John Quincy Adams Society: President Biden removing Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list to facilitate release of 553 political prisoners is a positive development, albeit too little, too late. Six decades of economic war failed to bring democracy to Cuba while making life for everyday Cubans harder and shorter. While the administration’s determination that Havana does not sponsor international terrorism is correct, it should face criticism for delaying that review for several years. With the incoming administration set on re-listing and the broader embargo intact, banks are unlikely to change their Cuba sanctions guidance, rendering the decision moot and on death row.
Rajan Menon, Spitzer Professor Emeritus, City College of New York/CUNY: Leave aside President Biden’s unqualified support for Israel Gaza War, a grossly disproportionate response to Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack. He has also stood by while Israel has been evicting thousands of West Bank Palestinians from their lands, effectively killing the two-state solution that has already been on life support, thus supporting Israel’s dead-end strategy of “mowing the lawn,” a futile effort to side step the fundamental source of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians: the occupation.
Arta Moeini, Managing Director, Institute for Peace and Diplomacy: The Biden administration's failure to grasp the evolving security dynamics in West Asia and anticipate the new balance of power in that region represents a critical strategic error. The rise of an emboldened, neo-Ottoman Turkey, coupled with Washington’s inability to leverage the emerging Iran-Saudi éntente, has left key opportunities for a stable Middle Eastern security architecture unexploited. While a potential cold war between Israel and Turkey looms, Ankara’s assertiveness and backing for Muslim Brotherhood-type Islamist groups has also alarmed Tehran and Riyadh, yet Washington has not capitalized on this shared concern to forge a stabilizing framework that could bring together the region's key players.
In light of this Biden's confounding decision to keep U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq over his tenure leaves them vulnerable in a region that is certain to experience more violence and instability at least over the near to medium term.
Negar Mortazavi, Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy: Despite the major failure of his wider Middle East policy, there was one catastrophe that Joe Biden prevented and that was a full-scale war with Iran. In the course of the expanding war in the region, Israel and Iran had two direct confrontations, first in April 2024 and then in October 2024, which were the first instances in which the two states directly attacked each other in dangerous gambles that brought them to the brink of an all-out war. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his war cabinet tried to pull the United States into Israel’s direct conflict with Iran to expand the war to a new front.
But the Biden administration was able to draw a red line on war with Iran and avoid getting pulled into what would be another dangerous and endless war in the Middle East. U.S. officials made it clear, behind the scenes and in public, that they would support Israel in defense but not in offense against Iran. That was the one successful strategy the administration implemented despite its many other bad policies toward the Middle East.
Chris Preble, Senior Fellow, Stimson Center: Ending the U.S. war in Afghanistan. For all of the focus on the aftermath of President Biden’s decision, including the swift collapse of the Ghani government and the Taliban’s return to power, no one has made a convincing case that an open-ended mission served U.S. interests. Withdrawing troops was an essential first step to testing the claims that the United States had put in place a government in Kabul that could stand on its own. Those claims have been proven false; those who made them have yet to be held accountable. But now they can and should be.
Sam Ratner, Policy Director, Win Without War: An aspect of Biden’s policy that didn’t get the coverage it deserved, but that will reverberate negatively for years to come, is the president’s terrible record on nuclear arms control. Arms control advocates were optimistic in 2020, expecting that Biden would live up to his pledges to take common-sense steps like re-entering the Iran Nuclear Deal and killing off the SLCM-N program, a pointless and escalatory submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile. They also hoped that he would take seriously the vital challenge of building a nuclear arms control relationship between the U.S. and China. Instead, Biden completely flipped on the Iran Deal and SLCM-N, among other programs, failing to resurrect the deal and ultimately endorsing yet more SLCM-N spending. On China, his administration began outreach to the Chinese government on arms control and then, at the first sign that achieving a deal would be a challenge, pivoted to threatening an expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal if the Chinese government continues its nuclear buildup. Nuclear arms racing with China is both dangerous and self-defeating, but Biden leaves office without his team having proposed any serious alternative.
Mark Reading-Smith, Executive Director, ReThinkMedia: While the core negotiations that defined the terms for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan were made before President Biden's arrival, the exit in August 2021 was bungled from start to finish. The decision to be out before the 20th anniversary of 9/11 carried the conviction of a president who clearly understood that it was imperative to initiate the long-overdue removal of U.S. troops from a lost “forever war.” However, the dire and deadly scenes from Kabul in the final days made it easy for opponents to call his administration’s competence into question.
The chaotic exit also left many of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable without any path to safety, and when the final wheels went up, the Biden administration left religious minorities in the hands of the Taliban, knowing the potential genocidal consequences. While promises were made by President Biden to help, those promises were largely unkept and forgotten. Those who have found a way to leave have done so through private evacuation efforts and other nations providing refuge, although many of these religious minorities remain in direct harm’s way or permanent limbo. This outcome was a sad early reminder of the lack of importance human rights ultimately were to the Biden administration agenda.
Annelle Sheline, Senior Fellow, Quincy Institute: Biden lifting Trump's eleventh hour designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) was significant in helping to prevent an even worse humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Unfortunately, the Biden administration maintained the Obama and Trump-era policies of supporting Saudi Arabia’s brutal campaign of bombing and starving the Houthi-controlled portion of Yemeni territory, where 80 percent of the population live. It was only after the Houthis demonstrated their missiles could threaten MBS’ economic ambitions in early 2022 that the Crown Prince finally agreed to a truce, which has largely held for almost three years.
Ironically, after the Houthis initiated their blockade of Israel’s port of Eilat, the U.S. suddenly found their actions intolerable, much to the schadenfreude of the Saudis and Emiratis, who declined to join the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian. Biden named the Houthis as a “specially designated global terrorist group” in January 2024. Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, 15 Republican Senators introduced legislation to reapply the FTO designation, which humanitarian groups fear would do little to deter the group but would impair humanitarian assistance to Yemen.
Sarang Shidore, Director of Quincy Institute’s Global South program: Through the U.S. deepening military ties with the Philippines and expanding American military sites in the archipelagic nation (partly provoked by Chinese intrusive activities in the South China Sea), Biden played a part in expanding the great power competition to the vital and dynamic region of Southeast Asia.
Sina Toossi, Senior Non-Resident Fellow, Center for International Policy: One of President Biden’s most significant foreign policy failures has been his approach to Iran. Despite campaigning on returning to the Iran nuclear deal, his administration sent the wrong signals upon taking office. Instead of a straightforward “compliance for compliance” approach, Biden’s team pushed for additional Iranian concessions, eroding trust and stalling progress. This miscalculation was compounded by the administration’s failure to deter Israeli sabotage of Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2021, which further derailed diplomacy. As a result, negotiations got nowhere by the time moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani left office, ushering in hardliner Ebrahim Raisi.
Over the next three years, Biden continued Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions, failing to de-escalate tensions. Iran’s nuclear program expanded dramatically, with its breakout time to a bomb dropping to just one week. Meanwhile, Tehran doubled down on support for regional allies like Hamas and Hezbollah, deepening instability.
By neglecting diplomacy and enabling Israeli impunity, his administration leaves the region and U.S. interests vulnerable, draining U.S. resources from urgent priorities at home and elsewhere abroad.
Michael Swaine, Senior Fellow, Quincy Institute East Asia program: The Biden administration has certainly eroded the One China policy and sent mixed messages regarding the U.S. stance towards the defense of Taiwan. Biden has stated on several occasions that the United States would militarily intervene to defend Taiwan if it were attacked by China, a stance that is not part of U.S. policy. In addition, the Biden administration has allowed a senior U.S. Defense Department official to state more than once that Taiwan is a critical strategic location for the U.S. defense posture in Asia, again a position that is not congruent with long-standing U.S. policy.
Beyond this, U.S. officials have stopped making statements regarding U.S. support for any outcome in the China-Taiwan standoff as long as it is arrived at peacefully and without coercion and with the consent of the people of Taiwan. That stance, again a long-standing position, clearly implied that Washington would no longer support peaceful unification.
Jake Werner, Director of the Quincy Institute’s East Asia program: On Sep 16, 2022, national security adviser Jake Sullivan proclaimed that U.S. control over “computing-related technologies, biotech, and clean tech...is a national security imperative.” The U.S. would not just aim for a relative advantage in those fields, but would actively undermine the efforts of “competitors” (i.e., China) to advance in them. Less than a month later, the Biden administration announced a fateful transformation in the practice of U.S. economic coercion, establishing a blockade against all Chinese companies on advanced semiconductors and the equipment and know-how required to produce them — effective immediately without notice or comment.
At a stroke, the new approach declared open season on technologies foundational to any advanced economy whose applications are overwhelmingly commercial rather than military, and it specifically targeted China. The administration thereby defined China’s entire development strategy and its aim of improving the lives of the Chinese people as a national security threat and began building the state capacity necessary to suppress that threat.
Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director, DAWN: Biden missed an important opportunity to reform long-failed U.S. policies in the Middle East that have entangled us in endless wars and human rights abuses in the region, to the detriment of the peoples of the Middle East and the U.S. alike. Had he stayed true to his promise to end support for abusive regimes and withdraw U.S. forces from the region instead of capitulating to the likes of Saudi’s murderous Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and Egypt’s dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, he could have heralded a true shift in U.S. policies, normalizing America’s abnormal role in the region and prioritizing economic and cultural development for the benefit of all.
