It’s easy to identify Biden administration foreign policy failures. Afghanistan springs immediately to mind.
Finding Biden foreign policy successes is far more difficult. Pro-Biden pundits have often cited Ukraine. However, Biden’s failure to deter Russia from invading Ukraine, after four years of Russian restraint under Trump, undermines that claim.
Since the invasion, depending on how one looks at it, what we have is either (1) a waste of money on a corrupt government that isn’t winning the war or, to present my view, (2) a failure timely to supply Ukraine with weaponry that could have prevented the current stalemate, in which recent Russian progress exceeds recent progress by the Ukrainians. Either way, Ukraine isn’t a success story.
Neither is the Middle East. There, Iranian proxies are attacking American troops and massively disrupting world shipping. So far, Biden has not successfully responded to either of these aggressive actions. And let’s not forget that Biden’s enrichment of Iran, a reversal of Trump administration policy, has enabled Tehran to fund its proxies to the hilt.
Fareed Zakaria’s search for a success story takes him to China. In this op-ed, he argues that “The U.S.-China relationship is back on track.”
Is it now on the right track? Has the relationship improved?