WASHINGTON — It is relatively rare that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have long foreign policy records and clear positions on many of the world’s hotbeds.
Trump’s Allies at the Republican National Convention they are expected to argue that Biden has weakened America’s position abroad and allowed conflicts to erupt between Russia and Ukraine, as well as between Israelis and Palestinians. Biden, a Democrat who ran in a message to strengthen America’s foreign alliances and reverse Trump’s policiesclaims he has restored the US position abroad.
Below you will find their files on major conflicts.
One of Biden’s weakest foreign policy arguments is the U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years, America’s longest war.
The chaotic events of July, August and September 2021 presented one of the first international challenges for the relatively young Biden administration. At least 13 American military personnel were killed in an attack on Kabul airport in the middle of the withdrawal.
Biden, who has long advocated ending US military involvement in Afghanistan dating back to his time as vice president under Barack Obama, defended his decision to withdraw by arguing that the goals of the original invasion after the September 11 terrorist attacks had been achieved two decades earlier.
However, Biden administration officials also blamed Trump for leaving them with a vague and unfinished withdrawal plan, one in which the U.S.-backed Afghan government in Kabul had little or no input.
In February 2020, the Trump administration an agreement reached with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. troops by May 2021. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Doha, Qatar to witness the signing of the deal, which was negotiated without direct input from the Afghan government, and met with the Taliban’s chief negotiator to seal the deal.
As 2020 progressed toward the November presidential election, which Biden won, there was little movement in the planning for the eventual withdrawal, although U.S. troops were withdrawn gradually. Trump fired his Secretary of Defense just six days after the November elections.
After Biden took office in January 2021, his White House struggled to reconcile the new president’s desire to withdraw from Afghanistan according to the timeline set by the previous administration. After the May deadline passed, began to step up the attacks and made significant territorial gains. When the Biden administration announced that all US troops to leave Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11 in September 2021, and when the deadline was moved forward, the Taliban stepped up their attacks, resulting in the fall of Kabul and the chaos that followed.
Trump was an open supporter of Israel during his time in office.
Against the advice of countless foreign policy veterans, he unilaterally decided to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to JerusalemPrevious Republican and Democratic administrations refused to take this step because of competing Israeli and Palestinian claims to the holy city. Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heightsan area conquered and occupied by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war and on which the US had not yet taken a position.
Moreover, all the steps Biden and Trump have since reversed, stop US funding for Palestinian refugees and programs aimed at supporting Palestinian self-government and revoked a 1970s State Department decision that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are “illegal” under international law.
At the same time, Trump tried to promote peace in the Middle East by bypassing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and successfully negotiated the so-called “Abraham Accords” that normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. He also proposed what some called it a ‘deal of the century’ to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflictbut that plan was firmly rejected by both the Palestinians and many of their Arab allies.
Trump claims that the war between Israel and Hamas would never have happened if he had been in office. But it is impossible to know whether Trump could have prevented the current war. Some experts believe that Trump’s alienation from the Palestinians may have contributed to the circumstances that led to the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, which started the conflict last fall.
In 2016, Trump campaigned on the idea that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a signature foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration, was the “worst” diplomatic agreement ever negotiated by the United States. Trump’s argument was that the deal — which gave Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for limits on its nuclear program — gave away too much and created a path for Iran to develop nuclear weapons once the deal’s time-limited limits expired.
After a few hiccups, Trump the United States withdrew from the deal in 2018 and embarked on a “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran, resulting in a wave of new and harsh sanctions against Iranian entities. One of the main targets of those sanctions was the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the administration designated a “foreign terrorist organization” for its support of anti-Israel and anti-American groups active across the Middle East, including in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
In January 2020, the Trump administration killed IRGC commander Qassim Soleimani in an airstrike at the airport in Baghdad, leading to threats of retaliation by Iranian officials against Trump and several of his top national security advisers that continue to this day. U.S. authorities increased security for Trump after they discovered what they called an Iranian threat on his life, but say that threat had nothing to do with the attempted murder which took place during his rally Saturday in Pennsylvania.
When the Biden administration took office, it declared its intention to revive the nuclear deal, arguing that it was the best way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons without military conflict. Biden a number of sanctions lifted or relaxed that Trump had imposed, but attempts to revive the deal failed after repeated attempts.
In August 2023, the Biden administration and Iran came to agreed to a deal that would see $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets held in South Korea would be released to banks in Qatar in exchange for the release of five Americans held in Iran. Republicans have fiercely criticized the deal, saying it would help Iran finance terrorism, though administration officials have said the money cannot be used for anything other than humanitarian supplies. As of last month, no money had been released for any purpose, senior administration officials said.
In one of the final acts of the Trump administration established that the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen were a “foreign terrorist organization,” a move criticized by many aid groups for worsening Yemen’s humanitarian crisis.
The Biden Administration that determination was reversed with a view to improving conditions on the ground, but that has had mixed results. As the crisis continues, the Houthis have continued their attacks in Yemen and on Saudi Arabia, and since the war in Gaza broke out last year, they have increasingly turned their sights on Israeli, American, British and other Western shipping interests in the Red Sea.
When he was elected president, Trump was told by his predecessor Obama that North Korea and its nuclear and missile programs posed the greatest threat to the United States. The threat from North Korea grew during Trump’s first months in office and reached a peak in 2017, when Pyongyang tested an intercontinental ballistic missile and at least one nuclear weapon.
Tensions reached a peak in September when Trump began describing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “ little rocket man and warned that any attack on the US would be met with “fire, fury and frankly a force the likes of which the world has never seen before.”
A few months later, the two sides agreed to reduce tensions and, in a series of scripted official and unofficial meetingslaid the groundwork for Trump’s meeting – the first of three – with Kim in Singapore in June 2018. As a result of that summit and two subsequent summits, North Korea suspended its missile and nuclear tests, but efforts to broker a lasting deal failed.
Since Biden took office, North Korea has resumed its rocket tests.
The Trump administration has taken a hard line on China and has tariffs and trade sanctions against Beijing as well as focusing on Chinese diplomats suspected of espionage and then Blaming China for the COVID-19 outbreak.
While the Biden administration has attempted to improve ties with China, including several meetings between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinpinghas largely left in place the sanctions imposed by Trump’s team. The Biden administration now accuses China of bolstering Russia’s defense industry to enable it to continue and scale up attacks on Ukraine.
The Trump administration has also improved U.S.-Taiwan ties, allowing for more high-level meetings between the two sides and ramping up arms sales to the island, which China considers its own. The Trump administration has also strongly condemned China’s growing aggression in the South China Sea, anti-democratic actions in Hong Kong and repression in the western Xinjiang region. The Biden administration has not changed those positions.
As president, Trump inherited a situation in which Russia not only occupied two enclaves in Georgia in 2008 But also seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014Trump believed, and apparently still believes, that his personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin could solve these problems, but neither did.
Although Trump has authorized the transfer of some offensive weapons to Ukraine, US-Ukrainian relations have taken a hit. Trump’s efforts to force Kiev to investigate alleged corruption by members of Biden’s family by withholding additional military aid, leading to Trump’s first impeachment.
Trump has also been extremely skeptical about NATO and US alliances broader in Europe and Asia. He has repeatedly taken credit for ensuring that more NATO members met their pledge to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense, though the vast majority of the 23 allies now meeting that goal did so while Biden was president.