Upon taking office, President Joe Biden made it a priority to repair the damage his predecessor, Donald Trump, had done to relationships with the United States’ long-standing allies and partners, including South Korea and Japan, but particularly in Europe. Early on, Biden reassured European allies of Washington’s commitment to their security, promising them, “America is back. The trans-Atlantic alliance is back.”
Despite some missteps along the way, the political capital Biden invested in shoring up ties with Europe, in particular, has paid off during the current standoff with Russia over Ukraine. NATO’s cohesion in the runup to the invasion and the robustness of the U.S.-led economic and security response in its aftermath are testament to the alliance’s value to the U.S.—as well as the importance of U.S. leadership in times of crisis.
Trump’s legacy also hung over Biden’s other early security moves, including diplomatic reengagement with the regime in Iran. Trump’s maximum pressure approach, which included abandoning the 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program, backfired, as Tehran responded by expanding its nuclear activities and assuming a more aggressive regional posture. Biden initially sought to jumpstart multilateral diplomacy in an effort to revive the nuclear deal. But talks made only halting progress and now seem to have been all but abandoned.
In other areas, Biden was less eager to break with policies he inherited from Trump. On Afghanistan, for instance, he announced in April 2021 that he would follow through on the Trump administration’s deal to withdraw the final 2,500 U.S. troops that remained there, all but completing the drawdown by early August of the same year. The subsequent Taliban takeover of the country and chaotic final evacuation by the U.S. and its NATO allies from Kabul was a public humiliation for Biden.
It also left many European observers questioning the wisdom of relying so much on the U.S. for their own security, particularly those who argue in favor of enhancing Europe’s “strategic autonomy” in the face of a shift in Washington’s strategic focus to China. Biden’s deft handling of the crisis over Ukraine, and his demonstrated commitment to European security in a moment of peril, initially put those concerns to rest. But political gridlock in Washington that has frozen much-needed military aid to Ukraine, as well as the prospects of a second Trump presidency, have recently reawakened them.
Meanwhile, Biden still has a lot of work to do to deepen and expand Washington’s security partnerships in the face of the greatest challenge to U.S. global leadership since the end of the Cold War: an increasingly assertive China under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. Countering that challenge will require continuing to shore up ties with the United States’ Asian allies, which Biden has done with Japan, South Korea and Australia, while also seeking to solidify nascent partnerships with regional powers—particularly India, but also Vietnam. That won’t be easy, given their reluctance to antagonize China, which remains a principal trade partner for many across the region.
WPR has covered the U.S. military and its security strategy in detail and continues to examine key questions about what will happen next. How will Biden navigate the next phase of the West’s confrontation with Russia? Can he simultaneously ramp up the U.S. commitment to Europe’s security while also confronting the challenge represented by China? Can Biden succeed in deepening security partnerships in Asia without planting the seeds for a new Cold War with China? Below are some of the highlights of WPR’s coverage.
Our Most Recent Coverage
It’s Time for a U.S. Reckoning on Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear brinksmanship has been on the rise in recent years, even as anti-nuclear sentiment has never been higher. That makes this moment in the U.S. a good one for reckoning and reassessment. Political science scholarship can guide journalistic efforts in refocusing the national conversation on the perils of a nuclear world.
U.S. Security and Defense Policy
Biden broadly outlined an early U.S. security strategy that prioritizes diplomacy, while emphasizing competition with rivals and adversaries like China and Russia. Over the three years of his presidency, that has come into sharper focus. Meanwhile, he has called for a modernization of the U.S. military and conducted topic-specific reviews on nuclear weapons and the use of armed drones outside of active battlefields. But his security legacy will be determined by the long-term impact of his decision to end the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, his handling of the confrontation with Russia over Ukraine—and whether or not he is able to resist the temptation to resort to the use of the U.S. military as new crises arise during his presidency.
- Why the U.S. is having trouble ramping up its arms production capacity, in Washington’s Deep Defense Pockets Somehow Aren’t Deep Enough
- What political gridlock in Washington means for U.S. allies abroad, in The World Isn’t Ready for a Post-American World
- How a lone U.S. senator’s block on Pentagon nominations and military promotions fits into a global trend in civil-military relations, in The Crisis in Civil-Military Relations Is Going Global
- What the recent Republican presidential debate reveals about U.S. foreign policy, in GOP Calls to Invade Mexico Are More Than Just a Political Stunt
Military Alliances and Security Partnerships
On the security front, Biden’s sharpest break with his predecessor has been in working to restore and expand America’s military alliances and partnerships. Gone are the harsh tone and public criticisms of allies that characterized the Trump era. In their place is a more traditional approach to key partners in Europe and Asia, as well as efforts to solidify emerging partnerships with countries wary of China’s rise, particularly India. For now, Biden’s handling of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has overshadowed doubts about the United States’ dependability. But moving forward, persistent differences in interests and preferences could make shoring up these relationships easier said than done, particularly when it comes to addressing the challenge represented by China.
- What it will take to put some teeth into trilateral cooperation between the U.S., Japan and South Korea, in The U.S.-Japan-South Korea Partnership Is Still Light on Substance
- How the war in Gaza is turning the U.S. into a lonely hegemon, in U.S. Support for Israel Is Becoming All Cost, No Benefit
- Why U.S. allies in Europe aren’t the only ones worried about the prospects of a second Trump presidency, in Washington’s Allies in Asia Are Getting Nervous, Too
- Why offering Ukraine something other than NATO membership sends the wrong message, in The ‘Israel Model’ Is a Poor Consolation Prize for Ukraine
Military Interventions—and Withdrawals
Having closed the debate on America’s military engagement in Afghanistan, Biden must now decide what to do about the other ongoing deployments of U.S. troops in Syria, Iraq and West Africa, where they are engaged in missions that, though largely invisible to the American public, are still potentially deadly. And he now faces an increasingly polarized debate over whether and how much the U.S. should intervene militarily to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s brutal invasion.
- Why the U.S. is shopping for new security partners in West Africa, in Cote d’Ivoire Is Becoming the West’s New Darling in West Africa
- Why continuing to wage the War on Terror does more harm than good, in It’s Time for the U.S. to End the War on Terror
- Why the U.S. will be supporting Kyiv’s war effort for a while, in Pentagon Document Leaks Foreshadow a Long War in Ukraine
- What the Pentagon is learning from the fighting in Ukraine, in The U.S. Military Is Taking Notes on the War in Ukraine
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in July 2021 and is regularly updated.