U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

PARIS—Few in France will miss Donald Trump. According to a survey released by the Pew Research Center in January, only 20 percent of the French population have confidence in the U.S. president, compared to 32 percent in the U.K. and 13 percent in Germany. And French President Emmanuel Macron’s high-profile efforts to cultivate his American counterpart on a range of policy issues resulted in some memorable encounters, but also, more often than not, in bitter disappointment. It may come as a surprise, then, that the French government’s enthusiasm regarding the prospects of working with the incoming Democratic administration of President-elect […]

It’s no coincidence that while congratulations for Joe Biden’s victory in the U.S. presidential race came quickly from Western democracies, many thuggish regimes remained conspicuously silent. The many despots who welcomed Donald Trump’s crass indifference to the fortunes of freedom are right to be wary of Biden. The president-elect intends to make America decent again, not only at home but abroad, by restoring the promotion of liberty and defense of democracy as pillars of U.S. foreign policy. Rebuilding U.S. credibility on human rights will take time, however. Trump’s affinity for autocrats is well documented. “It’s funny,” he mused to Bob […]

To say President-elect Joe Biden has his work cut out for him when it comes to U.S. foreign policy and national security would be a gross understatement. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea all loom large, right alongside climate change and the still-worsening coronavirus pandemic. Yet with a persistently polarized American electorate and a possibly divided Congress, it will be hard for his administration to make significant progress on the biggest security challenges facing the United States. Whatever happens with the messy transition period leading up to Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the Republican Party’s obstructionism and Donald Trump’s decapitation […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Lavender Au and Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive China Note by email every week. Although Chinese leader Xi Jinping still has not yet issued a statement or called to congratulate Joe Biden on his election win over Donald Trump, prominent commentators in China are already discussing what his presidency means for U.S.-China relations. Trump is still mounting dubious legal challenges to the election’s outcome, and has now embarked on a purge of the Pentagon, getting […]

It didn’t require an acute sense of hearing to register the sighs of relief from many quarters around the world when Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump was called by leading American news networks Saturday. From the mayor of Paris, the message was an exuberant “Welcome back America!”⎯and that spirit of encouragement was matched in places as far flung as Canada, South Korea and Ethiopia, even if the language was slightly more restrained. In certain other quarters, just as predictably, mum was the word. Vladimir Putin, who rushed to congratulate Trump four years ago, passed the first few days after […]

Donald Trump has been an unorthodox president, to say the least. Much of America and the rest of the world is hoping for a return to some semblance of normality under President-elect Joe Biden. But what might that mean on trade? The traditional take on American trade politics for decades has been that Republicans tend to be free traders while Democrats are more skeptical. Trump certainly turned that on its head. Yet after he started imposing tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in imports, several polls—which obviously have to be taken with a grain of salt—showed most Americans becoming […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. One of the few countries that waited a conspicuously long time to congratulate Joe Biden on his election win over Donald Trump was Saudi Arabia. King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, finally issued a statement, via the Saudi state news agency, applauding President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, more than 24 […]

Last Wednesday, with a divided and anxious citizenry awaiting the outcome of an agonizingly close election, President Donald Trump voted for climate change, as the United States became the first nation to formally withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The good news is that Joe Biden, now the winner of the presidential election, can restore U.S. participation at the stroke of a pen. The bad news is that rejoining the pact won’t by itself do much to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That will require dramatic domestic action from a deeply divided nation. The Paris Agreement is the most impressive multilateral agreement […]

The recent U.S.-brokered agreements between Serbia and Kosovo to normalize their economic ties have been portrayed by all three governments as a momentous diplomatic achievement. “By focusing on job creation and economic growth, the two countries were able to reach a major breakthrough,” President Donald Trump said at a White House signing ceremony in September, standing alongside Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovar Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti. Both leaders committed to moving forward on direct transportation links and other infrastructure projects, with the hope of boosting economic development, particularly in Kosovo, one of the poorest countries in Europe. The announcement […]

Despite all the alarm over the potential for violence and disruption, the U.S. presidential election and ballot-counting process have so far been routine. Were it not for the massive number of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic, we would in all likelihood already know the victor. As it is, at the time of writing this column, there are still three possible scenarios ahead because of the time it will take to tally the final outstanding ballots. The first is a reelection for President Donald Trump largely along the same lines of the electoral map he rode to victory in […]

Today is Election Day in the United States, when Americans will render their verdict on the presidency of Donald Trump. When Ronald Reagan was running for president in 1980, he famously asked voters to consider whether they were better off than they had been four years earlier, when his opponent, Jimmy Carter, took office. It appears from polls that many Americans will base their vote on Trump’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic. But changes to trade policy were a central part of Trump’s campaign to “make America great again,” so it’s fair to ask what Trump has delivered. Last […]

How has the multilateral system fared in the Trump era? At first glance, the answer must be “poorly.” Donald Trump has attacked and boycotted numerous international agreements and arrangements as U.S. president, ranging from the Paris Agreement on climate change to the World Health Organization. America’s relations with China have worsened dramatically at the United Nations and other forums, culminating in the two powers’ furious disputes over COVID-19. In New York and Geneva, diplomats fret about a growing “crisis of multilateralism.” Much of this sorry story was entirely predictable. In September 2016, when a Trump presidency still seemed improbable even […]

After more than a month of negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government, progress toward a peace agreement remains slow. The key unknown variable is whether the United States has an appetite for staying involved in the long grind of overseeing a peace process that must reconcile two divergent views of Afghanistan’s future—which can only be answered by the winner of this week’s presidential election. The Taliban recognize this, too, and made a foray into American politics last month, announcing their desire to see President Donald Trump win a second term, before hastily backtracking. The reason for the Taliban’s […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. I watched Barack Obama win America’s presidency from Damascus. I still remember when the race was called, on whatever international news network was carried on satellite TV in Syria, sometime in the middle of the night. Seven months later, Obama traveled to Cairo, to give a major speech to the Arab world. Although its promise of […]

As Americans cast their ballots Tuesday, and indeed for the millions who already have, they are voting for the future not just of their own country, but of the open world that the United States helped create. A distinctive element of this global order, particularly since the fall of the Berlin Wall, has been the removal of many restrictions on cross-border flows of goods, money, ideas and even people. Under every American president since the Cold War, until Donald Trump, the United States championed global integration as a motor of prosperity, a bulwark of peace and—at least implicitly—a source of […]