With Joe Biden, all set to exit the White House later this year, his one-term presidency has begun to come under increasing scrutiny to determine his legacy. What sort of President Biden is/was? To what extent was he able to achieve his foreign policy goals? What characterizes his era? Unlike Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and subsequent US “exit” from the Middle East and America’s “forever wars” in Afghanistan, Biden’s main legacy is his interventionist foreign policy. These interventions, however, were unlike the direct military interventions of the Bush and the Obama administrations. Rather, they are more indirect in which the US remains a primary player, both overtly and covertly. The purpose was to recover from the “damage” that the Trump administration did to American supremacy.

What Biden Promised and Did

He had his own “doctrine” with “America is back” as its foundation. The emphasis on “back” was not just rhetorical; it reinforced a potential reversal of what the Democrats and the US deep-state saw as Trump’s disastrous foreign policy that scaled back the level of American engagement with the world. But this emphasis on “back” was a double-edged sword. Biden, as it stands, also continued to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor vis-à-vis China and Israel. Instead of ending Trump’s “trade war” on China, Biden intensified it. By doing this, he essentially reinforced Trump’s legacy. US-China ties hit rock bottom much harder than they did........

© New Eastern Outlook