One legacy of President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy is the clear message to the rest of the world that no deal with the United States can be relied on once the president who made it is gone.
Trump spent his four years in office ripping up agreements made by several of his predecessors, most notability the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which he called the “worst deal ever,” negotiated by President Barack Obama and signed by six other world powers, including U.S. allies Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
Trump began his tenure by quickly exiting the Paris climate accord and ended it by notifying the World Health Organization the U.S. would withdraw from the body, which Trump blames for failing to confront Beijing over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
In between, Trump withdrew from the landmark Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned intermediate-range missiles from the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia; declined to extend the 2010 New START, which capped the number of nuclear warheads each country could deploy; and pulled out of the 1992 Open Skies Treaty, which allowed each country to overfly and photograph each other’s military facilities.
Trump was also unhappy with NATO’s plan, agreed to under Obama in 2014, for all member nations to boost their spending on defense over 10 years to at least 2% of gross domestic product by 2024.
Trump insisted on an accelerated plan, berating allies who have yet to meet the goal, and demanded Germany in particular meet the standard now.
And Trump blew up a long-standing cost-sharing agreement with South Korea, demanding a fivefold increase to $5 billion, to cover the cost fully of keeping 28,500 U.S. troops deployed there.
Things will be a lot different under President-elect Joe Biden, who will be pursuing a policy of “multilateralism,” as the Democrats seek a return to a time when the U.S. quarreled less with its allies and more with its adversaries.
Some of Trump’s policies can be quickly reversed by executive order, such as rejoining the Paris climate accord, which requires countries to meet largely voluntary goals they set for themselves to reduce greenhouse gases.
Biden can also accept Russia’s offer to extend the New START automatically for five years when it expires in February while continuing to seek a more comprehensive agreement, as Trump’s State Department has been doing.
The fractious two-year negotiations with South Korea will likely be settled quickly once Biden is in office, with the U.S. accepting a modest increase in compensation for U.S. military forces.
Other Trump policies will be trickier to reverse.
While U.S. allies are anxious for America to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, Biden has indicated first that Iran must be in full compliance.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’s nuclear watchdog, reports that Iran continues to increase its stockpile of low-enriched uranium far beyond the limits permitted under the deal and to enrich it to a greater purity than permitted.
But even if it returns to compliance, Iran and other countries have to wonder if any deal with the U.S. would survive the next president, which could very well be Trump again in 2024.
Reaching a deal with North Korea to abandon its nuclear program is similarly problematic.
Trump rejected the consensus assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that Kim Jong Un will never give up his nuclear arsenal because it believes it is the only thing guaranteeing the survival of his regime.
Now, many national security experts talk about how to live with a nuclear North Korea, perhaps by negotiating a more limited agreement that would institute restrictions on delivery systems that could threaten the U.S.
Biden is sympathetic to Trump’s desire to end forever wars, but, given the Taliban’s flouting of its agreement to reduce violence in return for a full U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden is likely to want to keep some 2,000 troops in the country for the time being to increase pressure for a peace agreement.
There’s another argument for keeping at least a token presence in the country.
If the U.S. leaves, so will all the other NATO nations that have been part of the international coalition helping the Afghan government battle the Taliban.
“We went into Afghanistan together, we will adjust together, and, when the time is right, when the conditions are met, we will leave together,” said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg last month.
Biden has surrounded himself with advisers from the Obama era, people he knows well and is comfortable with, including former Pentagon official Michele Flournoy, who is the odds-on favorite to be nominated as defense secretary, and Tony Blinken, former deputy secretary of state, who’s a candidate for the top job. He has also chosen former U.N. ambassador and national security adviser Susan Rice and Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, who holds Biden’s old Senate seat.
Biden’s team is expected to focus more on human rights and political freedoms, especially with respect to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Uighurs.
“Arab states such as Saudi Arabia will find a pragmatic ally looking to construct a coalition to put pressure on Iran but also one that will hold them to task on human rights,” said retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former supreme NATO commander, who predicted that Biden will not reverse the move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
“Allies and friends will be wary after four years of divisiveness and the policy of ‘America First,’ which at times trended toward ‘America Alone,’ as the administration withdrew from agreements, pulled back troops, and walked away from traditional methods of doing business,” Stavridis wrote in a recent op-ed.
“A Biden administration won’t make all of them happy on all issues,” he said. “But nearly every one of them will welcome a change.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
