Who’s Worse on Foreign Policy: Biden or Trump?

Donald Trump did a bad job on foreign policy.  I talked about that a lot, though, eventually, I got tired of saying it over and over, so I mostly stopped.¹  Even though I felt that way about former President Trump, I did not vote for Joe Biden because, in Illinois, I did not need to.  President Biden was going to win Illinois.  And I was very concerned about President Biden’s domestic policy – or, rather, the domestic policy of his supporters.  Still, when President Biden won, I was hopeful American foreign policy would be better than it had been under former President Trump.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t been.

On February 19, President Biden told the Munich Security Conference that “America is back.”  That was the hope: President Biden would restore, or at least start to restore, America’s credibility and reliability around the world.  But the way we left Afghanistan was a disaster.  Obviously, President Biden was handed a terrible mess in Afghanistan.  President Trump signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban on February 29, 2020, under which we were to leave on May 1, 2021.² 

I understand it would have been hard to stay,³ but we could have.  The Taliban had not complied with its obligations under the agreement.  But President Biden wanted to leave.  It is important emphasize this.  President Biden has said he had to do what former President Trump agreed to, but that is silly.  President Biden changed all kinds of Trump policies.  He could have changed this one, too.  But he didn’t because he wanted to get out, too.  And, like former President Trump, though perhaps with a bit more pretense at consulting, he did not care what our allies thought.  The attacks on 9/11 was the first time Article 5 of the NATO agreement was invoked,⁴ and our allies joined us in Afghanistan.  But President Biden has wanted to get out of Afghanistan for a decade, so he said to our allies, in effect, “We’re leaving.  It doesn’t matter what you think.  And all that ‘America is back’ stuff – well, I want to leave, so the heck with it.”

But beyond the lack of consultation, the United States did a terrible job in leaving.  I understand this is not all President Biden’s fault.  Former President Trump left the Biden administration with a bad situation, but they had time to do a better job.  And they didn’t.  They did not start early enough.  They did not plan for the contingencies.  We abandoned people when we said we wouldn’t abandon them.  We did not get people out when we said we would get them out.  We wound up looking uncaring and incompetent.  I am not saying a Trump administration would have done a better job.  I am saying the Biden administration did a terrible job.  Which is the problem. 

As I said above, the expectation was that President Biden would at least start to restore America’s credibility and reliability around the world.  Instead, the disaster of our departure from Afghanistan has further damaged both our credibility and reliability.  The Administration claimed we needed to get out of Afghanistan so we could better counter China.  The opposite has occurred.  After the way we left Afghanistan, Xi Jinping is going to see us as weaker and as less likely to support our allies in East Asia.  Countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan,⁵ among others, are going to worry: Can they rely on us?  Even if we try to help, will we be competent?  The concerns that our allies had about Donald Trump are now mirrored in the concerns they have about Joe Biden.

Further, President Biden said that, even though we were leaving Afghanistan, we could deal with any problems there because we retained “over-the-horizon” counterterrorism capability.  I have questioned that idea before.  Sadly, we may have seen an example of why this doesn’t work even as we left Kabul.  After the suicide bomb attack at the gates of Kabul airport, which killed thirteen American service members, we fired a drone missile at a car in Kabul that was supposedly going around collecting explosives.  But reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post now suggest that the car was being driven by a longtime employee of a U.S. NGO, who was collecting water, not explosives, and that seven children were killed, too.  

While mistakes are unavoidable in war, among the best ways to minimize them is through good quality intelligence provided by people on the ground.  Over-the-horizon attacks just aren’t as good, no matter what President Biden tries to tell us.  If this attack is the tragedy it appears to have been, it will be the kind of mistake that happens when you don’t have people on the ground and you try to rely on over-the-horizon intelligence. 

The withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a disaster.  What we need now is a group of thoughtful and experienced people who can figure out what to do next and how to do it.  Given what we have seen in our departure from Afghanistan, one worries whether that capability exists in the Biden administration.  Which is a concern because we have over three years to go.⁶
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¹ Among others, see here.  Former President Trump was bad on other things, too, but this post is about foreign policy. 
² Why would you agree to leave at the beginning of the fighting season?  It was irresponsible.
³ Also, who knows how the Afghans would have felt about us changing our mind again.  After all, we could have stayed in Afghanistan only if the Afghans had agreed. 
⁴ Article 5 of the NATO agreement provides that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an armed attack against them all.”
⁵ Taiwan may not technically be a “country,” but it is, in many people’s view, an ally of the U.S.
⁶ One last point: In spite of my comments about how President Biden’s foreign policy, President Trump’s foreign policy in a second Trump term may have been worse.  In his first term, former President Trump had good people, at least a while.  There were, among others, Defense Secretary James Mattis, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, and even National Security Adviser John Bolton.  They gave former President Trump honest advice, not just what he wanted to hear.  They may have even restrained former President Trump at times.  By the time former President Trump left office, however, he finally had his own people heading the State and Defense Departments and serving as National Security Adviser.  And his policies were getting worse.  The foreign policy of a second Trump administration, with former President Trump having his own people from the start and with no constraint of wanting reelection, could have been worse than even President Biden’s foreign policy.