When President Joe Biden took office, he pledged to “repair” America’s alliances, “engage with the world once again” and demonstrate the United States’ diplomatic power. Those in Biden’s orbit pitched a return to normalcy but with more openness to progressive voices on foreign policy.
As he leaves, progressives are disappointed at best and furious at worst. The majority of the U.S. disapproves of Biden’s job on foreign policy. In Washington, nonprofit organizations like Amnesty International have accused his administration of refusing to see human rights violations and said the U.S. is complicit in war crimes in Gaza. Democratic lawmakers in Congress have plenty of criticism for how Biden has handled the relationship with Israel and the deaths of U.S. civilians in the region.
“This is where the commitment to human rights, international law, the commitment to, you know, sort of rules-based order, is tested,” Allison McManus, an international policy expert at the liberal Center for American Progress, said. “And, I just, I think he fails the test.”
Asked about Biden’s foreign policy successes, the White House pointed to his accomplishments in the Pacific and rebuilding NATO.
“The president standing up for good causes and core values around the world, that’s his legacy,” one White House official said. “More than any previous administration, he’s brought Americans home.”
But, two major flash points are proving to be much more defining of his presidency: the withdrawal from Afghanistan — which coincides with the start of a continued decline in his approval rating — and the war in Gaza, which lost Democrats crucial votes in the election.
“We worked so closely with him on domestic economic policy and feel like he had such an incredible legacy,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal told NOTUS. “But I think it is marred by how the deaths in Gaza unfolded, the lack of a cease-fire, the continuing destruction of settlements in the West Bank. I mean, all the violence that we’ve seen and his inability to empathize on it.”
More moderate Democrats say Biden still has a chance to make it work. Progressives point to Gaza and Israel’s broadening war in the Middle East as the hallmark that he’s already failed.
“A lot hangs in the balance of whether a Gaza cease-fire can be agreed to. If the answer is yes, I think it’s ultimately a pretty solid legacy, but it’s the Middle East, right? So a lot can happen before tomorrow morning,” Rep. Jim Himes said. “If the president can land a cease-fire and hostage deal, that would be a signature achievement.”
Rep. John Garamendi acknowledged just how much of a cloud Biden’s Middle East policy holds over his foreign policy record, but he blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more than Biden. He described a strained relationship, with Netanyahu taking advantage of a weakness of the administration and letting him force his policies.
“Netanyahu is doing exactly what Netanyahu wants to do,” he said. “He put the Biden administration in a very, very difficult bind, for too long.”
Biden directed his State Department to pursue a whole-of-government campaign of diplomacy. But as the conflict has continued, so has the U.S.’s flow of weapons into Israel. Netanyahu has balked for months at the U.S.’s calls for change.
“He comes out as the staunch ally of Israel in its time of greatest need, again, which I think speaks to how he values alliances,” McManus said. “But it’s to a fault, and it’s to such a fault that it, unfortunately, I think, taints the rest of his legacy in terms of restoring the credibility of the United States as a global leader.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
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Two months before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the Biden administration established the Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidelines. The message to the entire State Department was that incidents that might cause civilian harm using U.S. weapons were to be sent up the chain. Reports would go to a small, newly established group that would review and make recommendations on the use of weapons from the U.S. going overseas.
Foreign groups would be investigated with support from the Department of Defense and the intelligence community and receive State Department reports from all across the world. Fulfilling congressional requirements of “End-Use Monitoring” specifically for civilian harm, the small team’s recommendations could result in suspending arms sales or contracts.
According to ProPublica, the State Department shirked reports that Israel was deliberately blocking humanitarian aid. The outlet also reported that administration officials rejected calls from inside the State Department to “completely or partially cut off” weapons sales to Israel.
The U.S. government wouldn’t commit to ever releasing a conclusive report on Israel’s conduct. It didn’t have personnel on the ground and wouldn’t rely on outside sources. That reality repeatedly undercut Biden’s warnings about humanitarian harm and his calls for the Israeli Defense Forces to change its methods.
“Those people do feel the political pressure,” Josh Paul, a former State Department employee who left the agency after more than 11 years over “provision of lethal arms to Israel,” told NOTUS.
“People would reach down to say, ‘Oh, by the way, you shouldn’t consider Amnesty International as a credible report. They’re not on the ground, who knows where their reporting is coming from, it could be Hamas,’” Paul alleged. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Amnesty International is one of the very few organizations with personnel on the ground in Gaza. After six months, an Amnesty International field worker said he “cannot believe that my family and I are still alive.” His work collecting evidence of civilian deaths on the battlefield and violations of international humanitarian law is one of the few windows into Israel’s conduct. Meanwhile, major U.S. allies abroad, like the United Kingdom and Canada, have suspended arms deals with Israel over the likelihood they are used in a “serious violation of international humanitarian law.”
Progressives saw the Biden administration’s position as a sham.
“It’s just complete bullshit,” Matt Duss, the vice president for the Center for International Policy and former Sen. Bernie Sanders adviser, said. Talking to the administration in attempts to slow aid to Israel, Duss thought maybe the investigations could be a way to condition military aid. He was wrong.
“It was a completely bullshit process, and it produced a bullshit result,” he said. “That entire process represented his acceptance that, yes, conditionality is an appropriate tool, even if he was dead set to kind of sidestep it.”
Duss said that soon after he brought up the investigations, he felt stonewalled. “That conversation, for what it’s worth, is over.”
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The Biden administration put a lot of pressure on cease-fire negotiations. One of Biden’s most experienced diplomats, now the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Bill Burns, was sent to mediate. But that diplomacy campaign has resulted in so many false starts and announcements of being “close to a deal” but with no resolution, that even some of Biden’s allies have become skeptical.
When national security adviser Jake Sullivan announced that his meeting with Netanyahu in December went well and showed signs of promise, Sen. Ben Cardin said he took it with a grain of salt.
“I had some information prior to that meeting that there was positive signs towards a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of the hostages,” Cardin said. “As I told my staff, that’s about the 30th time that they’ve come around and told me that, and it hasn’t come out, so excuse me for being guarded.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal said the administration would take it right down to the wire.
“They seem to be working hard right through the end and running through the tape seeking every possible solution to the ongoing war,” he said.
“There’s still hope.”
But, with the Trump inauguration less than a month away, few lawmakers think that anything will change.
“He certainly has no choice but to leave it behind. The question is what we’ll have in between now and the next 30 days,” Garamendi said.
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Republicans in Congress have honed in on Biden’s foreign policy. The House Foreign Affairs Committee released a 353-page report on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, detailing the mistakes that lead to tens of thousands of allied Afghans on the ground being isolated and killed.
They’ve signaled they will continue the investigation into the Biden administration even in the new Congress.
Rep. Brian Mast, who came to Congress in an IDF uniform, will be the committee’s new chairman. This means that Democrats will likely have to relive some of the most difficult times of the Biden administration regarding foreign policy in the years to come. The Democratic Party, as well, has work to do to rebuild trust within its own base on foreign policy, progressives say.
“Look at the way that Trump just went to the Arab and Muslim communities and courted them to say, ‘I’m going to bring about peace when nothing in his record has that,’” Jayapal said. “Essentially, to position himself as the person who’s going to bring peace in the Middle East, even if it means wiping out entire populations.”
As for the Democratic Party’s agenda, Duss said the window he once saw for a more progressive American foreign policy appears shut.
“It’s really hard to overstate the impact that one president can have on foreign policy,” Duss said. “It’s become just abundantly clear that Joe Biden has a very outdated view of America’s role in the world.”
Why?
“Because ideology is a hell of a drug. Yeah, you know, American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug.”
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.