Having withdrawn from his reelection bid and acknowledged the possibility that former President Donald Trump may succeed him, President Joe Biden has worked with Democrats and his federal agencies to lock in a legacy that won’t be easy for Trump to erase. From pumping out regulations to insulating government scientists to enshrining foreign policy commitments, the Biden administration is leaving behind policies that will be procedurally difficult or politically costly to abandon. In this series, the Washington Examiner will take a look at how Biden is Trump-proofing parts of the government. Part Three will look at his effort to “Trump-proof” foreign policy.
President Joe Biden has roughly six months left in his 50-year political career, and what he decides to do between now and then could define his foreign policy legacy and have lasting impacts.
During his presidency, he held up, strengthened, and unified NATO in the face of the largest ground war in Europe since World War II and attempted to shift the government's attention to the Pacific region as his administration continues to try to prevent a regional conflict in the Middle East.
With Biden no longer seeking reelection, a new commander in chief is guaranteed to be sworn in on January 20, 2025. Former President Donald Trump has the experience having served as president once already, though the world looks much different than when he left office, whereas Vice President Kamala Harris's foreign policy stances and perspectives are largely unknown, but she was an a participant in carrying out the Biden administration's foreign policies.
"I think that if Trump wins, he will enter his second term dealing with a very different world than the world he entered during his first term," Alexander Hamilton Society Executive Director Gabriel Scheinmann told the Washington Examiner, whereas Harris is "incredibly untested," he added. "She doesn't have much of a foreign policy or national security track record in any way."
Last month, before Biden dropped out of the election, Washington, D.C., hosted NATO's 75-year anniversary summit. A major theme of the summit was limiting Ukraine's reliance on U.S. support, instead providing some roles to the alliance in the event Trump wins in November given concerns that he could limit or end U.S. support for Ukraine.
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In order to ensure lasting support for Ukraine, NATO agreed to set up a new command base in Germany to coordinate military trainings of Ukrainian forces, a new center for NATO-Ukraine cooperation in Poland, as well as a long-term pledge to provide billions of dollars to Ukraine. Making Ukraine less reliant on the United States now allows it to prepare for the possibility that Trump, should he win, could curtail U.S. support for Kyiv, and it could make it more difficult for him to achieve.
The alliance, in its communique released at the summit, also declared that Ukraine was on the "irreversible path" to NATO membership.
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The former president raised concerns among NATO allies when, in February, he said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member country that doesn’t meet the defense spending requirements. The comment sparked backlash, including from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
Trump, who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, has repeatedly said he would be able to end Russia's war in Ukraine if he was elected almost immediately. His plan essentially is to force both sides to the negotiating table by threatening Russia to expand U.S. support for Ukraine and to threaten to cut off Ukraine to get them to the table.
In recognition of the possibility of a second Trump term, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with Trump by phone last month, which the former president described as " a very good phone call ."
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Trump's running mate, is one of Congress's most vocal critics of U.S. support for Ukraine. Just after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, when Vance was still a candidate for upper chamber, he said, "I gotta be honest with you, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another."
While the Biden administration has provided Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars worth of military aid and has said their support would continue as long as needed, it has often dragged its feet on Ukraine's most sophisticated weapons requests for months and has placed restrictions on the way Ukraine uses certain weapons despite continued pleas to lift those regulations.
It's unclear if a Harris administration would be more willing to adhere to Ukraine's requests, but Ukrainian ambassador Oksana Markarova described Harris's vice presidential running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), as a "reliable friend of our country" to a Ukrainian outlet on Tuesday.
A group of national security-focused Republican chairmen recently urged Biden to allow Ukraine to use U.S. weapons to strike military targets anywhere in Russia instead of only right over the border, though the policy has not changed. Stoltenberg, during the summit, also advocated the removal of those restrictions.
Biden, in recent weeks, has emphasized U.S. relations abroad, stressing the importance of having allies, attempting to juxtapose his and Trump's handling of foreign policy. Most recently, Biden reiterated his relationships with allies after he pulled off a complex prisoner exchange last week that involved seven countries and two dozen prisoners.
"The demands they were making of me required me to get some significant concessions from Germany, which they originally concluded they could not do because of the person in question," he said, surrounded by the families of the four Americans on their way home from Russia. "But everybody stepped up. Poland stepped up. Slovenia stepped up. Turkey stepped up. And it matters to have relationships. It really does. These things matter."
Michael O'Hanlon, the director of research in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, told the Washington Examiner that it's "hard to tie the hands of a president" and that for the most part, anything Biden in the final months of his presidency could be undone if Trump or Harris desires.
"There are some decisions that are irreversible, like starting a war ... and I realize presidential regulations and interpretations and statements can take a little bit of time to undo through the court system, but there's no particular reason to think that anything Biden or any other president could do unilaterally, Trump could not undo unilaterally," he said.
However, it's not uncommon for outgoing presidents to make decisions that their successor has the power to undo but may not have the support for such a decision.
After he lost his reelection bid, then-President Trump announced the U.S. would move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Biden did not undo that decision when he came into office.
"It's the kind of thing where you could undo it if you came in as a successor, but it seems like a lot of effort with a potential insult to a close friend in the form of Israel," O'Hanlon added, regarding the embassy move. "And so that is the sort of thing where it's not just that a successor couldn't undo it; they just chose not to. Once that kind of a decision was made, it would just be too hard to reverse, even though, in theory, you could reverse it."
Biden laid out his vision for the final six months of his administration during his address to the nation on July 24.
"I will keep rallying a coalition of proud nations to stop Putin from taking over Ukraine and doing more damage," he said. "I will keep NATO stronger, and I’ll make it more powerful and more united than any time in all of our history. And I’ll keep doing the same for our allies in the Pacific. You know, when I came to office, the conventional wisdom was that China would inevitably — would inevitably pass the United — surpass the United States. That’s not the case anymore."
The Departments of State and Defense have sought to counter China in the Pacific by building up its alliances and relationships with likeminded countries in the region. Both leaders have frequently deployed to the region to meet with the counterparts of allies including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines.
Austin touted the department’s Indo-Pacific investments recently, highlighting that they’ve nearly doubled their military construction investment in the region from fiscal 2023 to 2024, announced a plan to station its most advanced tactical aircraft in Japan as well as forward stationing a marine littoral regiment, and last year, Filipino President Marcos agreed to allow the U.S. to use four additional Philippine military bases, bringing the total to nine.
He recently traveled to the Indo-Pacific, along with Blinken, to meet with their counterparts in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, and earlier this week, they hosted their Australian counterparts in Anapolis, Maryland.
"Our achievements together over the past three years reveal something even more fundamental about this region's future. Today, we are witnessing a new convergence around nearly all aspects of security in the Indo-Pacific," Austin said in June during a visit to Singapore. "And this new convergence is producing a stronger, more resilient, and more capable network of partnerships. And that is defining a new era of security in the Indo-Pacific."
The Biden administration has also sought to bolster Taiwan's defenses given the ongoing threat posed by Beijing, though Trump, during his campaign, has criticized the way the ongoing relationship operates, raising questions about what his administration would do if he wins.
"I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense," Trump told Bloomberg News in mid-July. "You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything. Taiwan is 9,500 miles away. It’s 68 miles away from China. A slight advantage, and China’s a massive piece of land, they could just bombard it."
Trump also argued Taiwan "took almost 100% of our chip industry, I give them credit. That’s because stupid people were running the country. We should have never let that happen."
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The comments have raised questions about what a potential future Trump administration's policy on Taiwanese defense could be.
Following Trump's remarks, Taiwan's Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said, "We must rely on ourselves."
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