The World Reacts to Biden’s First 100 Days

As 2020 came to a close, the EU concluded an investment agreement with China, to the displeasure of members of the incoming U.S. administration. Less than three months later, the EU joined Canada, the UK, and the United States in issuing targeted sanctions against several Chinese officials and a state-owned company for human rights violations against the Uyghurs to the ire of Beijing. What accounts for this apparent change of gears? European politics are complicated, and single explanations are never exhaustive. But the arrival of the new U.S. administration has played an important role.

Europe’s Wait-and-See Approach

The deep and palpable relief felt across the EU at the election of U.S. President Joe Biden also underscored the damage that former president Donald Trump and his administration had inflicted upon trust in the transatlantic relationship. Caution thus endured. After all, the United States’ ability to turn the tables goes both ways: however much Biden will overhaul U.S. politics, there is no insurance policy against a future return to Trumpism.

Biden’s messages from Washington about repairing relations with allies were loud and clear. But European leaders took some time to let the new realities sink in. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel put it at the 2021 Munich Security Conference following Biden’s “America is back” speech, “democracies should not only talk about freedom and values but also deliver results and help others to succeed around the world. In Germany, we have a saying: ‘There’s no good unless one does it.’ That’s the agenda before us now.”

Deeds matter most to European leaders, so they watched carefully to see Washington’s first actions. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has travelled to Brussels twice since taking office, and Biden joined the European Council meeting virtually in March. Brussels has very positive views of Biden’s decisions to reenter the Paris Agreement, rejoin the World Health Organization, and restart talks on the Iran nuclear deal. European coordination with Washington on Iran, sanctions against China and Myanmar, and against Russia within NATO are the tangible results of a different approach. The EU-U.S. dialogue on China, which had started at the very end of the Trump administration, was relaunched two days after the China sanctions were issued.

Signs of Renewed Transatlantic Cooperation

Aside from practical coordination, emerging EU foreign policy strategies echo U.S. approaches, such as the union’s fledgling policy on the Indo-Pacific with a focus on maritime security, trade and supply chains, and the desire to diversify European relationships with countries throughout Asia. Beyond foreign policy, the United States’ return to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and U.S. proposals for a global corporate taxation regime are welcome music to European ears. On top of breaking one of the many stalemates in international institutions that the Trump era caused, U.S. proposals are spurring EU member states to overcome their own—quite wide—differences and create a more level playing field on the continent for foreign investment and corporate activities. And, of course, ambitious climate goals are on the agenda for both the United States and the EU.

There are signs that these events are reshaping the debate in the EU about its strategic autonomy, now recalibrated in cooperative terms with the United States instead of the often-perceived antithetical terms during the Trump years. The concept of such autonomy is also quickly shifting from security and defense to geoeconomics. This is an area where the EU can leverage greater trade strengths, hence the importance in Brussels of dialogue with the United States on economic governance.

No Wholesale Convergence

Transatlantic dialogue may have resumed, but there will be difficult areas of discussion ahead, as well as divergent interests. The EU’s shift toward an “open strategic autonomy” underscores a desire to work with Washington on economic governance and trade. But there are concerns in Europe that Washington’s focus on a “foreign policy for the middle class” might lead to greater economic protectionism across the Atlantic.

Conversely, the EU is ambivalent about the degree to which it is willing to join the United States and its allies to push back against the rise of authoritarianism. In an sarcastic twist in the debate about the EU’s strategic autonomy, Chinese President Xi Jinping recently pointed out to Merkel in a phone conversation, “We hope the EU can make the right judgment independently and achieve strategic autonomy in the real sense.” So far, EU member states continue to be typically divided and cautious in their relationships with China and Russia. Their response to the most recent events—the Russian military build-up on the border with Ukraine and reported Chinese incursions in Taiwan’s air space—has been ambivalent.

European capitals were surprised at the scope of Beijing’s retaliation following the EU’s sanctions on the treatment of Uyghurs. The chances of the EU ratifying the investment agreement, so rapidly wrapped up after years of negotiation, are now in jeopardy. China too is putting pressure on the EU. Next time, European leaders may think twice. Yet a common transatlantic agenda of pushing back against authoritarianism and preventing military escalation is still to be shaped.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s seminal decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 2021 is a dramatic shift for U.S. policy, yet it is also a continuation of pathways begun under his predecessor. Like former president Donald Trump, Biden aims to extricate the United States from forever wars and focus on other challenges, including those closer to home. Unlike Trump, Biden and his administration have the attention span to see it through.

Upon taking office, Biden inherited a U.S. policy dilemma on Afghanistan that amounted to having been painted into a corner. In 2018, the Trump team—seeing that previous administrations’ efforts at both waging counterinsurgency campaigns and urging negotiations had borne limited fruit—chose to begin direct talks with the Taliban. This oft-halting process culminated in the 2020 Doha Agreement between the two sides. It laid out that the United States would withdraw by May 2021 and facilitate some Taliban prisoner releases, in exchange for Taliban pledges on counterterrorism, direct talks with the Afghan government, and refraining from specific attacks.

How Biden Differs From Trump on Afghanistan

A major difference between the two administrations is whether the president claimed any U.S. withdrawal would be based on security and political conditions on the ground. Trump himself repeatedly allowed his own withdrawal impulses to be checked, after military voices argued that the current situation was not conducive to a drawdown. Importantly, as foreign policy analyst Laurel Miller has noted, declaring that an exit will be “conditions based” does not necessarily make it so. Indeed, monitoring any conditions on the ground in Afghanistan remains hard, as disputes over adherence to the Doha Agreement show. Credible reporting suggests that the Taliban gradually re-escalated violence over 2020 and fell short on counterterrorism pledges, rather than upholding their Doha commitments. But the fog of war, mutual contestation of facts, and the Trump administration’s trademark messaging chaos all made it hard to argue that the United States should not leave as pledged in light of the Taliban not honoring its own commitments.

By contrast, Biden dispensed with the claim of a conditions-based exit and rejected the entire pursuit of one as an intellectual strawman. He argued the United States lacked “clear answers to the following questions: Just what conditions would be required to allow us to depart? By what means and how long would it take to achieve them, if they could be achieved at all? And at what additional cost in lives and treasure?” Indeed, when it came to discarding the conditions-based exit refrain, it seems that it was Biden who said the quiet part out loud, rather than Trump—a change from the traditional Trump modus operandi.

There are other changes between the two administrations, both stylistic and substantive. In contrast to Trump’s hostility to foreign aid, the Biden administration emphasizes nonmilitary assistance to Afghanistan and has already moved to increase it to cushion the likely humanitarian and economic blow. By all accounts, the new national security team ran an inclusive, disciplined policy deliberation process before the president made the ultimate decision—a marked shift from the Trump era, when the president often tweeted first, and the bureaucracy sprang into action retroactively. The Biden team emphasizes, rather than denigrates, the role of NATO allies, who will also withdraw militarily.

But shared across both presidencies is a painful underlying truth: ending American participation in the Afghan conflict does not actually mean ending the endless war. On the contrary, Afghanistan is likely to see still more instability in the coming months and years.

Biden’s Disillusionment with Afghanistan

For close readers of Biden’s foreign policy archives, his withdrawal decision comes as little surprise. Though he initially supported an expansive U.S. role in Afghanistan, voting for the war in 2001 and advocating for increased security and reconstruction aid as late as 2008, he became increasingly disillusioned with the situation in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. Visiting Kabul that February, he reportedly became so frustrated with the administration of then Afghan president Hamid Karzai that he walked out of their dinner. After becoming vice president in 2009, Biden preferred a more limited counterterrorism mission to the eventual surge, and he voiced frustration that the Pentagon would “jam” then president Barack Obama into sending more troops. More recently, Afghanistan played a scant role on the 2020 campaign trail, but when Biden did speak on it, he committed to troop withdrawals and ending America’s forever wars.

What Comes Next

The long-term consequences of Biden’s withdrawal decision remain to be seen. Almost immediately after his announcement, the next scheduled round of peace talks were postponed because the Taliban pulled out, likely ushering in a longer freeze in the process. In the medium run, the key open question is whether the Afghan government will remain viable as its conflict with the Taliban likely intensifies and foreign troops withdraw, yet external aid continues to flow. The United States and its international partners will still have modest, although greatly diminished, means to shape outcomes—in the form of economic aid, security assistance, sanctions, and diplomatic engagement. A vital question is whether and how these tools can influence issues the international community cares about: counterterrorism, democracy, human rights, and alleviating the country’s humanitarian crisis.

Meanwhile, the story will rapidly become one not of U.S. presidents’ policy toward Afghanistan at all, but of Afghans’ agency to write their own future. The Taliban are coy on their governance goals but decidedly not democrats. Yet a wide array of Afghans is deeply invested in the constitutional republic and will resist fiercely any Taliban-attempted takeover. Where will it all land? To take a long-standing refrain from former president Trump: “We’ll see what happens.”

During U.S. President Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office, the U.S.-Saudi relationship was one of few Middle East–related topics on the administration’s list of priorities. After some suspense on the timing and who would be engaged, Biden called King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud on February 25, making him the fourteenth world leader—and the third in the Middle East—that Biden spoke with after taking office on January 20.

The call came after the United States had already ushered an end to the Saudi crown prince’s privileged access to the president’s office. Washington had announced ending “all American support for offensive operations” that Saudi Arabia leads in Yemen, imposed a temporary freeze on offensive arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and appointed a special envoy to Yemen with the clear objective of ending the Saudi-led war. The call also came on the eve of both the State Department’s press release announcing its adoption of the “Khashoggi Ban” policy—named after journalist Jamal Khashoggi, allowing the department to restrict the visas of people persecuting journalists and dissidents on behalf of a foreign government—and the Treasury Department’s sanctions on the Saudi team and individuals implicated in Khashoggi’s killing.

Yet for better or for worse, Saudi Arabia still matters to the United States, as the Biden administration’s focus on the relationship with Riyadh shows. The president mentioned the kingdom in his first major foreign policy speech, despite an intended downgrade in the strategic importance of the Middle East. Biden’s appointed foreign policy and Middle East team leaders in the National Security Council, the State Department, as well as the CIA have all previously indicated that Saudi Arabia will continue to be seen as a partner, even a friend, no matter who is ruling it—at least for now.

A Saudi Recalibration?

The kingdom got the message. Publicly, Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud stated that the relationship is “robust” and that “the [Biden] administration understands that working with the kingdom requires working with our leadership,” referring to the administration’s decision not to directly sanction Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman for his role in the killing of Khashoggi.

Yet Riyadh has taken actions to accommodate the Biden administration’s so-called recalibration policy. Even before the U.S. administration officially took office, Riyadh started responding to a number of bipartisan demands regarding its human rights violations. It released several prominent political prisoners, including two dual Saudi-U.S. citizens; reconciled with Qatar; coordinated a ceasefire initiative in Yemen with the United States and the UN; and allowed the docking of four fuel ships at the Yemeni port of Hodeidah. Additionally, Saudi Arabia indicated it might embrace a more realistic approach toward nuclear negotiations with Iran by surprisingly announcing its acceptance of the Vienna negotiations and by conducting its own round of talks with Iran.

How Far Can Biden’s Recalibration Go?

The U.S. administration is, however, facing pressure from Congress, media, and civil society to live up to Biden’s campaign promise to “make them [the Saudis], in fact, the pariah that they are.” Congress has already started approving pieces of legislation in response to the administration’s perceived insufficient actions to punish Saudi Arabia’s top leadership, namely the crown prince, for human rights violations. U.S. representatives are also reviewing a bill seeking to prevent Saudi Arabia from the “pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.” The bills come in addition to direct letters from lawmakers to Biden administration officials—asking them to pressure Saudi Arabia to end its air and sea blockades on Yemen, to clarify the administration’s broad yet systematic statements of U.S. support to Saudi Arabia’s defense, and to take further actions to implement a “meaningful adjustment” of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.

Congress is right to keep the pressure up, but the Biden administration is also correct to recognize the limits of its power over Saudi Arabia. The Saudi leadership’s mistrust of its U.S. partner has grown since Biden’s election. In the past, such episodes of mistrust drove the kingdom to adopt a more militarized and interventionist regional policy as well as a friendlier stance toward China and Russia. Saudi Arabia is indeed courted by America’s allies as well as its foes—all of whom aim to expand economic and strategic relations with the kingdom. The United States should mostly worry about its designated competitor, China, that not only doesn’t care about democracy and human rights in Saudi Arabia but also supports its authoritarianism. And despite the president’s commitment to U.S. values, America’s credibility in this department is still suffering from U.S. violations during the Iraq war, which Biden voted for as a senator. U.S. power is further limited by the fact that Saudi Arabia is highly influential in a region that is critical to international security and to the stability of the international economy; Riyadh also has global financial, political, and religious outreach that America benefits from. Most significantly, access and overflight rights in the kingdom are still important for the U.S. military to achieve its strategic goals and face global challenges.

The administration’s attempt to recalibrate the relationship is also facing a military-diplomacy dilemma. The United States wants to lead with diplomacy supported by America’s military footprint—and not the other way around, especially in the Middle East—while Riyadh sees the United states first as a defense and hard power broker and second as a force for soft power and diplomacy. In fact, today, the Saudi regime is more inclined toward Chinese rather than American soft power, whether in regard to technology, state-controlled economic development, or international diplomacy. At a time when Riyadh is facing increasing and expanding Houthi attacks and the United States is reengaging with Saudi Arabia’s perceived nemesis, Iran, Washington’s renewed pressure can work only as long as it gives Riyadh at least part of the military protection it wants.

But the Biden administration shouldn’t underestimate the fact that it is still Riyadh’s most influential political and strategic partner and its first partner of choice. The kingdom’s land, aerial, cyber, and maritime defense—in addition to advancements in its infrastructure, access to international financial markets, status in international organizations, economic and social development, and even its potential for diversifying its international relations—all depend a great deal on cooperation, or at least averting collision, with the United States. And all these areas are crucial to achieve the goals of the kingdom’s Vision 2030, the key to the Saudi crown prince’s legitimacy and stable rule and to the country’s economic transformation and sustainability. Moreover, whether true or not, there is a conviction in Riyadh that the United States has the power to interfere in palace politics and meddle with the stability of the regime through various state and nonstate tools. This makes Riyadh take Washington’s statements, actions, and requests very seriously.

The Next 100 Days

So far, the Saudi and U.S. governments have proven that they want to continue making their strategic partnership work. They are both using their respective leverage to define the contours of what the Biden administration calls recalibration of the relationship, amid new American and Saudi national and foreign policy priorities. In the case of this relationship, the phrase “America Is Back” may have to simply mean a return to the traditional parameters that governed most of their almost eighty-year-old partnership. Whether that will happen remains to be seen.

U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration’s early actions and statements indicate little desire to revert to a policy of engagement with China. The administration, much like the one before it, views China as a “strategic competitor” and is intent on implementing policies to better compete with Beijing. The main contours of the Biden administration’s China policy thus far include investing in U.S. competitiveness, strengthening U.S. alliances, and recommitting to multilateralism. As National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has explained, the administration is putting “less focus on trying to slow China down and more emphasis on trying to run faster ourselves.”

Early overtures to U.S. allies and partners—such as the first executive-level Quad summit along with renewed multilateral commitments like the Paris Agreement—are the first of many that will be needed for the United States to reclaim international credibility and leadership. These efforts appear to already be paying dividends. Since entering office, the Biden team has issued joint statements with Japan, the UK, and the EU condemning Chinese actions on issues including the South and East China Seas, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang. At home, the administration has focused on containing the pandemic and stimulating the economy with the American Rescue Plan. Biden has also proposed an infrastructure initiative that aims to “position the United States to out-compete China.”

Rather than roll out ad-hoc, one-off policies directed at Beijing, the administration is devising a long-term strategy to compete “without catastrophe.” Critical to this effort, Biden is focused on accumulating as much leverage as possible to deal with China from a position of strength and to dispel the growing Chinese perception that the United States is a power in decline.

Trump 2.0 or a Smarter Approach to Strategic Competition?

Despite his stated desire to change the U.S. approach toward Beijing, Biden has been hesitant to quickly undo several of his predecessor’s China policies. Instead, he has opted to conduct thorough strategic reviews within several federal departments and agencies, including the Department of Defense and the U.S. Trade Representative. There is still considerable bipartisan support for maintaining a competitive relationship with China, and any attempt to undo Trump-era policies would likely expose the administration to accusations of weakness.

On issues like tariffs and export controls, for example, the Biden administration has yet to initiate substantive rollbacks, going so far as to institute new export controls banning U.S. sales of sensitive technologies to China. On matters that Beijing considers sensitive core interests, the administration has picked up where Trump left off, most recently easing restrictions governing U.S. officials’ engagement with Taiwanese counterparts. The delayed reversal of Trump-era policies signals an attempt to maintain as much leverage as possible while trying to achieve reciprocal concessions. However, there is also a case to be made that the rollback of several of these policies, which Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris described as shortsighted during the campaign, could help the United States compete even more effectively. While no one expected the administration to make drastic changes to the bilateral status quo right away, the danger moving forward is that the Biden administration could fail to meaningfully differentiate its approach from that of the Trump team and may end up with little flexibility to adjust course.

The Biden administration has also sought to improve the overall tenor of the relationship. Administration officials have toned down the antagonistic and adversarial rhetoric while maintaining a competitive tone, indicating that the administration wants to avoid continuing further down the road of tit-for-tat escalations while still appearing tough on China. There has been a purposeful movement away from the provocative Cold War–style rhetoric that dominated the Trump administration’s lexicon and a shift toward a more nuanced competition of systems framework. This shift has manifested itself in the Biden team’s focus on human rights and its emphasis on maintaining the global rules-based order.

Setting the Table for What?

The Biden administration is using its first one hundred days to consolidate its leverage and try to establish the terms of prolonged strategic competition with China. The president is setting the table for a series of negotiations that allow for competition, confrontation, and cooperation while minimizing the risk of conflict.

The first high-level dialogue in Anchorage, Alaska, gave a glimpse of what these negotiations might look like. Chinese official Yang Jiechi’s “sixteen-minute tirade” in Anchorage brought to mind the oft-memed “mad as hell” speech by the browbeaten fictional newscaster Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network. Beijing has emphasized that the United States does not have the authority to unilaterally set the terms of the rules-based order. Instead, according to Yang, China will seek to build an international order free from supposed U.S. “hegemony,” while securing its core interests, such as territorial sovereignty and economic development. Washington, on the other hand, appears resolved to confine competition with Beijing within the rules-based order, which disincentivizes China from pursuing a might-makes-right approach.

The broad contours of the Biden administration’s approach to China have begun to emerge. But as Biden and his team seek to strengthen the United States domestically and shore up relations with allies and partners, they will inevitably face difficult questions on specific issues defining bilateral competition. How will they coordinate with Chinese leaders on climate change while simultaneously confronting them on human rights abuses? How will they advance negotiations on structural trade and economic issues without risking unnecessary, damaging decoupling? How will they deter China’s military adventurism without risking conflict in the Asia-Pacific? While answers to these questions have yet to materialize one hundred days in, Biden’s approach to these difficult balancing acts will determine the course of U.S.-China relations for the next 1,360 days of Biden’s first term, if not longer.

The author is grateful for research assistance provided by Nathaniel Sher and Ryan Featherston.

At an Earth Day summit, the White House announced that the United States will commit to a 50 to 52 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. The administration also pledged to step up U.S. financing for the climate transition abroad. These are the initial culminations of the intense climate diplomacy that President Joe Biden has been pushing forward in the first one hundred days of his term, and this is hopefully only a start. Biden’s early domestic priorities and diplomatic agenda have put climate action front and center, though the issue remains contentious with Congressional Republicans.

John Kerry now sits on the National Security Council as the U.S. special envoy for climate. His appointment signals that climate resilience and adaptation are top domestic priorities for the United States at least for the next four years. Kerry is a key diplomatic trailblazer for the administration, appearing at times to tow almost an independent line of action. This strategic appearance shows that Biden has placed climate geopolitics high on the foreign policy agenda and wants to shield climate cooperation from other contentious issues, most notably with respect to China.

Both domestically and internationally, the Biden administration’s sense of purpose on climate action is admirable, and these early signs are heartening. Even so, obstacles to effective climate mitigation remain and must be navigated with care.

A Solid Start

Domestically, the Biden administration has made climate action a cross-cutting priority, and in this sense, it has become a precondition for sound economic, security, and financial policies. For example, climate action is being successfully pitched as a pathway toward economic recovery following the recession induced by the coronavirus pandemic. In addition to a $1.9 trillion relief package, Biden has proposed a $2 trillion infrastructure plan designed to accelerate the energy transition, boost efficiency, address environmental justice concerns, and bolster entrepreneurial innovation.

The plans attempt to simultaneously reduce poverty and inequality, spur climate action, and push for economic and racial reconciliation. Unfortunately, they have sparked bitter debates between Democrats and Republicans. This is not surprising given the contentious presidential election and the ongoing harmful politicization of climate action in the United States. Nevertheless, Biden’s packages should foster economic growth, which will yield benefits for international cooperation on climate action.

The downside, however, is that American consumerism and the need for economic expansion will keep growing, which will result in overshooting planetary boundaries that go beyond carbon dioxide emissions, in the form of further waste and environmental plundering resulting from mineral extraction. The United States needs to reflect better internally on how its economic model creates environmental consequences that must be avoided at all costs.

Globally, the Biden administration is striving to rebuild credible leadership and soft power around the climate agenda. The UK is set to host this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), but the pandemic and Brexit have delayed preparations on climate negotiations significantly. In organizing the April Earth Day summit, Kerry identified a need and turned it into an opportunity. The U.S. summit will partially make up for the dismal uncertainty around what COP26 can hope to achieve.

This diplomatic outreach so far has brought allies such as Japan to step up their commitments on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The announcements on net zero ambitions are creating a virtuous race to the top. The key will be to ensure that these ambitions turn into actual plans—instead of merely greenwashing—to redesign energy systems as well as the economic models they generate.

Competition With China

Two areas are of rising concern, however. One is the competition between China and the United States. China has a fundamental comparative advantage in the form of a vertically integrated supply chain for green technology and energy commodities necessary for an energy transition. China is endowed with large resources of so-called rare earths—essential elements of new technologies—and other critical materials. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, it has already secured access to extraterritorial resources in addition to its own.

While China still uses coal at home, it is actually the most advanced exporter of solar, wind, and battery technologies. China’s production of rare earths is central to the energy security of the United States, so the former’s threats to cut off supplies are a grave concern for the latter. Rare earths are also crucial for the manufacturing of defense and satellite technologies. For these reasons, the United States is intent on rebuilding its ability to exploit and process these critical materials. It is also a matter of economic security: the green technology race is at the center of the global competition for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

For the United States, decoupling from China may be a necessary move for strategic security, including around green job creation, but it is going to slow down transition pathways, something the world can ill afford. Rebuilding a strategic manufacturing sector will take years. Since the stakes are so high, the United States, and other powers, must work with China to deconflict cooperation around green energy and sustainable technologies. It is crucial that the United States and its allies harmonize approaches to China and reassure China that the proposed cooperation is not about thwarting its economic growth but about maintaining global stability.

Crossed Wires With the EU

Another area of potential friction stems from the EU’s planned introduction of a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). The EU favors a regulatory approach to emissions reductions and aims to create a mechanism that forces private sector actors to change rapidly to remain competitive. Meanwhile, playing to its strengths, the United States favors a market-driven approach and aims to spur private sector entrepreneurship and innovation. This approach may be insufficient to turn the tide fast enough on sectorial shifts without punitive measures in place such as a carbon tax.

But the truth of the matter is that both approaches are necessary and complementary. The United States should not discourage the EU from establishing a CBAM. Rather, the CBAM and ensuring that it is implemented gradually and accompanied by the necessary levels of R&D in key sectors that may be affected, including in the United States. They should also work together to quickly find transitioning solutions that employ both carrots and sticks.

The United States is back in climate diplomacy, and a sigh of relief can be heard around the world. Yet the country’s cultural viewpoints and economic systems endure, ones that foes and allies do not necessarily embrace. The impetus must be placed on identifying mutually reinforcing goals and approaches or, at least, ensuring that transition pathways do not create a zero-sum game that would hurt climate action and destabilize international relations.

Ask anyone in President Joe Biden’s administration what their key goals are for global leadership and they’ll talk about rekindling U.S. alliances to fight the pandemic and climate change, champion human rights, contain China and Russia, and break with economic isolationism—an ambitious agenda and one that can greatly benefit from the active engagement of Washington’s hemispheric partners. Yet ask Biden’s team about their hemispheric agenda, and the answer you’ll get begins—and, too often, ends—on the United States’ southwestern border. That mismatch is telling.

The latest surge of refugees fleeing deep crises in El Salvador, Guatemala, and especially Honduras has quickly and inevitably made its way to the top of Washington’s political agenda. Overwhelmed by the human tide on the border, the Biden team is facing a crisis that has no good solutions.

The Migration Crisis Is Not the Only Challenge

Few top American politicians know this issue better than Biden. In 2014, president Barack Obama put his then vice president in charge of dealing with the long-simmering migration crisis and Biden devoted significant time and efforts to it. Sadly, former president Donald Trump reversed some of the admittedly meager progress on migrants that the Obama administration had made. The new Biden administration inherited an impossibly difficult challenge.

It’s easy to forget that—given all the coverage it generates—migration from the Northern Triangle (the Central American nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) is far from Latin America’s most critical challenge. It’s a case, instead, of the urgent displacing the important in the fight for the limited attention of Washington’s top policymakers. For all the human suffering this crisis generates, the cold geostrategic reality is that, comparatively, the Northern Triangle is strategically marginal to U.S. interests. Much more is at stake in the hemisphere.

Let’s be blunt: Latin America is not having a very good twenty-first century so far. The region’s two giants, Brazil and Mexico, are in the hands of populists plainly opposed to any sort of check or balance on their power. As political parties across the region atrophy, democratic governance is breaking down in all sorts of original ways. In Perú, two abominable candidates from the far fringes of the political spectrum have somehow landed in the second round of the presidential election. In Ecuador, a sensible, middle-of-the-road president elect will face a congress so fragmented that he’ll barely be able to govern at all. While politics fails and politicians quibble, Latin America and the Caribbean, with 8.3 percent of the world’s population, now accounts for 28.4 percent of COVID-19-related deaths worldwide.

A Lackluster Effort

There was a time when a centrist Democratic U.S. administration might have sought to reengage the region by expanding North-South trade, but given the current anti-globalization mood in Washington, that’s a nonstarter. In a marked departure from decades of precedent, Biden has failed to even ask Congress for Trade Promotion Authority (the power to broker international trade agreements)—showing plainly that no trade deals with Latin America are in the works. 

Where democracy has simply ceased to exist, such as in Nicaragua and Venezuela, the Biden team has yet to set out a clear vision, opting instead for keeping key aspects of the Trump administration’s so-called “maximum pressure” policies while sanding off the rougher edges. And where democracy is barely hanging on, the Biden administration has so far offered platitudes about ongoing partnership.

Crucially, when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines, Washington has vacated the field, leaving even its traditional allies like Colombia to scramble for Russian and Chinese vaccines. Moscow and Beijing perceive a clear opportunity to cash in diplomatically from their own vaccine and are exploiting the chance ruthlessly. The Biden administration is left to weakly admonish its regional allies against adopting Huawei technology for their 5G network rollouts, even as Chinese vaccine shots are put into thousands of arms in the region, while Western vaccines very visibly are not. 

The Danger of Slow-Burn Crises

To be sure, the region's democracies have, by and large, not collapsed. But they’re being sorely tested. Openly illiberal leaders are now running not just in Brazil and Mexico but also in Argentina, Bolivia, and soon Peru. In Colombia, with more than a year to go before elections, a far-left candidate with a soft spot for chavismo is leading in the polls, opening the bleak possibility that even the most steadfast U.S. ally in the region could drift away.

This should give rise to alarm in Washington. After all, if the failure of three small states on the northern edge of Central America can generate this much chaos on the southwestern border, imagine what might happen if bigger countries begin to follow suit. Venezuela, with the 5 million migrants it has already shed, should serve as a reminder that bigger democracies can also collapse and send waves of instability radiating out from their borders. An ounce of prevention is worth so much more than a pound of cure here. 

But crises have a way of monopolizing our attention. And the migrant surge on the southwestern border is no exception. As Latin America struggles to rebuild its economies and retain its democracies in the wake of a profoundly disruptive —and still ongoing—pandemic, Washington’s eyes remain narrowly focused on a border crisis that commands domestic attention but is also crowding out other indispensable U.S. initiatives in the hemisphere. 

President Joe Biden inherited a mess created largely by “the former guy.” Under Donald Trump’s rubric of so-called “maximum pressure,” the United States imposed layers of sanctions on Iranian individuals, institutions, and entire sectors of the economy, especially its banking and oil industries. In January 2020, U.S. forces killed the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Major General Qassem Soleimani.

Vowing revenge, Iranian leaders retaliated by attacking U.S. forces in Iraq, downing U.S. drones, and seizing and harassing ships in the Persian Gulf. Under a policy of “maximum resistance,” Iran methodically rolled back their implementation of commitments made under the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). As of February 2021, Iran possessed fourteen times more enriched uranium than under the deal and was much closer to being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

Thanks to the sanctions, by early 2021, nearly everyone in Iran (and many surrounding nations) was worse off – except maybe entrepreneurs in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who had taken over the remnants of formerly independent businesses. And, despite more than two years of maximum pressure, no U.S. interest had been advanced.

Is Time a Lever or a Ticking Bomb?

Still, officials in the Biden administration initially appeared to calculate that the Iranian regime is worse off than the United States. They reasoned that the longer it takes to negotiate a return to the JCPOA, the more leverage Washington would have to compel Iranian concessions.

Against that version of realpolitik, another version holds that “stuff” always happens around Iran, so it would be prudent to reimpose verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear activities as soon as possible. This perspective seemed to have prevailed in the White House by March when the administration more actively began seeking negotiations.

Both views have some validity. On April 11, 2021, Israeli operatives reportedly sabotaged Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. This could be expected to provoke various forms of Iranian retaliation, including a rejection of nuclear negotiations. Days later, however, Iranian diplomats arrived as scheduled in Vienna for high-level talks to revitalize the JCPOA. (Iran may still retaliate in some way. And Israel may still attack people and equipment associated with Iran’s nuclear program whether a new nuclear deal is reached with Iran or not.)

After one hundred days, it is fair to say that the Biden administration, with the help of European and Russian counterparts, has prudently reinvigorated prospects of an agreement to restore verifiable constraints on Iran’s nuclear program. It remains unclear whether a new or restored arrangement will be better for all parties than would have been the case had the Trump administration maintained the JCPOA.

The challenge now is to avoid letting the perfect (for the United States and its allies) be the enemy of the good (for everyone).

The JCPOA—or any substantial nuclear deal with Iran—is fundamentally a means for all parties to avoid existential threats to themselves and go on with their unhappy, conflicted lives without decimating each other. Iran spares Israel and other neighbors the threat of annihilation by affirming that it will not acquire nuclear weapons—in greater detail and with more rigorous verification than the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires. The United States, Europe, and the other permanent members of the UN Security Council affirm that they will not initiate war with the loathed Iranian regime.

This is what really bothers critics of the JCPOA: they want regime change in Iran. But even if they could somehow remove the clerics from power, they have no idea what sort of governors would replace them. No one can explain how the men with the guns, prisons, and money—Iran’s Revolutionary Guards—would be replaced by friendly democrats. The better bet is to limit nuclear risks and lift the siege on the Iranian people.

The Obstacles Ahead

In determining what deal is good enough to meet the United States’ standards, Americans will naturally focus on how to prevent Iran from cheating on a revived or reinvented JCPOA. However, objectively speaking, the more difficult challenge is to demonstrate that a new deal will be good enough for Iran—that the United States will live up to its side of any bargain. After all, Iran was complying with the JCPOA (according to the CIA among others) when Trump broke the deal.

Congress is the most obvious obstacle to persuading Iranian decisionmakers that Washington will remove sanctions as promised. Highly partisan politics and consequence-free grandstanding by legislators make it difficult to sustain deals with geopolitical foes. Relatedly, Washington has become so addicted to sanctioning that it doesn’t know how to stop once the other side has met the terms of negotiated agreements.

Iranians—Persians—see themselves as great negotiators who can size up whether their counterpart is trustworthy. And the United States has repeatedly shown itself to be unreliable and unable to sustain deals with adversaries. Iranians can point to the 2002 U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, the spotty implementation of the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea, the fate that Muammar Gaddafi met in Libya after he negotiated away his WMD capabilities, and so on. Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA simply confirmed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s warning that the United States would not deal squarely with Iran.

Biden cannot change the past, and he cannot fix the political structure that makes the United States nearly unable to ratify and sustain treaties or impose and remove sanctions as a precision tool. No president, especially from the Democratic Party, can do this; the White House needs support from Republicans in the Senate to ratify treaties. The uncertain durability of U.S. commitments, especially positive ones like sanctions relief and economic normalization, then limits how much the United States can coax from Iran in a nuclear deal or any other future arrangement. U.S. negotiators and their partners in Vienna have the wherewithal to repair some of the damage that maximum pressure caused to everyone’s security. But fundamental improvements will depend on changes in U.S. and Iranian domestic politics.

U.S. President Joe Biden entered office facing daunting challenges to democracy at home and abroad. Freedom House estimates that three out of four people worldwide now live in countries that are less democratic than they were a year ago, while the Variety of Democracies Index assesses that over one third of the world’s citizens are living in autocratizing nations. The trends include some of the world’s most prominent democracies, such as India and the United States, where former president Donald Trump’s effort to delegitimize and overturn the 2020 presidential election results culminated in the shocking January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and deeply shook confidence in the strength of U.S. democratic processes and institutions.

These interrelated threats to democratic systems at home and around the world make it plain that the new administration’s democracy policy must knit together a global agenda with domestic reforms. But while support for democracy has always been a bipartisan centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, a domestic democracy agenda is bound to be politically fraught. Can Biden address the United States’ yawning credibility gap as a global leader on democracy?

Tackling Domestic Extremism

In his first 100 days, Biden has prioritized three areas of domestic democracy policy. First, even as the investigations of the Capitol attack have continued apace, Biden has also focused on efforts to address the rise of domestic extremism in the United States. On his second day in office, the White House announced an interagency plan to combat domestic terrorism, leading to an intelligence assessment and new funding for state and local authorities to pursue domestic extremist groups. The Department of Defense also conducted military and civilian stand-downs—discussions about race, values, and how to report relevant misconduct—to address extremism in the country’s military ranks.

Advancing Equity and Inclusion in Public Policy

Second, Biden has made clear that he does not view extremism as the only vulnerability of U.S. democracy. In light of the inequity and injustice exposed by the pandemic and the racial justice protests, Biden has made racial equity the centerpiece of a more inclusive public policy agenda. An executive order on advancing racial equity will now ensure that equity considerations will be integrated across government policies and programs. The Department of Transportation has begun to apply the new policy, pausing the expansion of a highway in Texas that would displace a historically Black and Hispanic community and destroy schools, homes, businesses, and houses of worship.

In addition, Biden has acknowledged the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on communities of color by embedding equity elements into the COVID-19 stimulus bill, including loan assistance for farmers and ranchers who have experienced discrimination. He likewise established a Health Equity Task Force and created a senior position in the White House to focus on addressing racial inequity in healthcare, the first such position of its kind.

Protecting the Right to Vote

Finally, Biden has forcefully asserted the need to protect voting rights, human rights, and labor rights at home, including by offering unprecedented support for a failed worker campaign to unionize an Amazon plant in Alabama. As the union defeat demonstrates, executive power to enact sweeping domestic democracy reform faces both political headwinds and the constraints of federalism. For example, Biden has spoken out against restrictive voting measures and directed federal agencies within his control to expand voter registration and participation. But comprehensive voting rights legislation, along with other relevant measures like campaign finance reform, are unlikely to easily pass in the Senate. Despite Biden’s efforts, forty-three states have proposed new voting laws restricting access to voting by mail, early voting, and voting on Election Day.

Similarly, Biden has strongly condemned anti-Asian hate speech and violence. However, few such attackers have been charged and prosecuted for hate crimes, decisions that are made at the state level. This may soon change with the recent bipartisan approval of anti-Asian hate crime legislation in the Senate, but further demonstrates that Biden’s options for other national level democracy reforms will be limited without a viable legislative path forward in Congress.

Not the Time to Retreat on Global Democracy

As democracy recedes around the world, the United States cannot afford to wait to get its own house in order before resuming its previous role as a major supporter of democracy internationally. Soon after taking office, Biden confronted multiple major democracy crises abroad: the military coup in Myanmar, the Russian government’s arrest of political dissident Alexei Navalny, China’s further repression of the Hong Kong democracy movement, and Belarus’s continued suppression of protests following last year’s stolen election. Determined to show he means business in standing up for democracy globally, Biden acted quickly and decisively with a mix of public messaging and private diplomacy, as well as punitive measures such as sanctions, asset freezes, and travel bans.

The Biden team is acutely aware of the need to connect reforming democracy at home with reestablishing the United States as a force for democracy abroad. The administration wants to make clear to the world that the United States will not be stymied by its own travails in standing staunchly in support of democratic forces, especially to counter the influence of autocracies like China and Russia. At the same time, Biden recognizes that rhetoric championing human rights and democratic freedoms on the global stage must be matched by action at home.

Executing dual democracy strategies will be challenging. Presidents have wide latitude for executive action on foreign policy. But Biden’s room to maneuver and push through major domestic reforms in the face of determined Republican opposition are far more limited. Yet the opportunity is enormous—the chance to create a U.S. democracy policy that speaks to the needs and interests of a domestic and a global audience simultaneously. Whether Biden can meet this moment will likely be a defining sign of the ultimate success of his presidency.

Unlike most U.S. allies who were bruised by former U.S. president Donald Trump’s policies, India escaped largely unscathed. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, succinctly described the reasons for this outcome when he noted, “In the Trump vision of the world, allies have disappointed America and competitors have cheated it. India is fortunate in being neither.” Consequently, for all the benefits that President Joe Biden’s arrival promised to the United States and the larger international order, Trump’s defeat produced palpable uncertainties in New Delhi. One hundred days into Biden’s presidency, these doubts have not been erased, but they have been allayed.

China Is a Shared Adversary

In large part, this is because strategic issues and transnational matters have consumed the early attention of both governments—areas in which their interests significantly converge. New Delhi has been reassured by the Biden administration’s persistence with the tough-minded approach toward China. New Delhi had earlier welcomed the Trump administration’s bare-knuckled combat with Beijing because this approach offered India support while the Indian government was coping with China’s aggression along its frontiers. The Biden team’s interactions with China thus far have clearly conveyed that Washington is indeed attuned to the challenges that China poses not only to the United States but also to Asia’s larger regional order. As a result, India’s lurking fears that Washington might return to colluding with Beijing—the source of many unhappy memories in New Delhi—have been alleviated.

In fact, the Biden administration’s conduct thus far has only underscored its conviction that China is now the most dangerous U.S. competitor on the global stage. The administration’s decision to preserve Trump’s tariffs on China and to work with allies in tightening Beijing’s access to high technology appeals to India. But the U.S. initiative to convene a meeting of the heads of the Quad countries and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s visit to India—both of which occurred early in the administration’s tenure—have sent the clearest message of reassurance to New Delhi that this strategic convergence remains strong. Despite New Delhi’s initial reservations about the Quad meeting, the Biden administration’s efforts conveyed two striking signals. First, they showed that Washington recognizes that the traditional business-first approach to China no longer serves its strategic interests. Second, they demonstrated that Washington is serious about pursuing coalition-based strategies to constrain China—strategies in which India will play a prominent role.

Will Strategic Cooperation Smooth Over Other Difficulties?

While the details of what a considered U.S. policy toward China might be are still unclear, the early signs have been heartening to India and help to validate Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s larger bet on the United States. To be sure, there are still differences between the two sides. Biden’s announcement of a complete U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan remains one such example, but Washington’s efforts to integrate New Delhi into a regional solution offer hope that such divergences can be managed. The way Biden has resisted prioritizing Pakistan in this process also augurs well for continued U.S.-Indian cooperation. The commitment to preserving the strong partnership that Washington and New Delhi share thus offers confidence that both nations can manage other divergences on strategic matters as well, such as those on freedom of navigation in India’s exclusive economic zone.

The early focus on transnational matters, such as vaccine cooperation to defeat the coronavirus pandemic and resuscitated efforts to confront climate change, also provided scope for the Biden administration to strengthen bilateral ties with India. The Quad’s support for India’s pharmaceutical industry to help manufacture vaccines for global distribution and Biden’s decision to avoid demanding that India quickly commit to net-zero emissions have transformed potentially prickly transnational challenges into new opportunities for cooperation.

This attitude has produced welcome gains and, despite early fumbles, the administration’s support for India in managing its current spike in COVID-19 cases will hopefully deflate the unjustified complaints about the U.S. Defense Production Act being the principal cause of India’s vaccine woes. The administration’s emergency response will not offset India’s failure to invest early in expanding its vaccine manufacturing capability, but it will strengthen the buffers that could help to insulate the difficulties that are certain to arise in other dimensions of the relationship.

These difficulties will likely surface in bilateral economic relations and in discussions about the travails of India’s democracy. The problems that the United States traditionally has faced regarding market access in India are now exacerbated by India’s emerging policies on e-commerce and data localization, issues that are susceptible to neither easy resolution nor quick solutions that would satisfy the United States. The Biden administration, for its part, appears to be looking for ways to defuse these problems: toward that end, it has put the dispute about U.S. H visas on the backburner, and it has proposed only modest tariffs on Indian imports in retaliation for India’s digital taxes primarily to get New Delhi to participate in serious negotiations.

The concerns about India’s democracy may prove trickier to manage. The fears that India might be gravitating toward illiberalism, even as it remains vibrant electorally, are growing within the United States and elsewhere. Inside the American executive branch, the dismay about the deterioration of India’s democracy is no longer hidden, and within the U.S. Congress and in American civil society, these anxieties are now openly articulated.

The Path Ahead

The Biden administration—partly because it has not finished appointing officials to key positions and partly because the necessity for an integrated policy toward India has not yet been prioritized in the face of other national challenges—will have to figure out how to balance various competing interests in its approach to India. For the moment, the priority on deepening strategic ties to cope with the challenges posed by China and securing India’s cooperation to deal with transnational problems have pushed other nettlesome issues to the sidelines.

Once the Biden administration’s appointees are fully in place, however, the debates about how U.S.-India relations are to be managed will grow, even within the executive branch itself. This discussion will require careful attention at senior levels of government to devise deft policy approaches, as the recent response to India’s vaccine crisis amply demonstrated. Another conundrum that lies just over the horizon pertains to whether the administration should grant waivers on U.S. sanctions for India’s purchase of advanced weapons from Russia. When such contentious issues involve the U.S. Congress and various nongovernmental organizations, the challenges to developing satisfactory solutions will only become more onerous.

While the Biden administration has therefore done well to get the bilateral relationship off to a good start in the face of what were initial uncertainties, whether this strategic partnership will thrive—as opposed to merely muddling through—depends greatly on careful stewardship by leaders and officials in both capitals and the finesse with which both sides handle the problems that even today are all too apparent in both Washington and New Delhi.

For a country that has been given lower priority by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration than by any of his predecessors since Franklin D. Roosevelt, Russia has received more than its initially allotted share of Washington’s attention in Biden’s first 100 days.

Right after inauguration, Biden acted swiftly to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, which was due to expire on February 5. He spoke by phone with Vladimir Putin, who had long been ready for such an extension.

Shortly after that, in March, Biden created a stir in U.S.-Russia relations by publicly agreeing with a journalist’s description of Putin as a “killer.” It prompted Moscow to recall its ambassador from Washington for the first time in almost eighty years.

In April, Biden called Putin again to discuss a range of issues, including the military buildup along the Russia-Ukraine border. Biden alerted Putin to impending U.S. sanctions for what the U.S. treasury secretary called Russia’s “malign behavior,” but Biden suggested that the two presidents meet in Europe to discuss de-escalation of tensions. The sanctions package, Biden’s first, followed within days.

A Cooler Approach

At first glance, Biden’s emerging Russia policy looks very different from that of former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama. Unlike under Trump, the president and U.S. Congress are fully united on the need to face Russia as a long-term adversary. No more talk from the White House of a desire to “get along with Russia” and no more warmth toward Putin personally. And in contrast to Obama’s first term, there is no talk of a reset.

However, there is plenty of continuity from both Trump’s presidency and, to a degree, Obama’s second term in the form of U.S. sanctions on Russia and condemnations of its behavior. America’s frustration with Russia is running high.

Looking from Moscow, the new U.S. administration’s policy on Russia appears to be built on a baffling dichotomy. On the one hand, Biden and his team are seasoned pragmatists whose main focus is squarely on the United States itself. This logically requires a foreign policy of careful retrenchment and conflict mitigation.

On the other hand, the Democratic administration faces a seminal challenge to U.S. global dominance and even primacy, posed by China. Next to it stands a challenge to the stability of Western democratic institutions, including in the United States itself. The internal threat to U.S. democracy is enhanced, as many Americans believe, by Russia’s disruptive actions.

Tackling both challenges at the same time requires a liberal and democratic rejuvenation at home and strengthening geopolitical alliances overseas to oppose Beijing and Moscow. It was former president Bill Clinton who once famously quipped that the United States could “walk and chew gum at the same time” in its relations with post-Soviet Russia. In other words, Washington would do what it thought necessary and ignore Moscow’s sulking.

It appears that Biden might wish to revive that pattern. This means working with Russia on issues in the U.S. interest: nuclear arms, space weapons, nonproliferation, and more—while continuing to punish Moscow for actions that Washington finds objectionable.

New candor also demands that U.S. leaders make no secret of how they view their Russian counterparts: as a bunch of kleptocrats and killers. Like in the Clinton era, this approach would be based on the United States’ superior strength. Inevitably, pragmatism in Biden’s foreign policy has to walk side by side with ideology and confrontation.

Russia’s Evolving Tactics

The problem with such a policy is that Russia has changed since the “Bill and Boris” show. Russia is far less dependent on the United States than at any time since the end of the Soviet Union. U.S. sanctions have launched a powerful dynamic that made Russia focus inward and on non-Western countries, starting with China.

Moscow is now convinced that the United States is a hostile power bent on weakening Russia. The Kremlin has relatively few cards to play in a confrontation with the United States, but it is willing and ready to play them—as Putin in his State of the Nation address, “asymmetrically, swiftly, and harshly.” Moreover, Russia is borrowing a page from Biden’s book: it will deal with Washington only when it serves Russia’s own interest.

Having made its point in the form of countersanctions mostly affecting U.S. diplomats in Russia, and the about “red lines” not to be crossed, the Kremlin has accepted Biden’s invitation for Putin to speak at the virtual climate summit. The two presidents’ national security advisers are engaged in conversations on a range of issues that might be included in the agenda of a U.S.-Russia summit if and when it takes place.

Putin and Biden don’t need a summit to size up each other. They have met before, and each understands where the other is coming from. Neither can they be expected to solve the thorny issues that set the United States against Russia. They cannot even dial down the confrontation. What they can and should do is to make sure that there are guardrails in place to hold U.S.-Russian adversity in check.

In his first foreign policy speech in February 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden reassured the international community that “America is back.” After the near “zero interest in Africa” of the Trump years, this statement could not have come soon enough for U.S. allies and partners in Africa. Public health leaders at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention awaited U.S. leadership on global coordination to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. African policymakers hoped for closer ties (and more cordial engagement) with the United States. And members of the large African diaspora in the United States—along with prospective workers and international students—anxiously anticipated the lifting of travel restrictions.

Now marking one hundred days in office, the Biden administration’s approach to Africa is taking shape. While different in tone from its predecessor, there are significant policy continuities from the Trump era. Yet, to reposition U.S.-African relations in an increasingly multipolar world, there will need to be more engagement on the issues decisive to the continent’s future. Whether America is truly “back” in Africa remains to be seen.

A Fresh Start

Biden’s emerging approach to Africa marks a break in tone from his predecessor. The travel bans on six African countries were revoked within hours of the inauguration. Early calls with African foreign ministers and heads of states from South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya demonstrated Biden’s commitment to restoring robust U.S. diplomatic engagement.

The U.S. government under Biden has bolstered pan-African and multilateral initiatives. The administration’s support for Nigerian-born economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala paved the way for her confirmation as the first African and first female director general of the World Trade Organization. Similarly, the Biden administration said it would reconsider Trump’s bilateral trade negotiations with Kenya, suggesting a likely renewed focus on supporting the African Continental Free Trade Area, which would be a nod to this flagship pan-African regional integration initiative.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s State Department has also placed greater emphasis on democracy and human rights promotion in Africa. In an unusual move against a close ally, the U.S. signed on to a UN Human Rights Council joint statement calling on Egypt to end its crackdown on freedom of expression and assembly. Similarly, in its country report on human rights practices in 2020, the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor said Zimbabwean security forces acted with tacit support from President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government. Strongly worded statements have also been issued on human rights violations in southern Cameroon and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. A recent diplomatic mission by Senator Chris Coons to Tigray also demonstrates U.S. foreign policy priorities in the Horn of Africa.

Not So Different

Nevertheless, the Biden administration appears to be retaining Trump-era policies and policymakers’ general approach toward Africa. In Biden’s continuing hardline approach to China—reiterated in congressional hearings and in remarks by Blinken—the African continent figures as an arena of great power competition for influence. Take, for instance, the fact that the United States and Taiwan are working together with Eswatini to identify private sector opportunities to strengthen the country’s information technology sector. Just recently, Biden even floated the idea of a U.S.-led infrastructure plan as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative for infrastructure financing for developing countries.

Moreover, in the twenty-first century, U.S. engagement has primarily followed political and humanitarian concerns: provision of humanitarian assistance to the destitute, elections monitoring, and the containment of infectious diseases and terrorism from spilling out of Africa. This decades-old U.S. lack of interest in African economies could persist into this administration. For there was very little mention of Africa in Blinken or Biden’s early foreign policy addresses: indeed, in his March 24 speech at NATO headquarters on “reaffirming and reimagining America’s alliances,” Blinken did not once refer to the continent. In contrast to U.S. relative indifference to Africa, rising powers like China and India have become Africa’s largest trade partners, and Turkey’s embassies, schools, and hospitals across the continent signal its growing role.

What do these trends in U.S.-Africa relations mean for Africa, and should Biden and Blinken maintain the current course? To fail to reengage with a continent with several fast-growing economies, a youthful population set to exceed 2 billion by 2050, and significant U.S. foreign policy interests would be a grave mistake. The Biden administration must invest in securing Africa’s future now.

How to Invest in the Relationship

In an increasingly multipolar world, the United States needs to show African countries that the continent is a priority and not a piece on the chessboard of great power rivalry. To begin with, there ought to be higher-level U.S. government visits to African countries by Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Blinken. Already five African leaders participated in Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22 and 23. However, there should follow a dedicated U.S.-Africa summit in another year or two, in the mold of similar initiatives by China, Japan, Russia, France, and (more recently) the UK. Additionally, the United States should demonstrate its commitment to Africa-owned regional priorities as espoused in the African Union’s Agenda 2063. This includes finding areas of alignment with the Africa Continental Free Trade Area and employing a continental—as opposed to regional—lens to include North African countries in some areas, as the transnational complexities of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam talks indicate.

The U.S. government should also show its commitment to Africa’s post-pandemic recovery by providing access to COVID-19 vaccines. The effective rollout of vaccines will shape the global economic recovery; according to the International Monetary Fund, economies with slower vaccine rollouts will perform poorly. By most projections, Africa will not have sufficient vaccine access before 2023. In view of the successful domestic rollout with sufficient vaccine stock for all Americans multiple times over, Biden should immediately commit to supplying COVID-19 vaccines to African countries. The administration could lift export restrictions and announce, say, a donation of 50-100 million vaccine doses to the African Union. While this goodwill gesture to African countries will be months behind similar Chinese and Russian efforts, it will still go a long way toward mending ties. It can also set the foundation for establishing local production of these vaccines in countries like Senegal, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya, among others. There are more than three vaccines produced by U.S. pharmaceutical companies to serve this purpose.

Next, U.S.-African relations should focus on initiatives that generate jobs and other economic opportunities. The Biden administration has emphasized the need for better integration of U.S. foreign policy into Biden’s national policy agenda to strengthen the middle class: the phrase “foreign policy for the middle class” has come to the fore. Across thirty-four African countries, just as in the United States, unemployment is the number one problem for most people. Therefore, prioritizing aspects of foreign policy that support the creation of jobs and other economic opportunities in African countries and the United States should be an obvious direction to take. It makes sense to strengthen and expand exchange programs like the Young Africa Leaders Initiative and the International Visitor Leadership Program to target young Africans in underserved regions in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and Central Africa. A dedicated exchange program for medical professionals could leverage the thousands of U.S. nurses, doctors, and pharmacists in the African diaspora to support capacity building in their home countries in a post-pandemic world.

More can be done to support human capital development in Africa by leveraging the United States’ world-class higher education institutions. One approach could be to expand opportunities for graduate study in the United States through the provision of scholarships and information about the U.S university system by the State Department’s various agencies. The U.S. government can also arrange discussions between American universities and African countries to establish campuses on the continent and tap into a growing market for private university education. Webster University and NYU are two U.S. universities with a physical presence in Ghana. This approach can be scaled up on par with top universities such as Duke, Georgetown, and Northwestern, which have campuses in Qatar, Singapore, and other parts of Asia.

The Resonance of Racial Justice

Finally, the United States’ own progress in addressing deep inequities and tensions around racial injustice will affect its standing as a beacon of democracy among African countries. Harrowing scenes of police brutality, gun violence, and mass shootings caught on camera phones are easily consumed by young people in Africa via Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and other social media platforms. And justice for Black and brown Americans means something for African citizens: protesters knelt outside the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi to protest not only George Floyd’s killing but also Kenyan police abuses. Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict made the front page in newspapers across the continent and lit up social media.

Socioeconomic renewal at home can and will boost the United States’ position as a model of democratic governance and respect for human rights for African countries. From Nigeria to Kenya, Ethiopia to South Africa, the issue of minority rights and political inclusion are more salient than ever. The United States’ moral standing in the eyes of human rights advocates—in African countries and around the world—is increasingly being filtered through the lens of domestic U.S. social justice issues. By investing in securing Africa’s future, the new administration will find concrete ways to achieve its foreign policy objective of responding to the domestic priorities of middle-class renewal.