Biden’s accomplishments in foreign policy (Gettysburg Times op-ed)
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This continues DFA’s discussion of President Biden’s accomplishments and the stark differences between the President and his presumed 2024 opponent. Foreign policy and national security show the most dramatic contrast between President Biden and former President Trump, a troubling development because it once was part of the American ethos that partisan politics stopped at the waters’ edge.
I will discuss Biden’s accomplishments in areas where adversaries with nuclear weapons present a clear and present danger to U. S. national security: the Russia/Ukraine war, China, and North Korea.
Russia and Ukraine. After the surprise February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Biden immediately rallied the entire NATO alliance to provide military and humanitarian aid so that Ukraine could fend off the invasion and ultimately expel Russian forces from Ukrainian territory. Biden argued- — and rightly so ---that democratic governments everywhere are threatened if we allow an authoritarian Russia to take over democratic Ukraine by force.
Through 2023, the Biden administration and Congress have approved more than $75B in aid to Ukraine. Most aid has provided weapons systems, training, and intelligence that Ukraine needs for defense against one of the world’s largest and most powerful militaries. This represents a mere 9 percent of the $812B U.S. defense budget for 2022. An intelligence assessment presented to Congress on December 11, 2023, documented that this aid, supplemented by aid from other NATO allies, has led to Russia losing 87% of the active-duty ground troops it had pre-invasion, two-thirds of its tanks, and about a quarter of its prewar stockpiles of other ground-force equipment. All of this has been accomplished without the loss of a single U.S. or NATO soldier in combat. This is an astonishing accomplishment for such little cost, putting the lie to the argument from Congressional MAGA Republicans that our aid to Ukraine is too expensive.
As of the beginning of 2024, MAGA Republicans in Congress, egged on by Trump, were fiercely resisting Biden’s proposals for further aid to Ukraine. Trump not only opposes aiding Ukraine, but continues to express admiration for Russian President Putin. Returning Trump to the White House would almost certainly undo Biden’s greatest accomplishment to date: saving the NATO alliance and its main mission of protecting Europe from Russian aggression. Ukraine would be abandoned to the Russian bear.
China and North Korea. Neither of these nuclear powers presents the existential threat to the U.S. that Russia does, despite the right’s shameless fear-mongering. But the expansion of China’s navy into the South China Sea, and China’s escalating belligerent rhetoric against Taiwan, have been worrisome developments. To counter these threats, Biden’s foreign policy is to strengthen our relationships with our Pacific allies that former President Trump upended because of his “America First” ideology.
In addition, Biden has re-focused our China policy on the main area of contention between the two countries: China’s unfair trading practices.
On August 9, 2023 President Biden issued an Executive Order that bars U S. nationals from investing in three sectors of the Chinese economy: semiconductors and microelectronics; quantum information technologies; and certain artificial intelligence technologies. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, these sectors were chosen due to their “critical role in accelerating the development of advanced military, intelligence, surveillance, and cyber-enabled capabilities.” Biden has also imposed several other restrictive trade measures and sanctions on China, including export controls on key semiconductor equipment. As recently as last October these export controls were further tightened.
Biden’s policy has been focused on restricting trade in equipment and technologies that have military as well as commercial uses. This approach is much more effective than Trump’s reliance on the blunt tool of tariffs. Many of Trump’s tariffs ended up needlessly hurting American farmers and manufacturers, who, according to the non-partisan U.S. International Trade Commission, paid most of the cost of the tariffs.
Another of Biden’s major accomplishments is recognizing that the threat posed by North Korea to the U.S. and its Pacific allies cannot be mitigated without China’s cooperation. Biden understands, while Trump and the America Firsters do not, that global problems — — the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation and use, global pandemics, the threats posed by climate change — — require global solutions. While we must deal with Russia, China, and North Korea as threats to our national security, we must also cooperate with them on global problems that are a threat to all of us. Biden has a record of being able to do this. Trump has a proven record of instead turning his back on international agreements.
Jeff Colvin is a research physicist and co-chair of Gettysburg DFA. He lives in Gettysburg.