WASHINGTON — In a relative rarity for presidential elections, both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have long records on foreign policy and clearly stated positions on many of the world's hot spots.
Trump's allies at the Republican National Convention are expected to argue that Biden has weakened America's standing abroad and permitted the outbreak of conflicts between Russia and Ukraine as well as the Israelis and Palestinians. Biden, a Democrat who ran four years ago on a message of shoring up America's foreign alliances and reversing Trump policies, argues that he has restored U.S. standing abroad.
Here's a look at their records on key conflicts.
Afghanistan
One of Biden’s weakest arguments on foreign policy is the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years, America’s longest war.
The chaotic events of July, August and September of 2021 posed one of the first international challenges for the relatively young Biden administration. At least 13 American servicemen and women were killed in an attack at the Kabul airport in the midst of the withdrawal.
Biden, who had long advocated ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan dating to his time as vice president under Barack Obama, defended his decision to pull out, saying the goals of the original invasion after the 9/11 terrorist attacks two decades earlier had been accomplished.
However, Biden administration officials also blamed Trump for leaving them with a vague and unfinished plan for withdrawal — and one that had little or no input from the U.S.-backed Afghan government in Kabul.
In February 2020, the Trump administration concluded an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces by May 2021. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Doha, Qatar to witness the signing of the deal, which was negotiated without the direct input of the Afghan government, and met with the Taliban’s chief negotiator to cement it.
As 2020 progressed through the presidential election in November that Biden won, there was little movement in planning for the eventual withdrawal, although American troops were gradually drawn down. Trump fired his defense secretary just six days after the November election.
After Biden took office in January 2021, his White House struggled to reconcile the new president’s desire to withdraw from Afghanistan on the timeline committed to by the previous administration. After the May deadline passed, the Taliban began to step up attacks and made significant territorial gains. When the Biden administration announced that all U.S. troops would leave Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11 in September 2021, and then moved up the deadline, the Taliban increased its assaults, resulting in the fall of Kabul and the chaos that ensued.
The Middle East, Iran and Yemen
Trump was an unabashed supporter of Israel while he was in office.
Against advice from numerous foreign policy veterans, he unilaterally decided to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Previous Republican and Democratic administrations had refused to take this step due to competing Israeli and Palestinian claims on the holy city. Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a territory seized and occupied by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war about which the U.S. had not taken a position.
In addition, in moves all since reversed by Biden, Trump cut off U.S. funding for Palestinian refugees and programs aimed at supporting Palestinian self-governance and rescinded a 1970s State Department determination that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are “illegitimate” under international law.
At the same time, Trump sought to promote Middle East peace by bypassing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and successfully negotiated the so-called “Abraham Accords” that normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. He also proposed what some referred to as a “deal of the century” to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but that plan was roundly rejected by both Palestinians and many of their Arab allies.
Trump claims the Israel-Hamas war would never have happened had he been in office. But it is impossible to know if Trump could have prevented the current war. Some experts believe that Trump’s alienation of the Palestinians may have contributed to the conditions that led to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel that started the conflict last fall.
Iran
In 2016, Trump campaigned on the idea that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a signature foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration, was the “worst” diplomatic agreement ever negotiated by the United States. Trump’s argument was that the deal – which gave Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program – gave away too much and created a path for Iran to develop nuclear weapons once the time-limited restrictions in the agreement expired.
After several fits and starts, Trump withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and embarked on a “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran that resulted in a wave of new and hard-hitting sanctions against Iranian entities. One top target of those sanctions was the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the administration declared a “foreign terrorist organization” for its support of anti-Israel and anti-US groups operating throughout the Middle East, including in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.
In January 2020, the Trump administration killed IRGC commander Qassim Soleimani in an airstrike at the airport in Baghdad, leading to threats of retaliation from Iranian officials against Trump and several of his top national security aides that continue to this day. U.S. authorities ramped up security for Trump after detecting what they said was an Iranian threat on his life, but say that threat was unrelated to the assassination attempt that took place at his rally Saturday in Pennsylvania.
When the Biden administration took office, it declared its intent to try to resurrect the nuclear deal, arguing that it was the best way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons without military conflict. Biden removed or eased some of the sanctions that Trump had imposed but efforts to revive the deal failed after repeated attempts.
In August 2023, the Biden administration and Iran agreed to a deal in which $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds held in South Korea would be released to banks in Qatar in return for the release of five detained Americans in Iran. Republicans heavily criticized the agreement, saying it would help Iran fund terrorism, although administration officials have said the money cannot be used for anything other than humanitarian goods. As recently as last month, none of the cash has been released for any purpose, senior administration officials said.
Yemen
In one of its last acts in office, the Trump administration determined that Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels were a “foreign terrorist organization,” a move that many aid agencies criticized because they said it would exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
The Biden administration reversed that determination with an eye toward improving conditions on the ground, but that has met with mixed results. While the crisis continues, the Houthis have continued their attacks inside Yemen and on Saudi Arabia and, since the Gaza war erupted last year, they have increasingly turned their sights on Israeli, U.S., British and other western shipping interests in the Red Sea.
North Korea
When he was elected president, Trump was told by his predecessor, Obama, that North Korea and its nuclear and missile programs represented the greatest threat to the United States. The threat from North Korea grew over Trump’s first months in office and reached a high point in 2017 when Pyongyang tested an inter-continental ballistic missile and at least one nuclear device.
Tensions reached a high point that September when Trump began referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “ little rocket man ” and warning that any attack on the U.S. would be met by “fire, fury, and frankly power the likes of which the world has never seen before.”
Several months later, the two sides agreed to reduce tensions and, in a series of scripted official and unofficial meetings, laid the groundwork for Trump’s meeting – the first of three – with Kim in Singapore in June 2018. As a result of that summit and the two subsequent ones, North Korea suspended its missile and nuclear tests but attempts to secure a lasting deal failed.
Since Biden took office, North Korea has resumed its missile testing.
China
The Trump administration adopted a hard line on China, imposing tariffs and trade sanctions on Beijing as well as targeting Chinese diplomats for alleged espionage and then blaming China for the COVID-19 outbreak.
Although the Biden administration has sought to improve ties with China, including several meetings between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, it has largely left in place the sanctions imposed by Trump’s team. The Biden administration now accuses China of bolstering Russia’s defense industrial sector to allow it to continue and step up attacks against Ukraine.
The Trump administration also upgraded U.S. ties with Taiwan, allowing for more senior-level meetings between the two sides and stepping up arms sales to the island, which China regards as its own. The Trump administration also forcefully condemned China’s increasing aggressiveness in the South China Sea, anti-democratic actions in Hong Kong and repression in the western region of Xinjiang. The Biden administration has not altered those positions.
Europe, Russia, Ukraine and NATO
As president, Trump inherited a situation in which Russia had not only occupied two enclaves in Georgia in 2008 but also seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Trump believed, and apparently still does, that his personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin could resolve these issues, yet neither did.
Although Trump did authorize the transfer of some offensive weapons to Ukraine, U.S.-Ukrainian relations took a hit with Trump’s attempts to force Kyiv to investigate alleged corruption by members of Biden’s family by withholding additional military aid. That led to Trump’s first impeachment.
Trump has also been extremely skeptical of NATO and U.S. alliances more broadly in Europe and Asia. He has repeatedly taken credit for more NATO members meeting their pledge to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense, although the vast majority of the 23 allies now meeting that goal did so while Biden has been president.
