Skip to main content
Top

2024 | Book

Presidential Leadership and Foreign Policy

Comparing the Trump and Biden Doctrines

insite
SEARCH

About this book

The 2024 U.S. presidential election will hinge on two very different basic approaches to domestic and foreign policy, two very different sets of underlying premises, and two very different types of presidential and high-level official personalities at the administrative helm putting them into effect. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is campaigning on a nationalist conservative preservation platform. It is a direct antithesis of the Biden-Harris- Waltz progressive transformation agenda. This volume comparatively analyzes the choices of presidential doctrine that are likely to define the principles, beliefs, and nature of U.S. foreign policy in the years following the election of either candidate and their vastly different agendas.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Comparing the Trump and Biden Doctrines: Frameworks of Analysis

Frontmatter
Conservative American Nationalism Versus Progressive Internationalism: The Trump–Biden Foreign Policy Doctrines Compared
Abstract`
This chapter analyzes the puzzling amalgam of President Biden’s foreign policy initiatives and former President Donald Trump’s widely misunderstood doctrine of “America First.” Mr. Biden’s policies build on Barack Obama's foreign policy foundations, yet take them in a clearly more progressive direction. His progressive internationalism retains a core element of traditional liberal internationalism. That is reflected in his strong support of the Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion, and his more equivocal support of Israel after the October 7 Hamas attack, which amounts to the use of a containment strategy. Yet, Mr. Biden seeks to be a transformational leader both at home and abroad, applying progressive assumptions and policies in both areas. President Trump’s widely misunderstood policy of “America First,” places him squarely in the realist tradition of Hans Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer, both successors to Jacksonian populist nationalism. Trump’s doctrine stresses having the varied elements of national power—military, economic, political, and cultural—available for use, and developing a reputation for being willing to use them. It also reflects an emphasis on American National Identity as a cornerstone of America’s essential relationship with itself and the world and as well a highly selective involvement, with an emphasis on its own interests, in defining America’s role in the world.
Stanley A. Renshon
The Biden and Trump Doctrines in Comparative Perspective
Abstract
This chapter examines the origins, content, and effectiveness of the Biden Doctrine. Scholars have disagreed about what principles—if any—underpin Biden’s foreign policies, with rival cases advanced for “personality realism,” “pragmatic realism,” a “Rooseveltian internationalism” that rejects “minimalist realism,” “belligerent nationalism,” and more. Part of the analytical dilemma reflects the marked tensions within the Biden approach. Biden consciously framed his strategy as a repudiation of his immediate predecessor and a return to what he considered the broadly bipartisan tradition of internationalist American statecraft that had prevailed before Trump. This was based on the framework of a “foreign policy for the middle class” that would simultaneously address the challenges America faced at home and abroad within the broader context of an intense geo-political and ideational competition between democracy and autocracy. At its core, this approach explicitly linked America’s domestic strength to its international competitiveness. Following liberal internationalist precepts, the Biden administration committed itself to reviving U.S. alliances and re-joining multilateral and supranational organizations that the Trump administration had left. There were, however, notable areas of continuity between Biden and his predecessor that challenged his self-presentation as the “un-Trump.” Moreover, the execution of his eponymous doctrine was at best partially successful. The disastrous exit from Afghanistan in 2021, most notably, unnerved multiple U.S. allies and returned that nation to its pre-9/11 status as an incubator of terrorism. Although Biden’s initial handling of the Ukraine war won some critical praise, the broader results belied claims that America was “back” and reviving democratic alliances. Biden’s defensive liberalism may have informed his approach, and rejected populist nationalism, but it remained unclear as to whether this was directed at reviving the U.S., the West, democracies, or the “rules-based order.” Nor was it entirely clear how Biden would respond when U.S. interests and the demands of allies and rules clashed. Biden’s ultimate achievement was to perpetuate a retreat from global leadership that had begun under the prior Democratic administration of which he was a part.
Robert S. Singh
Is the Biden (Harris) Foreign Policy Obama Redux?
Abstract
President Biden has more ambitious diplomatic goals than President Obama. But, like Obama, he may not follow through with the necessary military means. After withdrawing U.S. forces precipitously from Afghanistan, President Biden told the United Nations in September 2021: “As we close this period of relentless war, we’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy.” Relentless diplomacy, however, seldom works without relentless military vigilance outside diplomacy. Soviet president Vladmir Putin made that clear when in the midst of “strategic stability” discussions with the United States he invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Now Biden draws redlines to defend Ukraine, escalate arms deliveries to Taiwan, and backstop Israel in its war with Hamas. Will he respect these redlines if conflicts escalate, or will he accommodate Russian, Chinese, and Iranian aggression, as President Obama did after Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, President Trump did after China seized full control of Hong Kong in 2020, and President Biden has done so far in the Gaza War in the Middle East?
Henry R. Nau

Comparing the Trump and Biden Doctrines: Historical and International Foundations

Frontmatter
Explaining the Changing Biden’s Doctrine: From Defensive Liberalism to Offensive Realism
Abstract
Two key factors in the international system might affect changes in presidential doctrines. One factor is the distribution of capabilities: is the system unipolar or bipolar/multipolar? Under unipolarity, a great power might try to promote its own ideology—international liberalism in the case of the US. However, when there are a number of great powers, realist doctrines will be very appealing. The other key causal factor is the level of threat confronting the great power. As the level of threat confronting the US is rising, the doctrine will become more offensive, aiming to maximize its relative power and to weaken its rivals. In the post-Cold War era under unipolarity, the US got the chance to carry out a liberal doctrine. Under Trump, the doctrine shifted to a nationalist-America First strategy with some realist elements—the US aimed to maximize short-term material gains unilaterally—transactional deals in which the US should be always the winner and the other side would be the loser. The explanation is power transition toward multipolarity and the rising level of threat in the international system—as both China (notably, in the South China Sea) and Russia (with the 2014 annexation of Crimea) became more aggressive. Before he became president, Joe Biden shared the international liberal agenda of various post-Cold War administrations. This agenda included the attempts to integrate China and Russia into the liberal international order, notably including China in the WTO and Russia in the G8. However, by the time he moved into the White House, the international system changed in some major ways, most notably with the rise of a peer great-power competitor—China. This shift compelled Biden to endorse a realist doctrine, focusing on great-power competition. In the first year of his administration, Biden led a defensive realist doctrine-competition with China but in a restrained and cautious manner with a focus on deterrence and balancing. This defensive doctrine included also withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021 and a major attempt to revive the nuclear deal with Iran. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the rising level of threat led, however, to a shift in the doctrine toward a more offensive orientation. The offensive realist doctrine, aiming at weakening Russia, was reinforced by the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians to the Russian invasion. The administration is willing to provide a major package of military aid as part of a realist agenda which encourages such aid when the client demonstrates its willingness to defend itself under the realist logic of a self-help international system and the client shows the capacity to cause major damage to a threatening rival of the US. Finally, the overall realist doctrine might be qualified later on by some liberal elements of dealing with global/transnational threats which were upgraded in recent years: pandemic; climate change and nuclear proliferation. These threats demand international cooperation, most notably with China. Still, under great-power competition and rising levels of threat, we might expect that the realist elements of the doctrine will be the most salient.
Benjamin Miller
International Organizations, Great Power Competition, and the U.S. Presidency: The Dilemma of China
Abstract
This chapter will contrast Trump’s approach to international organizations, which I will argue was principally realist, with Biden’s initial efforts to shape U.S. engagement with international organizations which I will argue is fundamentally structuralist. This chapter will highlight how their approaches lead to contrasting policies, making the point that neither eschews the value of international organizations as instruments of foreign policy. The chapter will then examine the aftermath of the war on Ukraine and examine if it has impacted this administration’s behavior. It will conclude by forecasting the likely impact on the Trump/Biden legacy in future approaches to international organizations.
James Jay Carafano

The United States in the World: Allies, Rivals and Enemies

Frontmatter
International Relationships: How Presidents Trump and Biden Think and Feel About Other Countries
Abstract
This chapter reports the results of a comparison between how presidents Trump and Biden think about other countries and their leaders, and how this relates to each president’s worldview and policies. The comparison is based on content analyses of presidential speeches, interviews, and other texts. Content analysis provides nonreactive measures of a cognitive process (integrative complexity), motivation (the needs for achievement, affiliation, and power), and emotion (psychological distance or closeness), both overall and with respect to specific nations. A separate analysis identifies changes in Trump’s rhetoric between findings published in 2021 and the current dataset. Cluster analysis is used to identify each president’s groupings of countries sharing similar relationships with the USA.
Peter Suedfeld, Bradford H. Morrison
Same Objective, Different Approaches: Comparing Trump’s and Biden’s China Policy
Abstract
President Barack Obama called himself America’s first “Pacific president” and began to pivot the U.S. foreign policy toward Asia, a process that would have been started by President George W. Bush if 9/11 had not happened. However, it was President Trump who set the concrete goal of beating China as one of his foreign policy priorities. The Trump administration’s 2018 Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework aimed to maintain “diplomatic, economic and military pre-eminence in the fastest-growing region of the world.” Trump emphasized “America first” which was reflected in his launching the trade war with China without working closely with U.S. allies or getting them to support the policy before he set it into motion.
Zhiqun Zhu
Evolving Great Power Tensions Between the United States and Russia
Abstract
Relations between the United States and Russia have gone from bad to worse during the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations. Trump signaled that he wanted to improve United States–Russia relations when he entered office in 2017, but these efforts were hindered by the accusations that the Russians interfered on his behalf in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. His clumsy efforts to use his office to invite further foreign interference, this time from Ukraine, resulted in his first impeachment and further clouded any moves he might have made in order to develop closer ties with Moscow. While Biden assumed the presidency in January 2021 hoping to pursue a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia, that was impossible after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Whatever hopes existed at the end of the Cold War for a meaningful U.S. partnership with Russia are now completely shattered, and relations are unlikely to improve as long as Vladimir Putin remains in charge in the Kremlin.
James Goldgeier
An Offer They Can Refuse: Winning Friends and Fighting Enemies in Iran
Abstract
This essay discusses the reasons for American policy failures vis a vis the Islamic Republic of Iran under the Trump and Biden administrations and proposes an alternative strategy. Iran today is, in many ways, a hub around which coalesce many of those forces and political entities—including even several superpowers—that aspire to the eradication of “North-Western world hegemony” and its replacement by the domination of East and South. The regime of the ayatollahs’ aggressive confrontation with Israel, the moderate Sunni-Arab states, the United States, and Britain serves as a spearhead and ignition key for this wider, international struggle to overcome the Free World. Iran must therefore either be permanently re-oriented or permanently neutralized. There is a great deal at stake.
Ze’ev Maghen
Still a Special Relationship? The Effect of the Administration Change on the U.S.-Israel Relationship
Abstract
Administration changes in the United States mark shifts in U.S. attention and involvement toward the Middle East in general and Israel in particular. This shift also characterized the Trump-Biden administration change. In contrast to the Trump administration, at its outset, the Biden administration did not prioritize Israel in its foreign policy during the first two years in office. This de-prioritization is explained by global and regional factors as well as political considerations in both countries—the electoral turmoil and fight over the political system in Israel, and the political divide over Israel between the two political parties in the United States and within the Democratic Party. We illustrate this change using three policies that are related to Israel, each revealing a different change dynamic: the Iran Nuclear Deal, which represents a major shift between the Trump and the Biden administrations, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which represents a shift of approach with a more critical confrontation with the Israeli government, and third, the Abraham Accords, which represent more continuity than change. We then discuss the response of the Biden administration to the attempted judicial reforms in Israel. We conclude with an early assessment of the effects of the barbaric Hamas attacks of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023 (and the Israeli response to those attacks) on the policy of the United States toward Israel and the region, an event that showed the strength of Biden's commitment to Israel.
Amnon Cavari, Shay Har-Zvi

Comparing the Trump and Biden Doctrines in Practice

Frontmatter
Beneath the Public Persona: The Real Psychology of the Biden Presidency
Abstract
This paper analyzes the reality beneath President Biden’s well-established “Good old Joe” persona. We examine evidence of the president’s capacities and conclude there is no dispositive evidence that he is not the driving initiator of the administration’s major policies, or the one saying yea or nay to those brought before him, whether he is or is not deeply involved. They are his and his administrations’ decisions and therefore we proceed on the basis that they are legitimate to evaluate. A president’s psychology reflects a pattern of ambitions and abilities developed and shaped over time and applied to his circumstances and purposes once in office. They affect not only a president's ambitions, but also his thinking about to achieve them. We examine the president’s high self-confidence in his own views, and how they developed over decades of public life. Mr. Biden overcame many significant obstacles, personal and professional, to reach the presidency. He suffered the enormous and tragic losses of his first wife and child in a car accident and later his son Beau to brain cancer. He has also survived several near -death experiences from brain aneurisms. That he has persevered and overcome these tragic circumstances is a reflection of his resilience. Mr. Biden’ core psychology—his strong ambition, his focus, determination, persistence, and risk-taking audacity, along with his strategy of practicing almost every conversation in advance, have been key aspects of his success. Yet, little is known about them. There is no analysis of Biden’s universally acknowledged tendency to talk, always at great length. I term this BidenTalk—reflecting that talk, of all kinds, plays a large role in Biden’s political persona. It is not fully appreciated how much of a role it also plays in his core psychology. It does so as a vehicle for forging strategic connections to whose he wants or needs in his circle of unquestioning supporters. Making these kinds of powerful emotional connections is deeply embedded in his understanding and practice of presidential leadership. We examine these features while analyzing ‘The Puzzle of Mr. Biden’s Progressive Presidency,” and then in a detailed analysis of the President Biden’s psychology and judgment in his decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.
Stanley A. Renshon
The Biden and Trump Foreign Policies: Comparing Differing Approaches to the Use of Force and Diplomacy
Abstract
The 2024 presidential elections may potentially offer a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It is therefore useful to examine these two leaders’ views about “the use of force” and the implications of their differences for American national security and foreign policy. Utilizing Robert (Art in The use of force: military power and international politics, University Press of America, 1993) conceptualization of the four uses of force (deterrence, compellence, defense, and swaggering), I compare and analyze both the Trump and Biden administrations’ foreign policy approaches regarding Afghanistan, Russia/Ukraine, China, Iran, and North Korea. Does either administration have a coherent “doctrine” regarding the use of force or containment compared with previous U.S. administrations? Or do their policies actually reflect ad hoc approaches, and if so, is that because of the presidents themselves, new features of the international system, or both? Finally, I ask, what are the foreign policy implications of these administrations’ principles concerning the use of force to advance U.S. security and economic interests, their impact upon our allies, and their potential consequences for efforts to deal with adversaries around the world?
Thomas Preston
Facing a Dangerous World: A Comparison of the Biden and Trump Doctrines
Abstract
This quantitative discourse analysis (QDA) explores the differences and similarities of the Biden and Trump doctrines, focusing on how each presidential doctrine is driven by specific geopolitical issues. We analyze the themes deployed in political speeches by Presidents Biden and Trump, based on a codebook of cultural/political themes that have been developed for use on a broad range of political leaders. The same themes were mentioned most often by both presidents, military, climate, allies, borders, and immigration. However, they prioritized these key issues differently and often expressed different policy positions on and attitudes toward them. In some cases, the presidents shared key views and differed less than commonly portrayed in media. Currently, the world is experiencing new levels of geopolitical turmoil. Strategic competition between the United States versus China and Russia drives international policy, and Russia has initiated a major war against Ukraine. Therefore, this study will also examine the two presidents’ views on China, Russia, and the Ukraine.
Lawrence A. Kuznar, Eric C. Kuznar
An Inward Turn?: Public Opinion, Partisanship, and American Foreign Policy
Abstract
Does American public opinion favor domestic priorities over international engagement? At the moment, not any more than historically typical. The public has long prioritized inward-facing foreign policies while still supporting a range of internationalist foreign policies. At the same time, we could be witnessing the beginnings of a shift in partisan attitudes about foreign policy. Significant differences between Democrats and Republicans exist over a relatively small number of highly salient and divisive issues. On the one hand, these differences might reflect normal disagreements over which policies to pursue to achieve a shared end goal. On the other hand, these differences could portend a change in foreign policy attitudes with Republicans becoming more insular while Democrats becoming more supportive of international engagement. This chapter considers these questions in reference to attitudes on the role of the United States in the world, foreign policy goals and priorities, international threats, and policies toward Russia, China, and international economics.
Douglas C. Foyle, Sarah Jessica Backer
Open Borders and National Sovereignty: The Trump and Biden Immigration Doctrines in Comparative Perspective
Abstract
This chapter describes and compares the distinct Biden and Trump immigration doctrines, and evaluates their accomplishments. While it is impossible at this date to know the extent to which they succeeded in affecting the long-term direction of immigration policy, it is possible to detect some indications of lasting effects that will have long-term effects on our immigration system, on our relations with other nations, especially Mexico, and on how the world views the United States as an immigration destination. The Trump immigration doctrine is described as “Conservative American Nationalism.” The blueprint was presented to voters in a speech he gave in Phoenix, Arizona, on August 31, 2016, and was animated primarily by the notion that no country can remain a sovereign country without securing its borders, and that immigration policy should serve the interests of Americans, not special interests, immigrants, or other nations. Trump operated under the assumption that the border could be controlled, that better immigration regulation would enhance national security and benefit the economy, and that the United States should vigorously use diplomatic and economic leverage to incentivize other countries to prevent illegal migration. Notably, Trump did achieve a reduction in immigration during his presidency and an improvement in border security. Biden’s immigration doctrine was based on diametrically opposite assumptions: that immigration is an unqualified benefit to America; that strict enforcement of immigration laws is inhumane; that illegal immigrants should be allowed to remain; and that the only way to reduce illegal immigration is to increase legal pathways and improve conditions in sending countries. Biden’s actions have brought about one of the largest, fastest increases in immigration in U.S. history, although the pathways he established are temporary. Moreover, this influx of migrants has come at a significant political and security cost that has yet to be fully realized.
Jessica M. Vaughan
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Presidential Leadership and Foreign Policy
Editors
Stanley A. Renshon
Peter Suedfeld
Copyright Year
2024
Electronic ISBN
978-3-031-52799-9
Print ISBN
978-3-031-52798-2
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52799-9

Premium Partner