The Biden and Trump Doctrines in Comparative Perspective

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.