Though not a focus of the presidential campaign, the incoming Biden administration will alter the course of U.S. foreign policy in dramatic ways. Joe Biden has promised to reenter the Paris Climate Agreement, re-engage with Iran, and end support for the catastrophic Saudi-led war in Yemen. He’ll certainly be more responsive to the concerns of the United States’ traditional allies, probably be more confrontational with Russia, and will do far less coddling of dictators than Trump has. In other words, it will be a return to relative normalcy on the foreign policy front.
But many progressives aren’t particularly keen on “normalcy.” The status quo under President Barack Obama was marked by many policies that were heavily criticized by the left, including the Libyan intervention, his expansion of the U.S. drone warfare program and his refusal to break from Israel and Saudi Arabia. Insofar as Biden represents a return to that state of affairs, there will be pressure from the foreign policy left (as much pressure as it can muster, anyway) to make seismic changes to how the U.S. interacts with the rest of the world.
What policies will be the most controversial, and how will we know whether the Biden administration is moving leftward? Here are a few of the top issues that will likely become political battlegrounds:
The Pentagon Budget
This is at the top of the list because it will inevitably come up—Biden will have to submit a budget and Congress will have to pass one—and because there’s clearly daylight between Biden and the progressive wing of his party. Organizations like Win Without War have long advocated for cuts to the Pentagon budget and for that money to be directed to domestic priorities like education; about half of Democratic senators have signed onto a plan from Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey to slash defense spending by 10%.
Biden has no plans to go along with this. In one interview with Stars and Stripes, he said that military spending might actually increase as the Pentagon organizes itself to respond to contemporary threats like cyber warfare. That isn’t going to go down well among a substantial portion of Democrats.
Sanctions
Another area where there is already a substantial amount of conflict between Biden and the progressives is the sanctions on Venezuela and Iran that the Trump administration has imposed. The left generally argues that these sanctions are inhumane and cause mass misery and death among ordinary people. Even if these countries are seen as adversaries of the U.S., the argument goes, these policies are unnecessarily punitive and don’t accomplish much anyway.
Biden seems likely to try to return to engaging diplomatically with Iran, and he may be open to lifting sanctions in light of the damage that the pandemic has done to Iran. (Several Democratic members of Congress, including Sanders, Markey and the left-wing “Squad,” have called on him to do that.) But Venezuela is going to be a different story. Biden has publicly said he supports the sanctions, and leftists who see the sanctions as just another chapter in the long history of the U.S. meddling in Latin American politics are unlikely to get him to change his mind.
Changing the Authorization for Use of Military Force
For the last three presidential administrations, the U.S. has been using the same authorizations for the use of military force (AUMF) as the legal basis for a variety of military operations in the Middle East and Africa. These AUMFs were passed in 2001 and 2002 after 9/11 and in the run-up to the Iraq War, and have been roundly criticized as absurdly outdated; the Constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress, and it seems like the legislative branch should weigh in on how the country deploys its military.
Democrats of all flavors and some Republicans have voiced support for repealing the 2002 AUMF (the one concerning Iraq specifically) and passing a new AUMF. Biden himself has said that Trump overstepped the bounds of the law when he ordered the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was in Iraq at the time. But there’s less agreement about how exactly Democrats should proceed here. Barbara Lee, the California member of Congress who was the only vote against the 2001 AUMF, succeeded this year in getting her House colleagues to pass a repeal of the 2002 AUMF, but not the 2001 AUMF; at the time, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted there was a live debate about what a replacement AUMF would look like and what limits it might set. Lee favors something that would prohibit action against Iran without congressional authorization, while a bipartisan group of senators led by Virginia’s Tim Kaine want an AUMF that would allow a president to take military action against a new country, after which Congress would review that action.
This debate is likely to play out largely in Congress, but Biden could indicate he wants the legislature to weigh in more on matters of war and peace. Recall that in 2013, Obama sought congressional approval for a strike against Syria’s government, and legislators were happy when diplomacy averted the need for that vote—many politicians would rather avoid tough votes and leave it all up to the White House.
Saudi Arabia
One of the most horrific recent atrocities in which the U.S. is complicit is the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, which has resulted in massive civilian casualties and a devastating famine. The U.S. began providing aid to this operation (in the form of arms as well as training and intelligence) under Obama, and it has continued to do so under Trump, even as evidence of war crimes mounts.
Biden has said that he’ll end support for that campaign. He’ll certainly be tougher on Saudi Arabia than Trump, who has declined to criticize Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman for his country’s abysmal human rights record or the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But he’ll also probably want to preserve the longstanding alliance with Saudi Arabia, and that surely won’t sit well among people like Sanders, who has called the kingdom’s rulers “murderous thugs” and see little reason to continue selling arms to an authoritarian state whose oil the U.S. needs less than ever.
Israel
Of course, Saudi Arabia isn’t the United States’ most complicated alliance partner. That would be Israel, which has long been supported by both political parties but has become a controversial subject among Democrats. Progressives have been increasingly critical of Israel’s right-wing government and its settlements in Palestinian territory, which are illegal under international law. This wing of the Democratic Party has become large enough that it has its own subdivisions, with groups like J Street emphasizing a two-state solution, while the more radical and younger IfNotNow demands an end to what it calls the “occupation.”
Where does Biden fit into this? Well, he nixed a line in the 2020 platform that used that word, “occupation,” in reference to Palestinians, indicating that he isn’t planning on blowing up the U.S.-Israel alliance, even if he might be more willing to listen to Palestinian concerns than Trump has been. (That will be easy since Trump has essentially ignored Palestinian concerns.)
***
The trickiest of all of these conflicts will likely be the last one. Given the deep and longstanding ties between the U.S. and Israel, Americans appalled at the treatment of Palestinians see their own country as complicit in a historical wrong (in a way that they aren’t complicit in, say, China’s treatment of Uighurs). And left-wing leaders like Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been unapologetic in their criticism of the Netanyahu government, voicing criticisms of Israel that once would have been taboo.
But Israel has plenty of defenders who are actively combating what they see as a dangerous drift in the party. And Democratic politicians who are too critical of Israel risk being accused of anti-Semitism—it’s quite possible for a debate over Israel policy to spiral into a swamp of mutual accusations of bad faith and prejudice.
Biden would surely rather not touch this third rail. But his tenure will undoubtedly feature moments when progressives demand he hold Israel accountable. Whether he does will be just one sign of how far the nascent foreign policy left can push him.
