The entrance of the Trump team into the negotiations was the difference in Gaza. Biden opened his administration with the promise of “a new era of relentless diplomacy.” But after four years of wasted opportunity, the Biden administration would struggle to name a single diplomatic accomplishment.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s inclusion in his January 2 exit interview with The New York Times of the Biden administration’s “core goal” of making “sure that the war [in Gaza] wouldn’t spread, the conflict wouldn’t spread to other fronts, to other countries” and that they have “been working” on that “every day since,” is risible because it spread to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.
Blinken was asked how he looks back on the decision “to support Ukraine’s military offensive without a parallel diplomatic track to try and end the conflict.” His answer, as America’s chief diplomat, is no less humiliating. He defined bringing fifty countries together, who waged war on Russia militarily and economically, as “extraordinary diplomacy,” while conceding that, since the war began, there was not one “opportunity to engage diplomatically in a way that could end the war on just and durable terms.”
Biden opened his presidency with the promise to “offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy,” to “promptly reverse the failed Trump policies that have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights,” to correct the course on Trump’s “abject failure” in Venezuela, and to bring in a new approach to North Korea that “is open to and will explore diplomacy.”
Biden failed on all four. Instead, he ushered in an era in which the State Department has been reduced to the hawkish arm of the Defense Department.
At the end of his term, far from reversing Trump’s policies, Biden’s Cuba policy looks more like Trump’s than like Obama’s. Biden maintained, and even increased, sanctions. The U.S. continued to support dissident activists and to fund regime change. Most importantly, and most devastatingly, the Biden administration continued to uphold the illegal embargo of Cuba in every single vote at the UN. In October 2024, only one other country in the world joined the U.S. in support of its embargo with one other abstaining.
On January 14, with less than a week in his term, Biden announced that he would, at last, remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Four years ago, that would have counted as a diplomatic accomplishment. Now, it is an ineffectual gesture that will simply be erased. William LeoGrande, Professor of Government at American University and a specialist in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, told me that “with just days left in his presidency, [Biden] relaxed sanctions he should have relaxed four years ago – sanctions that will almost certainly be reimposed by Donald Trump.” Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security advisor, told Fox News that “anything they [the Biden Administration] are doing right now we can do back, and no one should be under any illusion in terms of a change in Cuba policy”.
LeoGrande summarized Biden’s diplomatic legacy in Cuba by telling me that “Joe Biden’s Cuba policy accomplished nothing – actually, worse than nothing, because it left both Cubans and the United States worse off. He reneged on his campaign promise to return to Obama’s policy of engagement, a policy that was enormously popular in Latin America, Europe, and in the United States – everywhere except south Florida. In a vein quest for votes in Miami, Biden left most of Donald Trump’s extreme sanctions in place, immiserating the Cuban people in the midst of the pandemic.”
Biden’s diplomatic legacy in Iran is no less disappointing. Biden promised a quick return to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. Instead, he refused to end sanctions – the flesh of the agreement – and refused to promise that the U.S. would not break the deal again even for the duration of Biden’s term – the soul of any agreement. Though it was the U.S. that illegally pulled out of the deal, Biden demanded additional concessions from Iran.
Instead of following Obama’s diplomacy with Iran, Biden followed Trump’s maximum pressure on Iran. In order “never to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” Biden said the U.S. is prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure that outcome.”
But the U.S. does not believe Iran is trying to acquire a nuclear weapon. The 2022 U.S. Department of Defense’s Nuclear Posture Review concludes that “Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon and we currently believe it is not pursuing one.” CIA Director William Burns has repeatedly said that there is no evidence Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb. Most recently, Burns reiterated in a January 10 interview that “We do not see any sign today that any such decision has been made.”
The election of Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian brought a reformist back to the presidency of Iran. Pezeshkian has emphasized the need to mend relations with the U.S. and the West. He has called for bypassing intermediaries in favor of direct negotiations. But that did not influence the Biden administration in its stubbornness not to negotiate. When asked at a July 8 press briefing if “the U.S. now ready to resume nuclear talks, other talks, or make any diplomatic moves with Iran in light of this new president,” National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby responded, “No, we’re – we’re not in a position where we’re willing to get back to the negotiating table with Iran just based on the fact that they’ve elected a new president.” Another missed diplomatic opportunity.
Lack of willingness to engage with Iran diplomatically has, instead of the strategically important goal of mending relations between Iran and the West, pushed Iran closer to China and Russia. During the Biden years, Iran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS, two China-Russia led international organizations. On January 17, 2025, Iran signed a comprehensive strategic partnership with Russia. The details are not yet public, but Russian President Vladimir Putin says it includes bilateral cooperation in “politics and security” and collaboration on “the development of nuclear power plants.”
During Biden’s presidency, diplomacy with China has been set aside in favor of increased confrontation. Biden has sullied the One China policy, declared Taiwan a critical strategic location for U.S. defense, said that the U.S. would send troops to Taiwan if China attacked and weaponized and militarized the conflict.
Perhaps most dangerously of all, Biden pursued the opposite of diplomacy in the Russia-Ukraine war. When diplomacy offered a real chance to avoid the war before it began and to end the war in the weeks after it did, the U.S. refused to negotiate with Russia in the first instance and discouraged and blocked Ukraine from negotiating with Russia in the second. Since then, Biden and Blinken have abdicated diplomacy. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has barely, if ever, officially spoken to Russia foreign minister Sergei Lavrov since the war began, and President Biden has not met with President Putin once. By the summer of 2024, Biden was still maintaining that “I have no good reason to talk to Putin right now.”
Relations with Russia and China are more dangerous as Biden leaves office. Relations have not improved in Cuba and Iran, despite Obama setting the platter to which Biden could have easily returned. Biden’s promise of “relentless diplomacy” devolved into the abdication of diplomacy and a tragically wasted opportunity.
Source: AntiWar.
