One of the main messages of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign was that he would put “adults” back in charge of foreign policy. Four years later, Donald Trump has returned to the White House and must clean up the mess these supposed “adults” left behind.
Trump and his foreign policy team have their work cut out for them after four years of doormat diplomacy practiced by Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Their modus operandi was to give terrorist and authoritarian regimes favors and financial aid in exchange for empty promises or, in some cases, not even that. They prioritized public relations “wins” guided by short-term thinking that Sullivan laughably insisted Biden ignored in favor of “a time horizon measured in decades.”
Biden revoked Trump-era oil sanctions on Venezuela in 2022 and, in late 2023, gave Venezuela a six-month reprieve from further sanctions in exchange for a promise that socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro would hold a free and fair election. Maduro simultaneously refused to let the United States return illegal Venezuelan immigrants home. And, of course, Maduro did not hold a free and fair election.
Compare that with South America’s recent reintroduction to the determined approach of the Trump administration. Colombian President Gustavo Petro, like Maduro, refused to accept illegal immigrants from Colombia who were being sent back by the U.S. Trump threatened tariffs, travel restrictions, and visa sanctions on the Colombian government, and Petro capitulated and offered his own presidential plane to fly Colombian illegal immigrants back.
Consider a more dangerous country: Iran. Like the Obama administration, the Biden administration treated Tehran with kid gloves, the opposite of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign that forces Iran to choose between compliance and targeted actions, such as sanctions or strikes against Iranian generals.
Faced with Biden, Iran could choose neither, and Biden officials would be satisfied with that. Biden lifted sanctions on Iran, including, most recently, another waiver in November 2024, giving the terrorist state access to $10 billion from Iraq. Biden paid a ransom of $6 billion in unfrozen Iranian funds for the release of five American hostages, confirming that taking American hostages is a good way of generating billions of dollars. Biden also removed the terrorist designation from the Iranian-backed Houthis, which did nothing to improve behavior by the Iranians or Houthis, who ramped up attacks on ships in the Red Sea after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against Israel.
The Biden administration never put pressure on the Iranian regime to change its behavior and hoped giveaways, such as sanctions relief and ransom payments, would win Iranian favor for the U.S. It was absurd and nationally humiliating. The Biden administration also did nothing to pressure the Taliban after allowing them to recapture Afghanistan, take several hundred Americans hostage, execute Afghans, and allow a terrorist suicide bomber through security Biden entrusted to them during the withdrawal who killed 13 U.S. service members.
Compare this with the Trump administration: The only response the Biden administration had was Blinken sheepishly complaining that the Taliban were acting as they always had. New Secretary of State Marco Rubio, just days into his job, has promised the U.S. will put bounties on Taliban leaders if they have lied about the number of hostages they are holding.
Biden’s policy of useless giveaways was most prominent in Gaza. He funneled aid to the Palestinians, including $600 million in “economic support” since 2021 and $2.1 billion in “humanitarian assistance” after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. Biden’s team has continuously pushed for Hamas terrorism to be rewarded by calling for the Palestinians their own state, essentially telling the terrorists they are on the right track and don’t need to stop perpetrating and celebrating terrorism. Billions of American taxpayer dollars will continue to flow in any case.
Biden focused his ire on the victim because he expects Israel, being civilized and humane, simply to accept a sustained campaign of murderous terrorism against it. Biden left office slapping Israelis with sanctions and made a big public show about giving the Palestinians a pier built by Americans for aid that terrorists inevitably stole and used to fund war.
Biden’s strategy of giving American adversaries everything they want in exchange for nothing is not limited to enemy states and terrorist organizations. He did the same with the United Nations in the aftermath of the pandemic. The World Health Organization made itself an agent of Chinese propaganda, parroting Beijing’s lies about COVID-19 to the world and sabotaging response efforts. Trump made the sensible move of pulling the U.S. out of the organization and taking our money with us.
Biden reversed that decision immediately after taking office. In exchange for the U.S. staying in the WHO and being its main funder, Biden secured no concessions or reforms — no accountability for the WHO spreading global disinformation, no breaking of China’s grip on the organization.
Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan reflected the Democratic Party’s obsession with diplomacy for diplomacy’s sake. Their view was that negotiations themselves amount to success, and enforcement of agreements reached is an afterthought. The Biden administration got taken for a ride by every terrorist, U.N. bureaucrat, and adversarial global leader that offered them the PR win of announcing a deal to the public.
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As a result, from South America to the Middle East to the U.N., Trump’s team is left to clean up four years of gross diplomatic mismanagement and failure. Rubio at the State Department and Elise Stefanik as the ambassador to the U.N. give America’s voice more credibility than anyone Biden employed.
Democrats and liberal pundits’ arrogance in anointing Biden and his foreign policy team as the “adults” and their boasts that Biden would be vindicated on a “time horizon measured in decades” are grating and contemptible. Biden and his team lit the world on fire and demanded to be praised for it, leaving a new administration to fight the blaze.