When President Biden defended his foreign policy legacy this month, he said President-elect Donald J. Trump “should take full advantage of our diplomatic and geopolitical opportunities we’ve created,” in countering actions by Russia and China and handling developments in the Middle East.
He was hardly the first member of his administration to make the argument. In speeches and podcasts, and in a series of interviews with The New York Times over the past four weeks, many in his national security team made their arguments that they are leaving their successors with a world in which America’s adversaries are struggling and its allies have the upper hand.
Russia is isolated and bogged down in Ukraine. China is struggling through an economic and demographic downturn. Iran has never been weaker. And finally — after 15 months of intense diplomacy — an Israel-Hamas cease-fire is near, hostages are about to be released and it is possible to imagine a reshaped Middle East.
It is a self-interested argument, of course, one that warns Mr. Trump, in essence, “Don’t blow it.” Those on Mr. Trump’s team take the opposite view. They say the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan emboldened Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, who saw weakness on display; that the Biden administration took its eye off the ball and Iran is now at the threshold of a nuclear weapon; and that however tough the administration was on China, it wasn’t tough enough.
Putting aside that argument, clearly there are some diplomatic opportunities Mr. Trump can seize, though history and ominous recent warnings suggest that he may soften up his adversaries and his allies with threats of military action if he doesn’t get what he wants. (See: Iran, Greenland, Panama.)
Here is a scorecard to keep handy in the first few months.
In the fog of war, a potential Ukraine deal
There is very little evidence that Mr. Putin is eager for a deal that would extract him from a war that has already cost Russia nearly 200,000 dead and more than half a million wounded. But the assumption is that he must be looking for an off-ramp. Since his televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump has been promising just that — a deal “in 24 hours,” or even one completed before he takes the oath of office.
Now, unsurprisingly, it looks a little more complicated. His special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, an 80-year-old retired general who served on Mr. Trump’s first National Security Council, told Fox recently “let’s set it at 100 days” to make sure a “solution is solid, it’s sustainable, and that this war ends so that we stop the carnage.” Mr. Trump has said he will meet Mr. Putin “soon,” a notable timing, particularly because Mr. Biden has not talked to the Russian leader in nearly three years.
What might a deal look like? First, most Biden and Trump officials acknowledge, at least in private, that Russia would most likely keep its forces in the roughly 20 percent of Ukraine it now occupies — as part of an armistice similar to the one that halted, but did not end, the Korean War in 1953. The harder part of any agreement is the security accord. Who would guarantee that Mr. Putin wouldn’t use the halt in the fighting to rearm, recruit and train new forces, learn from the mistakes of the past three years, and re-invade?
Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, argues that the Biden team spent the past year “putting the architecture in place” for providing for that security. But Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is suspicious that it’s all talk. Remembering that no one paid much attention to the 1994 security agreement that Ukraine signed with the U.S., Britain and Russia, among others, he says only NATO membership will keep Mr. Putin from attacking again.
Mr. Zelensky argues that is not just in Ukraine’s interest; it’s in Europe’s. “Russia is an enemy, and they are able to go to any country in Europe and occupy it,” he said in recent days.
Still, the broad outlines of a Trump-era deal are visible in the haze.
A cease-fire could be enforced by a European peacekeeping force, most likely led by British, German and French forces. The key, two senior Biden officials said, would be whether Mr. Trump would be willing to keep the United States in its central role of providing intelligence, arms and the permission for Ukraine to strike into Russian territory fairly close to the Ukraine border. (Mr. Trump has suggested, but not said, he would revoke that permission. And his vice president, JD Vance, has been among the leading critics of continued American support for arms.)
Mr. Sullivan insists it is crucial for Mr. Trump to do what many in his party hate: continue military support. “A good deal for America means we need leverage,” he said.
The Russians, of course, want a far larger deal — one in which the United States would pull its arms and troops out of Europe. And on that, Mr. Trump has been silent.
Backing Iran away from nukes
Developments in Iran in recent months could propel Mr. Trump into a negotiation with Tehran over the fate of its nuclear program and its role in the Middle East — or could drive him into the first military conflict of his new term.
Iran has never been weaker in modern times. The octopus arms that it used to squeeze Israel have been cut off: In rapid succession, Tehran has lost Hamas and Hezbollah; it has lost Syria, its transit zone for weapons; its missile attacks on Israel failed. And Israel’s Oct. 26 missile strike took out Tehran’s air defenses, and the defenses around its nuclear sites, along with the facilities used to make rocket fuel.
So it’s no surprise that Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, is talking about striking a new deal with the United States and the West. The only hitch is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is also stepping up its production of near-bomb-grade uranium and taking steps that might speed its way to a bomb.
Still, in their briefings to the incoming Trump administration, the Biden national security officials have said that while Iran has enough material to make four weapons quickly, they still see no evidence that Iran has made a decision to race for a bomb. But clearly the Iranian “weapons group,” the secret core military and scientific organizations that has kept the bomb designs warm, are positioning themselves to exercise that option.
In the run-up to the inauguration, Mr. Trump has talked about reviving his “maximum pressure” campaign, and when asked about possible military strikes, answers with an ominous “anything can happen.” It sounds a lot like the playbook he ran on North Korea in 2017, calling Kim Jong-un “Little Rocket Man” before embracing him during three meetings and an exchange of “beautiful” letters. (Those warm missives, now returned to the National Archives, didn’t lead to much. Negotiations failed, and North Korea’s arsenal has enlarged to somewhere between 60 and 100 nuclear weapons.)
The moment of decision could come if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, eager to seize the moment and perhaps extend his hold on power by moving to the next conflict, tells Mr. Trump he has decided attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. He would argue the country has never been more naked, unable to defend the sites or strike back. Then Mr. Trump will have to choose: Stop his close ally from striking, or risk having the United States sucked into a new conflict, early in his presidency.
About that Nobel Prize: Accords in the broader Middle East
Eliminating the Iranian nuclear program is regarded by many around Mr. Trump as the key to unlocking the Nobel Peace Prize he kept saying he deserved in the first term. It could pave the way to build on the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term: the 2020 Abraham Accords, in which Israel entered bilateral agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The Biden administration was negotiating with Saudi Arabia to broaden the agreement, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken recalled recently that he was on the way to unlock one of the last parts of that deal when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. It was, he said, clearly intended to blow up any chance of reconciliation between Israel and the most important Sunni Arab state.
Now, the whole region is in play.
Mr. Trump could try the triple play of sealing the deal with the Saudis, empowering a new Lebanese government that can finally reclaim its embattled territory from Hezbollah, and working to rebuild Syria.
But that would take a plan, discipline, lots of American aid, and could run afoul of the more isolationist wing of the America First movement he has led. It would also spark arguments with some of his appointees, like Mike Huckabee, his pick for ambassador to Israel, who has made no secret of his opposition to a two-state solution and wants Israel to expand and defend its settlements in the West Bank.
In other words, Mr. Trump has the moment to mold the Middle East, in a way no president has in decades. But doing so may trigger a conflict with Mr. Netanyahu — and with his own advisers.
The China challenge
Taiwan was supposed to be the first China crisis to hit the new Trump administration. But it turns out it is TikTok, and that plays to Mr. Trump’s strength: an international crisis that can be resolved with a business deal.
Mr. Trump propelled the effort to wrest TikTok from the hands of its Chinese owners on national security grounds, but he reversed himself when he discovered it was a critical campaign tool. Now he promises to resolve the dispute after the Supreme Court upheld the law forcing divestiture. “My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!” he wrote on social media.
No one knows how seriously Mr. Trump takes the national security threats at the core of the TikTok case, but it will be an early test of his ability to deal with President Xi Jinping of China. It also could be an indicator of how he will handle much larger issues, like Taiwan’s fate, China’s emerging partnership with Russia and the competition to dominate artificial intelligence.
The emergence of the China-Russia partnership is perhaps the biggest geopolitical change since Mr. Trump flew out of Washington four years ago. It may affect everything: whether the world fractures further into Cold War blocs, whether the two countries join military and cyber forces against the West, and whether nations are plunged back into new cold wars.
In its last few months, the Biden administration put together a strategy to counter the nexus of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — and classified the whole thing, limiting the space for public debate over how to manage the resumption of superpower conflict. In confirmation hearings, Mr. Trump’s nominees took the safe route of sounding hawkish; the choice for secretary of state, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, called China “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever faced.”
Then comes the AI competition. By denying China the most advanced chips designed by American firms, and the tools to make them, Mr. Biden tried to lock Mr. Trump into a strategy that would enable the United States and the West to set the global rules.
Again, Mr. Trump has a choice: The tech executives surrounding him chafe at the Biden-era regulations, and fear that the raft of restrictions will stifle innovation. Mr. Trump will have to pick sides.
The post Get Your Scorecards: Global Opportunities for Trump the Deal Maker appeared first on New York Times.
