President Biden will begin what is likely to be his last summit with global leaders as commander in chief on Monday, pushing for even stronger support of Ukraine despite the looming uncertainty of how president-elect Donald J. Trump might undo his efforts.
Just before the Group of 20 summit began in Rio de Janeiro, Mr. Biden authorized the first use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine for strikes inside Russia, U.S. officials said.
The decision, a major change in U.S. policy, was made in part to help shore up Ukraine’s defenses after Russia recruited North Korean troops to assist its fighters. It also came on a day when Russia bombarded Ukraine’s power grid in one of the largest attacks of the war.
For two years, Mr. Biden sent billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine to help repel Russia, but repeatedly hesitated when it came to offensive weapons, worried about provoking President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia into a wider war.
Mr. Putin, like Mr. Trump, will not be at the summit. But unlike Mr. Biden, both men are sure to be at the center of conversations about a future they will both dominate.
President Emmanuel Macron of France, who is in Rio for the meeting, told reporters that the Russian bombardment of Ukraine on Sunday shows that Mr. Putin “does not want peace and is not ready to negotiate.”
Mr. Biden and his aides are in a desperate race against time as they seek to bolster Ukraine before Mr. Trump takes power. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said this week that the Biden administration is trying to “surge military equipment, to allocate all of the resources that Congress has given us” in the remaining days that Mr. Biden has left in office.
But that rush raises difficult questions about why the president didn’t move more quickly to deliver advanced weapons that Ukrainian officials desperately wanted months ago. Several Republican lawmakers have long been calling on Mr. Biden to approve the offensive weapons.
Writing in sand
It is clear at the G20 summit that Mr. Biden’s strategy in Ukraine, like his broader foreign and domestic policy vision, could soon be a thing of the past.
The move to empower Ukraine to attack deeper within Russia came in Mr. Biden’s final months in office, and was made with full awareness that U.S. foreign policy could soon be overhauled with Mr. Trump’s return to the White House.
While Mr. Biden has centered his foreign policy strategy — and more broadly his presidency — on working to confront climate change and defending U.S. allies, Mr. Trump campaigned on an “America First” isolationist approach and has accused other nations of not contributing enough to security alliances.
Josh Lipsky, the senior advisory for the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s return to the White House would be hanging over the meeting in Rio.
“Even before the election, for the past year this outcome was on every leader’s mind,” Mr. Lipsky said. “The primary focus for the U.S. is to show the rest of the world that this forum matters and the US will remain engaged.”
World leaders are moving on
Mr. Biden’s Latin America trip, which included a summit in Peru and a tour of the Amazon, amounted to one last urgent push of his view of diplomacy — even as many of the participants shifted focus. Some of the world leaders who met with Mr. Biden during his diplomatic swan song seemed to already be looking to the next chapter.
“China is ready to work with the new U.S. administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences,” China’s leader, Xi Jinping said at the beginning of his meeting with Mr. Biden in Peru.
Other world leaders participating in the summit also appeared to have moved on.
Argentina’s Javier Milei has already worked to forge close ties with Mr. Trump. Earlier this month, Mr. Milei met with the president-elect and Elon Musk on the sidelines of the Conservative Political Action Conference at Mr. Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla.
The G20 summit also comes at a time when some U.S. allies, including Brazil itself, appear to be strengthening other global partnerships to offer a counterweight to the West, including the BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which recently added Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates as members.
Mr. Biden’s allies will likely use the summit to lock in partnerships on climate and other common goals, even if only as symbolic gestures that may be wiped out once Mr. Trump returns to power.
Latin American leaders will also be looking to Mr. Biden with an eye toward Mr. Trump’s immigration proposals. Mr. Trump is targeting a decades-old program providing temporary legal status to about one million immigrants from dangerous and deeply troubled countries such as Haiti and Venezuela. He also has pledged sweeping immigration restrictions and mass deportations that would likely increase pressure on Mexico and Central America.
Mr. Biden is also expected to participate in an event that will launch a new global alliance against hunger and poverty. It is not clear if Mr. Trump will continue to support the program once he enters the White House.
Mr. Biden acknowledged his lame-duck status during brief remarks in the Amazon rainforest on Sunday as he traveled from Lima, Peru to the G20 summit.
“It’s no secret, that I’m leaving office in January,” Mr. Biden said, declining to mention Mr. Trump by name. “I will leave my successor and my country a strong foundation to build on, if they choose to do so.”
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