As President Joe Biden concludes his final year in office and prepares to hand the reins over to Donald Trump, he leaves behind an increasingly unstable world stage.
Tensions in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia have only increased towards the end of 2024, with U.S. adversaries making big moves as Biden quietly fades from the world stage. As Trump takes office, foreign policy fires he will have to contend with include the years-long war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas War, the freshly-ignited Syrian civil war and an increasingly aggressive China that’s hellbent on solidifying its position as the U.S.’ greatest adversary, economically and militarily.
“There’s a certain ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ quality to this entire discussion,” Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It’s clear that the President of the United States is not making detailed day-to-day decisions on these issues.”
Despite receiving a whopping $130 billion in U.S. military aid since its conflict with Russia began, Ukraine has so far failed to change the course of the war, with both adversaries trying to make incremental gains in anticipation of Trump taking office, who may force a peace settlement. The Biden administration has expressed little interest in diplomacy with Russia, pouring an additional $2.5 billion to aid Ukraine just as Biden is set to leave office, according to the White House Monday.
“They go to the positions once and if they survive, they never return. They either leave their positions, refuse to go into battle, or try to find a way to leave the army,” a Ukrainian battalion commander told CNN in September on Ukrainian troops morale.
Currently, Russia is slowly advancing the front into the rest of the Donbas and Donetsk regions while securing their gains, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Russia has also received 10,000 troops from North Korea, while Ukraine struggles to keep up in manpower and keep morale up for its troops.
Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have grown closer since the beginning of the Ukraine war, with China aiding Russia by ramping up economic and military aid, in some cases violating sanctions to help Putin.
Tensions between the U.S. and Russia have only increased, as Biden gave Ukraine the greenlight to pummel Russia with American-made long-range missiles. Trump criticized the decision for being “very stupid” and jeopardizing peace talks, according to The Associated Press.
Similarly, the Israel-Hamas war, which began in October 2023 when Islamic militant group Hamas attacked Israel and took hostages, has yet to conclude despite Biden’s assurances that a U.S.-brokered ceasefire was in reach. The conflict drew in Iran and its proxy Hezbollah, who began attacking Israel a day after Hamas.
Biden brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in late November, however, the war in Gaza with Hamas continues to rage on.
Biden claimed for a large part of 2024 that a ceasefire deal was imminent in Gaza, however U.S. officials were privately skeptical of its progress, citing Hamas’ stubbornness in negotiations. In addition to fighting in Gaza, Israel recently took advantage of the chaos in Syria to take strategic positions overlooking Damascus.
Houthi rebels in Yemen have been pounding commercial shipping vessels between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea this year, with mixed responses from the Biden administration. Houthis continue to attack ships that are linked to Israel or any of its allies, including the U.S., according to the New York Times.
Rebels have launched over 200 drones at Israel since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Wall Street Journal Dec. 22.
In Syria, the toppling of the Assad government has thrown the country into disarray while the U.S. doesn’t seem to know what it wants to do in the region.
Islamic fundamentalist terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized Syria’s capital in Damascus, majorly shifting the lines of a bloody conflict that has raged for over a decade. The new government has already begun normalizing relationships with the rest of the world, meeting with Turkish and American leaders alike.
HTS formed after their leader, Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani, split with Al-Qaeda over strategic differences, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. As HTS attempts to consolidate power, conflict still rages between the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the north of the nation, with currently no truce in sight.
“This was a bad time for the whole [Syria] thing to happen,” Gabriel Noronha, executive director of Polaris National Security, previously told the DCNF. “There can’t be long-term decisions made for the next month, but this is also a critical time to make decisions on engagement and have influence early on in the process.”
Additionally, the Pentagon revised its U.S. troop count in the region on Dec. 19, bumping the number up to 2,000 from 900. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon provided a complete explanation for the sudden change.
Biden’s attempts to address the growing influence of China fell flat as the communist nation ratcheted up tensions this past year.
China’s Navy conducted its largest military drill around Taiwan in decades on Dec. 10, while Biden was in Angola negotiating a massive U.S. investment in a rail project meant to curtail China’s influence. He appeared to doze off during the meeting, sparking criticism despite officials denying it.
“To our east, there’s a wall of [People’s Liberation Army] PLA Navy forces, and right next to our air defense identification zone, there’s another one,” Taiwan intelligence officer Lt. Gen. Hsieh Jih-sheng told the Wall Street Journal. “They’re sending us a pretty clear message: to turn the Taiwan Strait into their internal waters.”
The force consisted of 60 ships and 30 coast guard vessels, with Taiwanese authorities also spotting 47 warplanes in its airspace that day, according to the WSJ. China also violently boarded U.S.-allied Philippine naval boats in the South China Sea in June.
“As you’ve seen over the waning days of the administration, this has not been a China administration,” Logan told the DCNF. “The balance of power in East Asia continues to erode significantly. Our allies in the region are not stepping up, and the Biden administration is drawing down U.S. munitions stockpiles, particularly in Ukraine, but also in the Middle East.”
“Their failure to prioritize the Indo-Pacific is really going to be a, if not the, central part of [Biden’s] legacy,” Logan told the DCNF.
The White House did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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