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When asked about his foreign policy doctrine in 2014, Barack Obama described it as an attempt to “avoid errors”.
“You hit singles, you hit doubles; every once in a while we may be able to hit a home run,” he said.
“There are going to be times where there are disasters and difficulties and challenges all around the world, and not all of those are going to be immediately solvable by us,” he said.
Joe Biden was president during a tumultuous era of global politics when Americans were looking for big solutions to intractable problems: home runs, if not walk-off grand slams. The problems he faced were urgent; his solutions could often appear incremental. And he leaves office with a checkered foreign policy legacy in which the successes were tempered by setbacks.
The chaotic withdrawal from the “forever war” in Afghanistan – a difficult decision that many argued was necessary at the time – haunted the administration, as the US-backed government collapsed and the Taliban swept back into power.
Biden rallied European countries to Kyiv’s defense in a spirited fightback but leaves office with Ukraine under siege and probably facing ruinous negotiations during the Trump era. And in Gaza, the 11th-hour ceasefire-for-hostages deal comes after 15 months of bloody war and a perceived inability to restrain the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, after the Hamas attacks of 7 October.
Most of all, Biden’s late exit from the presidential race and Kamala Harris’s subsequent loss to Donald Trump, will probably see his legacy threatened as Trump reverses many of his policies and ushers in an era of America First foreign policy.
In his final days, Biden and his national security team took to the airwaves to defend his record on foreign policy, as they rushed aid to Ukraine and worked feverishly to conclude the Gaza deal. The president said that the United States was “winning the worldwide competition”. And his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said that the “American people are safer and the country is better off than four years ago”.
Yet there will be very loud detractors on both the right and left in the weeks, months and years after Biden’s exit from politics.
“I don’t know who believes that,” Senator Pete Ricketts, a Republican member of the foreign relations committee, said of Sullivan’s comments during a nomination hearing this week. “I don’t believe that. I think the election results demonstrate the vast majority of Americans don’t believe that.”
There are some indications that Americans agree. A recent poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research said that 44% of Americans believe Biden had a negative effect on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and 23% said he had no impact on that war.
Just 14% of Americans believed that Biden had a positive impact on Israel’s war in Gaza, with a majority saying that his impact had been “negative”.
Critics have described Biden as too cautious, a traditionalist seeking to turn back the clock to the Obama-era foreign policy when he was vice-president.
That has been put in sharp relief with the deal-focused style of Trump, who has rejected the international rules-based order and taken big swings, including demands that Israeli hostages be returned and a ceasefire hammered out before his inauguration or “all hell will break loose” in the Middle East.
Biden’s team preferred a quieter, dogged diplomacy in that conflict – and claimed this week that it was their efforts, as well as Israel’s military campaign and targeted assassinations of impediments like the Hamas military commander, Yahya Sinwar, that made the ceasefire possible.
But that approach put immense stress on his party and, some argue, may even have helped hand the election to Trump.
Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman, told the Guardian that he believed that Biden’s policies overall and his role in Ukraine had been “very positive”, but said that his “unconditional” support for Benjamin Netanyahu had been “very damaging” to the country and had hurt Democrats in the elections.
“It really hurt us with young people, with progressive groups, with anti-war groups,” he said. “And we have to show that the party is going to have a more balanced view on the Middle East.”
In the hectic final months of his presidency, Biden has sought to shore up Ukraine’s defenses, as he disbursed remaining funding and repealed a series of restrictions on the use of missiles on Russian territory and the use of landmines to help defend Ukraine.
Meanwhile, his administration sought to “Trump-proof” support for Kyiv while also preparing to pitch Trump on continued support for the country, hoping that he would not want to see the capitulation of a US ally early in his term.
“It’s not a coherent policy. This is going to be a major shake-up,” one person briefed on the plans said. “But they are trying to do everything they can to give Ukraine its best chance [under Trump].”
Four years ago, Biden declared that “America is back” as he reassured US allies around the world. But with Trump waiting in the wings, Biden’s four years in office may only appear a blip in the new era of America First.
