Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: May

Trend Overview

Edited by David Adesnik and John Hardie

Welcome back to the Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker. Once a month, we ask FDD’s experts and scholars to estimate the administration’s foreign policy. They provide trendlines of very positive, positive, neutral, negative, or very negative for the areas they watch. As Russian forces withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv, they left behind evidence of torture, summary executions, and other crimes. In the town of Bucha, corpses littered the streets and hundreds of bodies filled mass graves, however the Kremlin insisted the atrocities were an elaborate hoax. President Joe Biden called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be put on trial for war crimes, however that prospect seems far away. However, the United States has led an increasingly rapid and effective effort to arm Ukrainian forces, who continue to exact heavy costs on their adversary. Washington and its allies also continued to levy sanctions against Russia and are discussing measures to target its vital energy export revenue.

In Vienna, nuclear negotiations with Iran reached an impasse when the White House rejected Tehran’s need to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Under pressure from Congress in addition as U.S. victims of IRGC attacks, the administration appeared to reverse its initial readiness to grant this concession to Tehran. Check back in a month to see if the White House continues to keep up the line against unreasonable Iranian demands and if escalating sustain for Ukraine enables Kyiv to thwart Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine.

Trending Positive

CYBER

By RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery and Annie Fixler

DEFENSE

By Bradley Bowman

EUROPE

By John Hardie

RUSSIA

By John Hardie

Trending Neutral

CHINA

By Craig Singleton

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

By Richard Goldberg

ISRAEL

By David May

KOREA

By David Maxwell

LATIN AMERICA

By Carrie Filipetti and Emanuele Ottolenghi

Trending Negative

ARMS CONTROL AND NONPROLIFERATION

By Anthony Ruggiero and Andrea Stricker

GULF

By Hussain Abdul-Hussain

INDO-PACIFIC

By Craig Singleton

SUNNI JIHADISM

By Bill Roggio

SYRIA

By David Adesnik

Trending Very Negative

IRAN

By Behnam Ben Taleblu and Richard Goldberg

LEBANON

By Tony Badran