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 assess the administration’s foreign policy. They provide trendlines of very positive, positive, neutral, negative, or very negative for the areas they watch.

In Iran, anti-regime protests continued into their third straight month despite the death of hundreds at the hands of security forces. The Biden administration has condemned this crackdown but refuses to endorse the protesters’ demand for an end to 40 years of clerical dictatorship. Nor will the White House rule out a resumption of talks with Tehran to revive some version of the 2015 nuclear deal.

The authoritarian regime in Beijing is also weathering a wave of protests sparked by its draconian efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Biden administration offered tepid words of support for the protesters but appears to remain focused on reducing friction with Beijing. The Kremlin still controls the streets in Moscow but had another bad month in Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces retook the strategic regional capital of Kherson with help from American and NATO weapons. Among the fraternity of anti-American autocrats, Kim Jong Un seemed most confident, testing a pair of intercontinental ballistic missiles, on one occasion with his nine-year-old daughter in tow.

Will December prove to be another rough month for America’s adversaries? Check back with us at the beginning of February, since the Tracker is taking off at the end of this month for the holidays. However, before we head out, we will be publishing a special year-end retrospective in mid-December that breaks down where the Biden administration has done well and where it has faltered in 2022.

Trending Positive

International Organizations

By Richard Goldberg

Trending Neutral

China

By Craig Singleton

Cyber

By RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery and Jiwon Ma

Defense

By Bradley Bowman

Europe

By John Hardie

Indo-Pacific

By Craig Singleton

Iran

By Richard Goldberg and Behnam Ben Taleblu

Korea

By David Maxwell

Latin America

By Carrie Filipetti and Emanuele Ottolenghi

Russia

By John Hardie

Syria

By David Adesnik

Trending Negative

Gulf

By Hussain Abdul-Hussain

Israel

By David May

Nonproliferation and Biodefense

By Anthony Ruggiero and Andrea Stricker

Sunni Jihadism

By Bill Roggio

Turkey

By Sinan Ciddi

Trending Very Negative

Lebanon

By Tony Badran