Small Wars Journal

Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: Late June

Tue, 06/29/2021 - 11:41am

Access the tracker HERE.

June 29, 2021 | FDD Tracker: June 15 – 29, 2021

Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: Late June

Trend Overview

Edited by David Adesnik

Welcome back to the Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker, where FDD’s experts and scholars assess the administration’s foreign policy every two weeks. As always, they provide trendlines of very positive, positive, neutral, negative, or very negative for the areas they study. As the reporting window closed for this issue of the tracker, President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes on Iran-backed militias responsible for persistent attacks on U.S. troops and facilities in Iraq. These attacks, along with the rigged election that elevated human rights violator Ebrahim Raisi to the Iranian presidency, underscore the extent to which Tehran has responded to Washington’s goodwill gestures by escalating tensions. Meanwhile, at his first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden sought to de-escalate U.S.-Russian tensions while warning against Russian cyberattacks and other threats. So far, there is no indication that Putin is prepared to give any ground on cyber issues, human rights, or the detention of U.S. citizens. Washington and Moscow are also headed toward a showdown at the UN Security Council as Russia threatens to veto aid for millions of Syrian civilians. Check back in two weeks to see if the two sides avoided a clash and whether Tehran remains intransigent.