WASHINGTON (Washington Insider Magazine) – When Joe Biden was elected US president in 2020, many foreign officials and ambassadors looked with anticipation to a US foreign policy that would place greater emphasis on global concerns than his predecessor. While President Donald Trump had given world leaders unprecedented access to top officials within his administration, his policies were decidedly more nationalistic.
One year into Biden’s administration and those ambassadors and foreign officials seem to have a mixed reaction to Biden’s foreign policy efforts. While many of them are pleased with Biden’s more international focus, they’ve become frustrated with the way his administration has seemingly left many of them in the dark.
POLITICO recently spoke with nearly 20 ambassadors and senior staff from a wide variety of nations who are currently serving in Washington, DC. Their complaints largely center on the lack of communication from officials within Biden’s administration.
One ambassador hailing from an unidentified EU nation compared his relationship with Biden’s officials to those from Russia. “The thing is, [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov, he will travel to our country and he will sit down with our guys for an hour, hour and a half. It’s not that we believe everything that Mr. Lavrov says, but if he gives an hour of his time, you will listen to him, you will get his spin.”
This contrasts sharply with how another EU-based ambassador described the work done by the US State Department protocol office: “They’ve done zero.”
Many of these ambassadors are concerned that Biden is making important decisions without them, some of which will have lasting repercussions on their nations and regions. Another ambassador from a small EU nation expressed these fears when he told POLITICO, “We are in some kind of gray zone. We don’t know what they’re saying about us. We never felt so insecure as we do now.”
Biden wasn’t universally panned by these ambassadors though. Several larger, more powerful countries have expressed their appreciation for his administration’s efforts, even going so far as to say, “I’ve been spoiled. More or less, we can have immediate communication.”
While Biden seems to be focusing his efforts on building bridges with more influential nations around the world, he risks alienating a large swath of smaller allies by failing to cultivate relationships with them. The long-term effects of this approach remain to be seen.
