By 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.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has yet to confirm whether he will attend November’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in San Francisco. He may hope that dangling his attendance will deter the Biden administration from advancing tough China policies. Beijing may similarly hope that two newly announced U.S.-China working groups will lead Washington to tread more cautiously for fear of sinking the diplomatic initiative. Elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific, the administration is working to shore up vital relationships with Pacific Island countries while avoiding the fallout from a diplomatic spat between Canada and India.
As the fiscal year drew to a close, Congress passed a last-minute continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown. GOP members, however, stripped out provisions related to Ukraine aid. That short-sighted move forces the Pentagon to delay replenishment of U.S. stocks and inhibits planning for future phases of the war. In better news, President Joe Biden reportedly promised to grant Ukraine’s longstanding request for ATACMS missiles.
