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President-elect Donald Trump's electoral victory comes as a series of major foreign policy issues are in play, with the Biden administration facing difficult diplomacy and threatened escalation in the Middle East, Ukraine and beyond.
Over President Joe Biden's remaining 10 weeks in office, foreign leaders will have to decide whether to acquiesce to his policy prescriptions or dismiss the U.S. leader as a lame duck and hold out for what they anticipate will be better treatment from Trump.
If past is prologue, many of what Biden considers his highest foreign policy achievements - re-cementing traditional alliances disparaged by Trump in his first term, renewing American leadership of global institutions from which his predecessor withdrew or downgraded, and emphasizing diplomacy rather than unilateral declarations of power - are likely to go up in flames.
With the experience of his first term in mind, when he charged that the "deep state" conspired against the changes he sought, Trump has promised to dismantle the career national security bureaucracy. "The State Department and Pentagon and national security establishment will be a very different place by the end of my administration," he pledged in a policy video released last year as he began his campaign.
Trump's policy plans this time around have been vague: solving the Ukraine war in 24 hours, backing away from the U.S. role of what Vice President-elect JD Vance has called being "policeman of the world," cracking down hard on countries such as Iran and Venezuela, and expanding his signature Abraham Accords in the Middle East. European officials are currently debating proposals for self-sufficiency in defense, in expectation of Trump pulling support for NATO.
Biden administration officials recognize that they already have significantly less sway with other nations and only a limited ability to make policy decisions that can endure beyond Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
Ukraine is in an especially difficult position right now, with the country facing major setbacks on the battlefield in recent weeks, sapped by a shortage of military personnel that is difficult to fix quickly. Trump, who during his first term tried to use U.S. military aid to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating Biden, has shown far more skepticism toward supporting Ukraine than the current administration, while expressing admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Biden administration officials plan to ship as much military aid as they can to Kiev, with some of the equipment that was part of the $61 billion package that Congress approved in April not yet on Ukrainian soil. Biden officials have little faith that the Trump team is interested in continuing significant financial support for Zelensky's government, and they have already told European leaders that they are likely to have to shoulder most of the burden.
Biden still faces the question of whether to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided long-range missile systems to hit deep into Russian territory, something the Ukrainians have demanded for months but that the White House has avoided amid fears that Putin will escalate the war or complicate other U.S. foreign policy priorities. Biden could still decide to take a maximalist approach toward helping Ukraine over the next couple of months, although parts of his administration continue to oppose the idea.
Trump's vow to resolve the Ukraine conflict even before he takes office lacks details, but the rhetoric alone could push Zelensky closer to the negotiating table. Some of Trump's advisers, including former top national security aide Keith Kellogg, have floated the idea of freezing the conflict along the current territorial lines in exchange for some form of Western security guarantees for Kiev. One incentive for Putin, Kellogg has said, would be putting off Ukraine's membership in NATO, a promise the alliance has already made.
While some Republican lawmakers remain staunchly supportive of aid to Ukraine, Trump advisers have consistently signaled that they do not intend to maintain current levels of assistance.
"We gave Ukraine more money than we allocated for the U.S. Marine Corps last year. Just think about that," Kellogg said at a Nixon Foundation event in September.
Top Biden policy officials plan to be on the phone this week with foreign counterparts to try to assess what kind of international work might be possible in the coming months, one U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal planning. Israel and Middle East policy is an especially open question, where a tangle of competing interests means that some actors may still welcome U.S. input while others - especially the Israeli government - may be inclined to be dismissive.
Of the three separate conflicts in which Israel is currently engaged - Gaza, Lebanon and Iran - none is likely to be resolved before Trump takes office, and all depend far more on the actions of the parties directly involved than any desire for peace by the Biden administration.
In Gaza, the Israel-Hamas war rages on. After nearly a year of negotiations, with the United States, Egypt and Qatar mediating between the two intransigent parties, they appear no closer to a deal to ease the suffering of Palestinian civilians, return Hamas-held Israeli hostages and lift barriers to aid.
The administration will face a decision point next week when it needs to address a 30-day deadline it imposed on the Israeli government last month to ameliorate humanitarian concerns or risk the suspension of U.S. arms shipments and other assistance.
One factor complicating the administration's decision is the knowledge that if Biden were to cut off military supplies to Israel, Trump - who has reportedly been in regular contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and last month urged him to "do what you have to do" to win the war - could immediately restore arms transfers on Jan. 20.
Even as it tries to negotiate a Gaza cease-fire, the Biden administration has drawn up detailed plans for a "day after" government in the enclave, including a path to a long-term solution in which Palestinians would get an independent state in Gaza and the West Bank on land currently occupied by Israel.
As sweeteners for both sides, the Biden plans outline normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, adding the kingdom to the list of three smaller Arab countries that established diplomatic relations with Israel during the Trump administration.
For its part, Israel would agree to the path to Palestinian statehood, while the Saudis have been promised a U.S. security and civil nuclear agreement. All of those plans may fall by the wayside under Trump, who has long touted his close relationship with both Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump has said he is agnostic on a two-state solution, and he could offer the Saudi sweeteners for free.
In Lebanon, where Israel is fighting a second front against Hezbollah, the chances for a deal under Biden may be better than on Gaza, said Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East negotiator under several administrations, now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"The administration has a very detailed off-ramp" that Israel may be more inclined to accept "now that it has more or less accomplished what they want to do" in destroying Hezbollah's leadership and infrastructure and clearing its fighters from the area north of the Israel-Lebanon border, Miller said.
The Biden administration has also fought to dial down tensions between Israel and Iran, which has said it is still contemplating a retaliatory response to an Israeli strike on air defense installations and military sites last month - itself a response to an earlier Iranian attack. It is unclear how Tehran will respond to another Trump administration, which might well seek to reinvigorate the former president's "maximum pressure" campaign of crushing sanctions and direct military action against top generals.
Netanyahu's firing this week of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant may further complicate the ability of the Biden administration to advance its goals for the Middle East.
Over the 13 months since the war began with Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack, U.S. officials came to see Gallant, a gruff and blunt former naval commando, as an "indispensable partner" and ally in countering the most right-wing members of Netanyahu's coalition, some of whom categorically opposed aid for Palestinians and want to send Israeli settlers back to Gaza.