Urgent Foreign Policy Steps Biden Should Take in 2023

After an extraordinary year of foreign policy, our Quincy Institute experts weigh in on Ukraine, Russia, China, the Middle East, and more.

It’s been an extraordinary year in foreign policy, dominated by an ongoing, brutal war following the February Russian invasion of Ukraine. NATO, struggling with its mission before 2022, appears more emboldened and unified than ever.

Meanwhile, tensions have continued to roil between the U.S. and China on a number of fronts, not the least, the fate of Taiwan.

In the Middle East, Biden’s post-Russian outreach to Saudi Arabia and inability to stop assistance to Riyadh in the Yemen war underscores the problematic nature of Washington’s relations with despotic governments there, while trying to maintain an “autocracies vs. democracies” approach to geopolitics in other parts of the world.

After two years in office, the Iran nuclear deal looks “dead,” while the U.S. slaps more sanctions on Tehran in the wake of crackdowns on protesters and reported drone transfers to Russia.

Phew.

With so much going on, we asked our own Quincy Institute experts to weigh in on the following prompt: what needs to happen almost immediately in 2023 for U.S foreign policy to start out on the right foot for the year? Why?