Despite Donald Trump's repeated refusals to concede defeat in this election, it is clear that Joe Biden will become President of the United States on January 21st, 2021. Now, there are a lot of things that Biden will have to do once he takes office. President Trump has left in his wake an endless stream of disasters, messes, and bungles over the past four years. A pandemic is raging out of control in this country, killing hundreds of thousands and infecting millions. Civil unrest is still ongoing in major American cities over the killing of George Floyd. The environment is suffering due to the denialist policies of the EPA, which has been taken over by fossil fuel magnates and has chosen to believe lobbyists over scientists. And America's reputation on the world stage has been badly marred due to the actions of an incompetent, short-sighted administration with an inability to recognize even the most basic principles of cause-and-effect.
But perhaps the most pressing issue facing the world today is the consequence of Donald Trump's "America First" foreign policy - a policy rooted in ultranationalism, far-right populism, and isolationism. Since he took office in 2017, Trump has shown a desire to seal America off from the rest of the world. His administration scrapped international treaties governing everything from trade agreements to foreign aid.
And, most notoriously, Trump has promoted a rabidly non-interventionist foreign policy when it comes to armed conflicts overseas. While some people on both the left and the right may consider this a positive, the truth is that it is a dangerously short-sighted policy that will endanger millions of lives, threaten regional security, and open the door to terrorist organizations like the Taliban, Al-Shabaab, and the Islamic State regaining power and influence.
Trump's foreign policy has been - to put it mildly - an absolute disaster. In October of 2019, Trump abruptly ordered the withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria, leaving thousands of our Kurdish allies undefended and at the mercy of hostile forces such as the Turkish government and the Assad regime.
A few months later, Trump announced that he was organizing a "peace deal" with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and was preparing to withdraw all Coalition forces by 2021 - an act that would leave the Afghan government wholly under-defended against the Taliban insurgency and could potentially lead to the Taliban retaking control of Afghanistan. In fact, as these peace talks were occurring, the Taliban stepped up the rate of terror attacks against Afghan civilians and conducted a rash of suicide bombings that killed hundreds - indicating that the Taliban likely have no intention of upholding their end of the bargain. In fact, the Taliban actually officially endorsed Donald Trump for president of the United States, explicitly saying that his non-interventionist foreign policy was beneficial to them.
And, just last week, Donald Trump announced that the US would be withdrawing troops from Somalia - a war torn country in the Horn of Africa that is home to terrorist organizations such as Al-Shabaab and has a government rife with corruption and anarchy.
These decisions were, unfortunately, met with very little vocal scorn from the voting public. Populist non-interventionists on both the far-right and far-left praised Trump's decision as a stepping stone to ending "endless foreign wars" and "imperialism", and smeared critics of this short-sighted plan as "neocons" and "warmongers".
In the end, however, Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, and that is something we should all be thankful for. But there is a lot of work to be done to repair the damage this administration has caused to our reputation and our foreign policy. Our foreign policy has, for four years, been governed by a populist, isolationist foreign policy built on empty promises, ultranationalist dogwhistles, and blind ignorance, and millions of lives across the world have been jeopardized as a result.
Decisive and immediate action is essential if we are to adjust back to a proper foreign policy based on liberal internationalism, humanitarian interventionism, and global cooperation. I hope that, on day 1 of his presidency, President Joe Biden will reverse the Trump administration's decision to withdraw troops from Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Such a move would be widely unpopular, yes, and Biden will undoubtedly receive a lot of flak from the populist crowd on the far-left and far-right. But it will be the right thing to do regardless of popularity, and human life should always take precedence over human ignorance.
I would like nothing better than to end the wars in Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia. I would like nothing better if we could withdraw all troops from there tomorrow. But the fact is that we simply can't. Withdrawing from these countries wouldn't end the wars. It wouldn't end the killings and the atrocities and the immense suffering. All it would do is worsen the wars. The wars will continue with or without our presence, and the same non-interventionists who whined about "endless wars" and "imperialism" will never speak of those countries again.
And we not only have the capability to do our part to ensure that these countries are given a fighting chance at freedom; we have a moral and ethical obligation to do so. And, in the end, I believe that history will come to show that it is the interventionists and the internationalists - not the isolationists and non-interventionists - that hold the moral high ground.
I hope Biden can see fit that the US can once again live up to its potential and do its part to make the world a better place, because our foreign policy over the last four years has been nothing short of shameful.
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