Joseph Biden's Personal Diplomacy and American Foreign Policy

Abstract

As part of his transactional, disorderly, and hierarchical foreign-policy decision-making process, Donald Trump's conduct of personal diplomacy was largely criticized during his first administration. However, in the first year of his second term, he has shown that he will not back away from this practice. Personal diplomacy, referring to direct interactions between state leaders for cooperation-building and crisis-resolution purposes, has a long history in both international relations and American foreign policy. Indeed, although he criticized Donald Trump's foreign policy on multiple grounds, Joseph Biden also embraced personal diplomacy, pointing out that “all foreign policy is the logical extension of personal relationships.” After explaining the theoretical and practical applications of personal diplomacy, this article analyzes Biden's use of the practice in managing several major foreign policy issues, including the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, and great power competition with Russia and China. The findings show that the efficiency of Biden's personal diplomacy was greatly affected by individual factors, state-level characteristics, and conditions in the international structure.