Joseph Biden's Personal Diplomacy and American Foreign Policy

The first Trump administration was an unusually difficult period for American foreign policy. The president's constant clashes with the American foreign policy establishment, his inconsistent and capricious foreign policy decisions, the frequent rotation of the decision-making structure due to resignations and firings, and the ambiguity these dynamics created for allies and foes alike have been extensively analyzed in the literature. ¹ One of the most controversial aspects of Trump's foreign policy has been his personal diplomacy with foreign leaders. His one-on-one meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, without any other state officials or notetakers, caused an uproar in American political circles. This intensified when Trump sided with Putin regarding the alleged Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential elections. ² Similarly, Trump's sudden and unilateral decision to withdraw American soldiers from Syria after a phone conversation with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested to many that his conduct of personal diplomacy made his foreign policy decision-making vulnerable to manipulation by foreign leaders. ³ In addition, Trump's unwelcome encounters with European leaders, his publicly threatening and harassing rhetoric, and his confrontational body language in these meetings—best illustrated when he shoved past the prime minister of Montenegro at the 2017 NATO summit to get to the front for a group photograph—raised fears that his personal diplomacy might also threaten the future of longstanding transatlantic alliances. ⁴

Personal diplomacy has been a common practice in international politics for centuries, and has been particularly prominent in American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. Therefore, it is not surprising that, despite his criticism of Trump's foreign policy and handling of foreign leaders, ⁵ Trump's successor Joseph Biden also relied on personal diplomacy during his own tenure. Indeed, Biden's years in the Senate as Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, as well as his vice presidency during the Barack Obama administration, provided him with sufficient experience and opportunity to bond with then and future foreign leaders. “I’ve met every major leader in the last 35 years . . . because of the nature of my job,” Biden stated during his presidential campaign. ⁶ Believing that “all foreign policy is the logical extension of personal relationships,” ⁷ he relied on personal diplomacy across almost all major foreign policy issues, including relations with China, the Ukraine war, and the Israel–Palestine conflict.

While presidential diplomacy is a common practice in American foreign policy, its benefits and costs are highly controversial in the literature, as the debates surrounding the Trump administration demonstrate. As this article shows through the Biden case, even policy experience and strong bonds with foreign leaders may not result in effective personal diplomacy, and various systemic, domestic, institutional, and cognitive variables may overwhelm the human factor in international relations. With this hypothesis in mind, first I first provide a literature review on personal diplomacy in international politics and American foreign policy. Next, I look at Biden's practice of personal diplomacy through major foreign policy issues during his term. Finally, I use an evaluation of Biden's personal diplomacy to offer insights about the future of personal diplomacy in the second Trump administration.

Personal diplomacy in international relations and American foreign policy

In his 1939 book on diplomacy, distinguished British diplomat and historian Sir Harold Nicolson adopted the Oxford English Dictionary definition of diplomacy, describing it as “the management of international relations by negotiation,” traditionally carried out by ambassadors and envoys. ⁸ While it is true that diplomacy has often been carried out by these actors, in modern sovereign bureaucratic states, political leaders occasionally take the wheel of foreign policy and conduct diplomatic relations personally. Accordingly, personal or leadership diplomacy refers to diplomatic efforts “when a particular national leader tries to sort out an international problem on the basis of their own personal relations with, and understanding of, other national leaders.” ⁹ With the growth of telecommunications and transportation technologies, as well as the help of a rising number of international institutions, political leaders today communicate on a regular basis through international summits, state visits, videoconferences, phone calls, and letter exchanges in order to increase international cooperation and address political problems.

Personal diplomacy reflects the renewed attention on individuals in international relations. Traditionally, fear, greed, and the ambitions of individuals were regarded as the central variables for explaining domestic and international politics. Various scholars, from Islamic philosophers like Ibn Khaldun ¹⁰ to those seen as the founders of classical realist thought such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Thucydides, E.H. Carr, and Hans Morgenthau, all adopted this approach. ¹¹ Nevertheless, when the discipline of international relations was developed in the positivist mindset of American academia after the Second World War, individuals were widely regarded as too unpredictable and capricious to allow for parsimonious explanations of world politics. For example, although he acknowledged an explanatory role for individuals with the notion of the “first image” in his classic Man, the State and War, Kenneth Waltz prioritized the state, and especially the international structure—the second and third images, respectively—in his explanation of international politics. ¹² Despite the ascendancy of state- and system-level analysis in the discipline, however, scholars continued to engage with individuals, especially in the foreign policy analysis literature. ¹³ In the mid-1970s, international relations scholars such as Robert Jervis and Margaret Hermann also started paying attention to how individuals’ psychological factors and leadership traits influence foreign policy behaviour and international politics. ¹⁴ Another area of individual-level analysis was counterfactual studies, including Fred Greenstein's striking demonstration of the impact of personality at critical junctures in world politics, such as the end of the Cold War. ¹⁵ Still, attention to individuals must have been limited, given that in a 2001 article published in International Security, Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack called on scholars to “bring the statesman back” into international relations studies. ¹⁶

Since this call, there has been increasing attention to political leadership, personal characteristics, individual morality, and human factors in international relations, thanks to the emergence of strong, charismatic, control-prone, and sometimes interesting world leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump. ¹⁷ A focus on personal diplomacy contributes to the political leadership literature not only by analyzing personal traits and psychological characteristics, but also by treating leadership interaction as an independent variable. In this social constructivist mindset, the same personal and psychological characteristics may lead to different outcomes depending on whom the political leader is dealing with. For example, Trump's differing relationships with European leaders and authoritarian rulers may reflect not only the American president's admiration of strong leadership, but also the greater ability of authoritarian rulers to adapt to an untraditional American president, in contrast with European democratic leaders’ more limited normative and political flexibility. The uniqueness of personal diplomacy lies in its greater emphasis on the experiences generated through leadership summits, meetings, talks, and other forms of direct exchange, rather than on individuals’ personal characteristics, although these characteristics are not irrelevant as they can shape behaviour during these occasions.

Personal diplomacy is, of course, not a new practice. Summit meetings as a form of personal diplomacy were held by the European kings and princes of the Middle Ages, even when long-distance travel, health risks, and potential attacks in distant lands constituted fatal threats to their lives. With a lack of international rules preventing the possibility of assassination or betrayal, leaders often chose borders or bridges as meeting spots while using body doubles when approaching the location. However, for some critical meetings, such as with the Pope, they took months-long trips to foreign lands to directly conduct diplomatic relations. ¹⁸ The effect and intensity of this leadership interaction on international relations can be observed in the criticism of the diplomats at the time. Philippe de Commynes, French diplomat and historian of the fifteenth century, for example, believed that “spoiled, vain, and badly educated” princes were prone to believe false stories and groundless reports in conducting foreign relations, while physical danger was always a possibility in face-to-face negotiations. Accordingly, de Commynes recommended that political leaders communicate through “wise ambassadors” rather than directly negotiating with each other. ¹⁹

Although it was natural to expect that the birth of nation-states and the corresponding rise of a bureaucratic class may have diminished the leadership effect in international relations, personal diplomacy actually continued apace. Intermarriage among members of European reigning families created strong leadership bonds, sustained by frequent letter exchanges on international developments. Important events, such as accessions to the throne, births, marriages, and deaths, offered opportunities for face-to-face communication. ²⁰ In this so-called “monarchical diplomacy,” European leaders—most prominently Louis XIV of France, Catherine II of Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom—took foreign policy in hand and conducted their own diplomacy. As a testament to the value of monarchical diplomacy, former British prime minister William Gladstone stated that “personal and domestic relations within the ruling families abroad give openings, in delicate cases, for saying more, and saying it at once more gently and more efficaciously than could be ventured in the more formal correspondence.” ²¹ Indeed, personal diplomacy became a critical mechanism for crisis solution and wartime diplomatic negotiations during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most strikingly illustrated by the meeting of Napoleon and Alexander I on a raft on the River Niemen near Tilsit in 1807, which concluded with an armistice between France and Russia. Simultaneously, the two leaders unsuccessfully attempted to construct a new European order as two great powers. ²²

With this advantage, personal diplomacy became the main mechanism shaping the international system in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Concert of Europe relied on conference diplomacy, which introduced the practice of regular face-to-face consultation among the leaders of European great powers to increase international cooperation and to address political problems, most specifically the era's revolutionary movements. ²³ The idea that state leaders should assume the chief role in diplomatic relations grew stronger at the end of the First World War, when diplomats were held partly responsible for their failure to stop four years of conflict. Additionally, the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 brought the leaders of the great powers together for six months, day and night, through formal and informal meetings. ²⁴ While their decisions ultimately sowed the seeds of another world war, and the legacy of the infamous 1938 meetings between Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler tainted the practice of direct leadership talks, the successive wartime meetings of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam focused on coordinating the war effort and shaping the postwar international system, ²⁵ proved the strength, permanence, and desirability of personal diplomacy in international relations.

The changes to the conduct of diplomacy after 1945 produced a major surge in personal diplomacy. First, developments in transportation technology enabled faster and more frequent international travel, while advances in telecommunications provided alternative ways for state leaders to interact. Second, although the world was divided into two opposing blocs plus the non-aligned “third world,” growing interdependence in security, economic, social, and technical affairs within each bloc necessitated more regular and direct contact between state leaders. This impulse only grew with the end of the Cold War and the rise of globalization. Therefore, personal diplomacy dealt not only with security and military affairs, but also with other specialized subjects that fell under so-called “low politics.” Third, and related to the former development, the rising number of international organizations, regional blocs, and specific annual fora, such as the G7 and G20 summits and the World Economic Forum in Davos, provided more opportunities for state leaders to practice personal diplomacy. ²⁶ Although the growth of institutionalism diminished the flexibility of personal diplomacy by introducing formal rules, norms, and standards in the conduct of international relations, ²⁷ leadership meetings and exchanges have played a significant role in the visibility and efficiency of these multilateral mechanisms.

As Elmer Plischke noted, personal diplomacy has been at the core of American foreign policy throughout the country's political history. Even prior to the time when the United States started playing an active role in world politics in the First World War, American presidents played the role of “diplomat in chief”: George Washington sent a presidential communication to the sultan of Morocco in 1789; Ulysses Grant hosted the King of Hawaii in 1874 and the Emperor of Brazil in 1876, both of whom had come to the United States as summit visitors; and Theodore Roosevelt became the first president to visit a foreign country—Panama—in 1906. ²⁸ Moreover, some prominent high-level politicians, such as Benjamin Franklin during the independence period and William Howard Taft as Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of war, conducted efficient personal diplomacy abroad during critical and transformative times in American history. ²⁹

Yet, the person who made the conduct of diplomacy an inseparable part of presidential duty was Woodrow Wilson. In the wake of the First World War, Wilson pointed out the barbarities of the old international order and identified the reliance on European diplomatic traditions as one of the main reasons for the four years of spilled blood. Seeing it as his divine duty, Wilson wanted to directly confront the European elites, believing that if he stayed in Washington, Europe's victorious leaders would pursue the old game of realpolitik. In his diplomatic innovations, the president not only challenged the European leaders, who were opposed to his transformative ideas, but also faced domestic opposition within American politics and media, which resisted his personal crusade. For example, Frank Cobb, editor of the New York World, argued that if Wilson went to Paris, he would lose his political influence due to “distance and detachment” and turn into “merely a negotiator dealing with other negotiators.” Furthermore, any public reaction against the conference results would directly target him, while personal contact between the president and the European leaders would only add “new friction and controversies” to the emerging leadership competition between the US and Europe. Yet, these concerns did not dissuade Wilson from going to Europe and staying for most of the six-month conference in order to directly meet European leaders. ³⁰ While Wilson failed to change the isolationist tendencies of the US following the conference, he succeeded in adding a new method to the country's diplomacy toolkit.

Accordingly, the next wartime president, Roosevelt, was more comfortable engaging in personal diplomacy. During the Second World War, Roosevelt realized that an efficient war effort against Nazi Germany necessitated personal diplomacy for trust-building with Churchill and especially Stalin, as the Soviet leader also shared the belief that attitudes, feelings, and body language in leadership meetings could expose inner thoughts and real intentions. Successive summits managed to establish a working cooperation among these three leaders, who were very different in terms of political philosophy and personality. Roosevelt and Churchill's direct meetings and exchanges, especially during the critical years between 1941–45 when the two leaders spent 113 days together, ³¹ played a central role in shaping the postwar liberal international order. Nevertheless, Roosevelt's sudden death in April 1945 revealed an important weakness of personal diplomacy: when a leader who participates in such diplomacy dies and is replaced, foreign policy and diplomatic relations may shift due to the change in emotions and attitudes in leadership interactions. For some scholars, therefore, the transition from Roosevelt to Harry S. Truman marked a critical juncture that contributed to the onset of the Cold War, as Truman failed to establish personal trust with the Soviet leader. ³²

Despite this risk, however, all postwar presidents have embraced personal diplomacy. According to Tizoc Chavez, four factors explain this development. First, the leadership role inherent in the liberal international order, which requires American presidents to personally respond to international developments, either by negotiating with adversaries or consulting with allies. Second, domestic politics, as international summits and leadership meetings have been used to boost presidents’ domestic political approval, with the help of media attention to these events. Third, foreign leaders’ desire for presidential access, as they view engagement with the US presidency as the most direct and efficient way to receive American assistance. Meeting with the most powerful individual in the world also helps their own domestic approval ratings at home. Finally, presidents’ desire for control of foreign policy and to avoid being obstructed by the State Department, Congress, the media, lobbies, or other influential foreign policy actors leads them to establish direct personal contacts with other state leaders. ³³

Proponents of personal diplomacy point to the significant advantages of the practice. First, personal diplomacy allows state leaders to make “sincerity judgments,” as facial expressions, body language, voice tone, and even unconscious movements in leadership meetings offer precious intelligence about other leaders’ intentions and motivations. ³⁴ Second, personal diplomacy may introduce empathy between opposing states through a mirroring system, as direct interaction enables the leaders to put themselves into the other side's shoes. ³⁵ Finally, in a time of crisis, a top-level meeting between state leaders can offer the fastest and most direct means of solving a problem, especially when the leaders hold significant domestic power and authority. ³⁶

Despite these advantages, personal diplomacy also comes with significant risks. The first is the risk of entrapment, whereby an inexperienced or weak leader may be pressured or persuaded to accept policies that do not reflect national interests. This is the point that de Commynes and Cobb made in their times, and what Chamberlain and Trump were criticized for in their interactions with Hitler and Putin, respectively. The second risk is giving up the last stand in the decision-making process. When two leaders meet and make crucial decisions, it is difficult to reverse those decisions without a leader losing prestige or being seen as unreliable, since they are regarded as the ultimate authority in their own political systems. Despite his support for personal diplomacy, Henry Kissinger wrote that “when presidents become negotiators no escape routes are left.” ³⁷ Third, cognitive factors, such as leaders’ personal characteristics, political ambitions, ideological beliefs, and even mental state, may undermine rational decision-making if a leader relies too much on high-level diplomacy and fails to incorporate alternative voices into the process. Fourth, as the Roosevelt case most strikingly illustrates, because humans are mortal and their political futures cannot be guaranteed, personal ties between leaders may not be regarded as a reliable tool for long-term foreign policy strategies. ³⁸ Finally, while international laws and norms provide some protection, though not absolute, against assassination or imprisonment in foreign lands, state visits or summit meetings can serve as ideal targets for terrorist organizations seeking propaganda opportunities. Or, in a better but still politically troubling scenario, groups such as anti-globalization and climate change protestors may also see these meetings as an opportunity to make their cases to the public. ³⁹

Biden's conduct of personal diplomacy

While Joe Biden entered the White House with years of experience engaging with world leaders and a belief that foreign policy is the extension of personal relationships, his presidential term began with a significant impediment to personal diplomacy. The COVID-19 crisis curtailed international travel and face-to-face negotiations when American foreign policy crises in the post-Trump period required presidential diplomacy. The most significant requirement was to reestablish trust and mutual understanding with allies around the world, especially European leaders. “America is Back” was the message Biden wanted to convey from the outset, as Trump had openly refused to play a leadership role in the liberal international order. Therefore, despite the pandemic, Biden took his first international trip as president to the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Switzerland in June 2021. During this tour, he held several meetings with European leaders in which he emphasized American support for democratic values, a commitment to more economic integration and pandemic-related economic aid to poorer countries, and a strong military alliance to combat the Russian and Chinese military challenges. ⁴⁰

Biden's desire to restore American global leadership also led him to convene two international summits through videoconference due to the pandemic. The Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021 convened forty world leaders with the aim of tackling the environmental crisis by calling on countries to enhance their efforts. At the same time, the Biden administration announced ambitious new emissions targets for 2030 to demonstrate its leading role in addressing global problems. ⁴¹

The second virtual leadership meeting, the Summit for Democracy in December 2021, is a more revealing case in terms of personal diplomacy, as it shows that what matters is not only whom a leader is willing to engage with, but also whom they are not willing to engage with. Biden's decision not to hold a phone call with the Turkish president, Erdoğan, until April 2021, three months after he took office, was a deliberate (non-)use of personal diplomacy to show the US president's disapproval of a leader whom he regarded as authoritarian. ⁴² The use of personal diplomacy as a carrot and stick during the Summit for Democracy can also be observed in the invitations and exclusions: leaders of certain countries, such as Russia and China, and some US allies including Thailand, Vietnam, Egypt, and Turkey, were excluded from the summit, while other countries with problematic democracy records, such as Israel, Iraq, the Philippines, and Poland, were invited. ⁴³ Consequently, the event aimed not only to send the message that the United States was back in terms of leadership within the international system, but also to make clear that access to the American president was not free and required respect for, and commitment to, American political and security interests.

Nevertheless, the exigencies of global affairs may require US presidents to grant presidential time to adversaries when major interests are at stake. Accordingly, during the Ukraine crisis, personal diplomacy with Biden became an important battleground between Russian and Ukrainian leaders. When advisers notified Biden on his second day in office that Putin wished to speak to him, and suggested that making the Russian leader wait for his turn in line for the congratulatory call would do no harm, Biden responded with, “Where I come from, when a significant world leader, a friend or an adversary calls you up, unless you have a damn good reason not to, you take the call.” ⁴⁴ Three months later, when the administration received intelligence indicating that Russian troops were massing on the Ukrainian border with tanks, artillery, and missiles, Biden made another call to Putin not only to warn him about the deteriorating bilateral relations, but also to propose a face-to-face dialogue in June. Biden believed that Putin “want[ed] to be a big player on the big stage,” and that personal diplomacy would give the Russian leader the international prestige he sought while diminishing the likelihood of a military operation that spring. ⁴⁵ The summit held on 16 June may have postponed the Russian military incursion for a few months; however, it also frustrated Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, who desperately urged the American president to meet with him “at any moment and at any spot on the planet” before the Biden–Putin summit as a demonstration of support. ⁴⁶ According to Zelensky, Biden's decision to reward Putin with a summit while Russian troops were sitting on the Ukrainian border was an intentional insult, proving his concerns that the American president did not care about Ukraine. ⁴⁷

This example illustrates the risk of personal diplomacy in situations of zero-sum conflict, as presidential attention to one foreign leader may be regarded by another as treachery. Zelensky had craved personal diplomacy with an American president since his election in 2019, particularly in the form of an official invitation to the White House. However, this prospect was diminished by his first call with Donald Trump, wherein Trump asked him to open an investigation against Joe Biden and his son Hunter for alleged corrupt ties with a Ukrainian energy company—an episode of “personalized diplomacy” that led to impeachment proceedings against Trump. When Biden assumed the presidency, on the other hand, his focus on stability in great power relations often resulted in frustration among Ukrainian officials. As the Biden–Putin summit approached, the US dismissed Zelensky's pleas for a military package with lethal weapons ⁴⁸ and relaxed its opposition to the Nord Stream 2 gas line project between Germany and Russia, ⁴⁹ while personal diplomacy between Biden and Zelensky developed poorly and belatedly. The Biden administration rejected Zelensky's request to meet before the Biden–Putin summit, and although a long-awaited invitation to the White House was finally extended, the administration postponed the meeting because it was focused on the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Adding salt to the wound, as Franklin Foer explains, Zelensky came to the meeting on 1 September with a long list of demands, the most critical of which was Ukraine's desire to join NATO. According to Biden, not only would this move provoke Putin, but other NATO members would not support it as it would increase the possibility of military conflict with Russia. Zelensky then had an emotional outburst and dismissed the value of NATO cooperation by referring to the organization as a historic relic. This “pissed Biden off” and increased his doubts about the Ukrainian leader, whom he viewed as belonging to a different generation and, as a former comedian, not a natural-born politician. ⁵⁰

At the end of 2021, the Biden administration received further intelligence about massive troop movements on the Ukrainian border and in Crimea, but this time with detailed information on war plans. This alarming development once more brought personal diplomacy to the centre of American foreign policy. From October to the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Biden frequently spoke with Putin in an effort to convince him not to initiate a dangerous confrontation, with Zelensky to warn him of the invasion, and with European leaders for policy coordination. Biden also sent senior members of his administration, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, abroad multiple times to conduct face-to-face meetings with European and Ukrainian leaders. One important question during this period concerned a possible Biden-Putin summit to prevent the invasion. As Bob Woodward points out, Biden and his administration believed that, since Putin wanted the respect of world leaders, “the only messenger from the United States with the weight and influence to stop Putin was the president.” Nevertheless, there was also a potential risk: if the president met with Putin and the invasion occurred anyway, Biden would be regarded as a failed leader like Chamberlain. Consequently, instead of engaging with Putin directly Biden decided to send William Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, to Moscow to deliver a warning to the Russian leader. ⁵¹ All in all, the record shows that, in the first year of his presidency, Biden frequently conducted personal diplomacy as required by the Ukraine crisis.

Following Hamas's attack on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, Biden once more relied on personal diplomacy to defuse a military crisis. Shortly after the attack, he dispatched Blinken to the region to conduct shuttle diplomacy with the regional leaders. Simultaneously, Biden had multiple calls with both Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, in an effort to reduce tensions and organize humanitarian aid. It soon became clear, however, that the matter required more direct presidential involvement. Not only did Israel and its US supporters demand a public demonstration of support, but the US administration also believed that presidential diplomacy would send a more credible message to Hamas not to escalate the conflict, while helping to convince Israel to refrain from revenge killings and to ease the suffering of civilians in Gaza. ⁵² There were risks associated with this use of personal diplomacy, however. First, travelling to an active warzone would constitute a personal security risk to the president. Second, any indiscriminate attack against civilians during the president's visit, which was a likely scenario at the early stages of the conflict, and in fact occurred with a hospital blast in Gaza during Biden's visit, ⁵³ would damage presidential diplomacy at its very outset. Finally, administration officials were unsure whether personal diplomacy would be effective with a right-wing, populist politician such as Netanyahu, especially when a security issue was at stake immediately after a traumatic attack. As Biden himself acknowledged, it was a “gamble,” ⁵⁴ one he took by travelling to Israel on 18 October and giving a warm embrace to Netanyahu in front of the cameras at the airport in a form of “bear-hug diplomacy.” ⁵⁵

For Biden, presidential diplomacy with Netanyahu was also a gamble for another more personal reason. In May 2010, when then–vice president Biden travelled to Israel, the Netanyahu government announced plans to build 1,600 homes in occupied East Jerusalem. This move was regarded as a humiliation and an intentional snub to Biden, as the issue of Jewish settlements had been the biggest point of disagreement between the US and Israel during the Obama administration. ⁵⁶ The announcement and its timing prompted a strong condemnation from Biden and a public apology from Netanyahu, while also demonstrating the risks associated with personal diplomacy.

Nevertheless, Biden's experience during the Obama administration taught him that personal and public bitterness towards Netanyahu was not a good strategy for influencing Israeli policy. Netanyahu himself has also been an active practitioner of personal diplomacy, and did not refrain from using this strategy against American presidents, as was strikingly demonstrated by his March 2015 address to a joint session of the American Congress, which aimed to undermine Obama's foreign policy. ⁵⁷ Therefore, during the recent Gaza crisis, Biden preferred to rely on personal and private conversations with Netanyahu while avoiding public criticism of Israel's policies. Yet, as the months passed and several incidents involving Israel's indiscriminate use of force resulted in thousands of civilian deaths, alongside insufficient cooperation on humanitarian aid to Palestinians, Biden's strategy of “personal touch” showed its limits and the president increasingly faced criticism for exaggerating the importance of personal relationships. ⁵⁸ Biden himself eventually grew irritated with Netanyahu and privately referred to the Israeli leader and the people working with him as “fucking liars.” ⁵⁹ This example demonstrates another risk of personal diplomacy: the violation of promises and agreements will likely be regarded as a direct insult and humiliation, further damaging a relationship.

While Biden dealt with several unexpected military crises and issues during his term, relations with China were intended to be the main foreign policy priority in his pre-election grand strategy. On this issue as well, Biden was determined to benefit from leadership diplomacy and his personal ties with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The two politicians had met several times between 2008 and 2013, when both served as vice presidents. Biden was aware that personal relations alone could not manage the great power competition, but he believed they could help foster mutual understanding, thereby reducing the risk of military escalation while facilitating cooperation on matters requiring international coordination, such as climate change, pandemics, and international economic governance. According to Biden, personal connection was the missing element in relations between Obama and Hu Jintao during Biden's vice presidency, and the lack of empathy between those two leaders contributed to military tensions, especially in the South China Sea. In his mind, then, personal diplomacy would lead to “strategic empathy,” in which competition and cooperation would go hand-in-hand without any surprising and destabilizing act from either party. ⁶⁰

In American foreign policy, international developments often play a more critical role in shaping the president's agenda than pre-election grand strategies. For this reason, some scholars recommend thinking of grand strategy as an “emergent strategy”—in other words, not as a plan, but as a process. ⁶¹ Indeed, Biden's effort to develop personal rapport and strategic empathy with Xi was hampered by the Afghanistan withdrawal, the Ukraine crisis, and the Israel–Hamas conflict in Gaza. Accordingly, personal diplomacy in US–Chinese relations was not on full display, and the most substantive summit between the two leaders was finally held in November 2023. Unlike the groundbreaking, days-long summits of the Cold War, the Biden–Xi meeting lasted only four hours; its highlights included Biden's birthday wishes to Xi's wife as well as the Chinese leader's offer to send new pandas to the US as “envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.” ⁶² In this regard, Biden's effort to develop personal ties with the Chinese leader and pursuit of “strategic empathy” proved insufficient in shaping American–Chinese relations. Still, his administration benefitted from Biden–Xi contacts at critical moments. For example, amid concerns about Russia's possible use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Biden convinced the Chinese leader to issue a joint statement against the use, or threat of use, of nuclear weapons after their meeting in Indonesia on 14 November 2022. This move served as a warning to Moscow from its most important ally. ⁶³

Evaluation of Biden's personal diplomacy

The examples above show that personal diplomacy was an oft-used instrument in Biden's foreign policy toolbox, employed for managing great power competition, alliance relationships, and crises such as Ukraine and the Israel–Gaza war. Before evaluating Biden's conduct of personal diplomacy, however, we need to emphasize that the practicality of personal diplomacy should be considered carefully for two important reasons. First, judging the consequences of a foreign policy strategy is a complicated task, and assessments may differ in the short and long term. Chamberlain was initially hailed as a victorious leader who appeared to have prevented the outbreak of war after he reached the Munich Agreement with Hitler; yet, Hitler's eventual violation of the agreement turned the Munich summit into a prime cautionary example of the risks of relying on personal diplomacy. ⁶⁴ Similarly, Ronald Reagan's summits with Mikhail Gorbachev led some contemporaries to describe the American president as a “useful idiot for Soviet propaganda,” ⁶⁵ but current proponents of personal diplomacy cite these meetings as a prime example of the benefits of top-level summits.

Second, personal diplomacy should not be viewed as a “holy grail” capable of solving all complex and difficult problems in international affairs. At most, it can function as a facilitating mechanism enabling state leaders to address problems in the most direct and timely way possible. Personal diplomacy is most likely to be effective in times of crisis, when there is a hierarchical leadership style, and when leaders are confident in their abilities to control developments. ⁶⁶ Because any variance in these individual, state, and system levels of analysis may affect the success of personal diplomacy, it should be regarded as only one instrument in the diplomatic toolbox. An overreliance on personal diplomacy may actually undermine its utility while creating problems in domestic politics, such as increasing the controversies about the transparency of foreign policy.

With these considerations in mind, evaluating Biden's personal diplomacy a year after his presidency is a challenging task. Still, it is possible to begin such a process by engaging with the questions in the personal diplomacy literature and in Biden's grand strategy. The first question is whether individuals and leadership relations matter in international politics. Some scholars would answer this question affirmatively by stating that the personalities, ideologies, and actions of individual leaders can shape critical junctures in history. Others, especially neorealists and structuralists, would argue that there are more important forces in the international system, such as balance of power considerations, institutional habits, or cultural factors, which render individuals mostly irrelevant to understanding international relations. The examples above show that, while Biden's personality and foreign-policy-making style often led him to rely on personal diplomacy and direct interactions with foreign leaders, structural forces were powerful in shaping not only the success of that approach, but also how and when it was employed. For example, in June 2021, Biden was hopeful that his summit with Putin would prevent a military conflict in Ukraine, but six months later, new intelligence about Russian war plans convinced him that personal diplomacy could not overwhelm what was essentially a realpolitik military struggle. In the case of Israel, Biden attempted to moderate the Netanyahu government's policy of reprisals through his personal ties with the Israeli leader, but the ongoing military conflict and militarist cultures on both the Israeli and Hamas sides were too powerful to soften Israel's security measures. Finally, Biden wanted to initiate a closer personal communication with Xi of China, but international developments in Russia, Israel, and Afghanistan prevented him from focusing on the policy of “strategic empathy.” All in all, Biden's record of personal diplomacy seems to suggest that, while individuals matter, especially in the foreign policy process, their relevancy and the outcome of personal diplomacy more often depend on structural factors.

The second controversial question in the personal diplomacy literature is related to the benefits and costs of leadership relations and meetings. Proponents of personal diplomacy contend that sincerity judgments and the creation of empathy are benefits of personal diplomacy, while critics argue that limited expertise and the ideological preferences of political leaders can have negative consequences for effective foreign policy and national interests. Although Biden's political history and foreign policy expertise certainly cannot be dismissed, his ideological preferences were visible in his personal diplomacy. For example, although he had no problem speaking to Putin and Xi when great power relations were at stake, his opposition to authoritarianism was visible in his refraining from holding meetings with the Turkish leader, and in his disharmony with Zelensky. In terms of the potential advantages of personal diplomacy, Biden also has a mixed record. In some cases, personal diplomacy helped the president to understand the viewpoints of other leaders. For example, when the German government showed an unwillingness to send Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine because of the historical legacy of German militarism in Europe and the concern that unilateral action by Germany would lead to Russian retaliation, phone conversations with German chancellor Olaf Scholz convinced Biden of the sincerity of these arguments. This led Biden to seek a middle ground by agreeing to send American Abrams tanks. These tanks would actually have little utility in Ukraine in the short term, which is why the decision to send them to Ukraine had been long resisted by the Pentagon. Nevertheless, Biden still transferred them to Ukraine because it would help Germany take a step forward by alleviating its concerns. ⁶⁷ Nevertheless, in the majority of cases, high-level diplomacy between Biden and his counterparts produced antipathy rather than empathy. Zelensky's demands for technological weapons and NATO membership repeatedly frustrated Biden; and Netanyahu's conduct in the Israel–Gaza war prompted the US president to refer to him as a “liar.” All in all, on this second question, critics of personal diplomacy have the stronger argument, even in the case of an American president with remarkable foreign policy experience.

The third question of evaluation can be considered in terms of Biden's grand strategy and its compatibility with the practice of personal diplomacy. After he moved to the White House in January 2021, Biden's main foreign policy priority was to revive the liberal international order, which he believed was damaged during the first Trump administration. Liberal internationalism, in essence, aims to contribute to cooperation through strengthening international law, rules, norms, and institutions rather than by relying on behind-closed-door talks between the leaders of major powers. ⁶⁸ By promoting open diplomacy and rejecting secret agreements signed before the First World War in his famous Fourteen Points, Woodrow Wilson highlighted the tension between liberal internationalism and personal diplomacy. However, as Wilson's participation in the Paris Peace Conference demonstrates, liberal internationalism still recognizes the importance of leadership communication in institutionalist, multilateral, and transparent forms. In this sense, Biden's democracy and climate summits in his first year were more consistent with liberal internationalism than his ad hoc, bilateral, and undisclosed meetings with world leaders. Donald Trump's conduct of personal diplomacy may also illustrate this relationship between liberal internationalism and personal diplomacy, as his tendency to engage in frequent, out-of-the-public-eye, and transactional bilateral contacts with foreign leaders is likely driven by his animosity toward the liberal international order and international institutions.

In another way, personal diplomacy in institutional form is not a choice but a requirement for American presidents. Several political leaders with whom American presidents must interact today—such as Putin, Xi, Netanyahu, Erdoğan, and Narendra Modi, among others—have been in power for many years, and in some cases for multiple decades. American presidents, by contrast, serve four to eight years, and the effectiveness of their personal diplomacy tends to erode by the end of their presidencies. When Bill Clinton brought Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak together at Camp David in 2001 to resolve the Palestinian question, he came closer to achieving a two-state solution than any other American president. However, his successor, the more conservative and pro-Israeli George W. Bush, expressed his dislike of the day-to-day negotiating process and sought to initiate a renewed and broader international summit, thereby fruitlessly restarting the diplomatic process from scratch. ⁶⁹ In his confrontation with Obama over the Israeli settlements, Netanyahu was able to delay meaningful concessions during the last two years of Obama's presidency, not only because Obama was approaching the end of his presidential term, but also because partisan Republican opposition to Obama in the Senate diminished the president's leverage against the Israeli leader. ⁷⁰ As Biden entered the White House at the age of seventy-eight, the “lame duck” label stuck with his presidency from the beginning and led American and foreign observers to focus on the next American president throughout Biden's four-year term. ⁷¹ As American leaders change frequently while many foreign leaders do not, and because partisanship in domestic politics brings different personalities into power, presidential diplomacy cannot reach its full potential. An institutionalist structure would mitigate this disadvantage by introducing predictability, standards, and continuity to personal diplomacy, increasing its efficiency for American foreign policy. Biden recognized this fact in his first year, but international crises and developments often pushed him to ad hoc, bilateral, and secret forms of personal diplomacy in the later years of his presidency.

This discussion may help us identify three factors in effective personal diplomacy. At the individual level, personal diplomacy can be more effective if a state leader is able to set ideological preferences aside and adopt a rational stance. With his foreign policy experience, Biden recognized this principle in great power relations, but his approach to Turkish and Ukrainian leaders still reflected his understanding of world affairs as a clash between democracy and authoritarianism. At the state level, leadership interactions must align with an administration's grand strategy and must be conducted in an institutionalist form to increase standards, predictability, and confidentiality, rather than relying on purely personal and transactional approaches, as President Trump did. Starting with multilateral leadership summits that reflected his liberal internationalist grand strategy, Biden was later forced by international developments to return to bilateral personal diplomacy with state leaders behind closed doors. The third point at the system level is that international conditions and structural factors play a critical role in the effectiveness of personal diplomacy. With his foreign policy experience, Biden was confident that he could shape world affairs, but, as his Democratic predecessor Obama warned, those who rise to power may be “mere conduits for the deep, relentless currents of the times,” ⁷² and an American president's personal diplomacy may only be successful if the international conditions allow it to be. With the eruption of conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, Biden was not a lucky president in this regard.

Conclusion

With the election of Donald Trump as the forty-seventh president of the United States, personal diplomacy will take center stage in American foreign policy even more strikingly than before. One of Trump's most prominent election campaign promises was to end the Ukraine war within twenty-four hours by speaking with Zelensky and Putin, a task he claimed Biden was not capable of accomplishing. ⁷³ Trump also claimed that Netanyahu did not take Biden's advice and that the lack of talks between them diminished American interests in the Middle East. He argued that, under his presidency, the US would weigh in on regional affairs again and the Israeli leader would listen to him “a hundred percent.” ⁷⁴ Indeed, even before the election, Trump increased his phone diplomacy with Netanyahu, discussing Israeli military operations against Hamas as well as Israel's response to Iranian missile attacks—interactions that, according to some, violated the principle of “one president at a time.” ⁷⁵ After the election, some governments seem to have increased their efforts to adopt Trump's personal diplomacy. For example, some reports emerged in the Turkish press about the return of Erdoğan's son-in-law Berat Albayrak, former minister of energy and natural resources, into the Turkish cabinet as the vice president. In the first Trump administration, Albayrak established close and friendly relations with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and provided a channel between Erdoğan and Trump. ⁷⁶ The timing of the news was quite interesting in this regard, as Erdoğan's main criticism of Biden's presidency was the lack of leadership contacts between the two countries.

Since the Second World War, personal diplomacy has been an essential task for American presidents, and will continue to be so in the future. The potential danger is the blurry line between “personal diplomacy” and “personalized diplomacy.” While Biden valued leadership contacts with foreign leaders, he mainly used personal diplomacy as a tool to achieve foreign policy objectives, and used it selectively when the conditions necessitated his personal involvement—as occurred, for example, when Blinken's efforts to talk the Israeli government out of military operations in densely populated parts of Palestinian cities did not work. ⁷⁷ Biden was also careful not to turn his personal frustrations into public confrontation when conducting personal diplomacy. Trump's leadership style is risky in this regard, as Trump is inclined to use personal diplomacy more often than other presidents, while keeping track of how foreign leaders respond to his requests, as the Hunter Biden case with Zelensky most strikingly demonstrated. If personal diplomacy takes the form of personalized diplomacy, leadership ties become the foreign policy objectives themselves, and personal disagreements may damage interstate relations. In this regard, the conduct of personal diplomacy seems likely to be one of the greatest challenges for American foreign policy in the next four years.