WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden said Thursday that the days of the U.S. "rolling over" to Russian President Vladimir Putin are gone as he called for the immediate release of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
During his first visit to the State Department as president, Biden issued his strongest condemnation of Putin as large protests have broken out across Russia after the jailing of Navalny. Thousands of protesters have been arrested.
Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and Putin's most determined political foe, was arrested Jan. 17 upon returning from a five-month convalescence in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning, which he has blamed on the Kremlin.
"I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia's aggressive actions -- interfering with our election, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens -- are over," said Biden, who last week spoke to Putin in what White House officials called a tense first exchange. "We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people."
Biden's comments on Russia occurred as he asserted a broad reset of American foreign policy, including reversing Trump's order to withdraw U.S. troops stationed in Germany, ending support for Saudi Arabia's military offensive in Yemen and promising to support gay and transgender rights as a cornerstone of diplomacy.
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Using the visit to outline how his foreign policy would differ from that of his predecessor, Biden called for a return to the "grounding wire of our global power." He sought to buck up the diplomatic corps, many of whom were discouraged by former President Donald Trump's policies and tone.
"America is back. Diplomacy is back," Biden told State Department staff before delivering his foreign-policy speech. "You are the center of all that I intend to do. You are the heart of it. We're going to rebuild our alliances."
With Biden's most public diplomatic effort of his young presidency, White House officials said he was hoping to send an unambiguous signal to the world that the United States is ready to resume its role as a global leader after four years in which Trump pressed an "America First" agenda.
Biden said he would rebuild "the muscle of democratic alliances that have atrophied over the past few years of neglect and, I would argue, abuse."
He offered a list of issues where he said he would reverse Trump's policies or forge different priorities, including scrapping the former president's plan to withdraw about 9,500 of the roughly 34,500 U.S. troops stationed in Germany. The European nation hosts key American military facilities like Ramstein Air Base and the headquarters for U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command.
The move would halt a Trump administration plan -- which many national security experts had viewed as punitive -- to bring some U.S. troops home from Germany and shift other units to Belgium and Italy. That plan, which was laid out last summer, rankled European leaders and angered both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, who view the presence of U.S. troops in Europe, and especially in Germany, as a cornerstone of post-World War II order.
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Trump announced the pullback after repeatedly accusing Germany of not paying enough for its own defense, calling the longtime NATO ally "delinquent" for failing to spend 2% of its GDP on defense, the alliance benchmark.
No reductions or changes have been made to U.S. troop levels since Trump's announcement. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin hinted at a likely reconsideration of the order in a conversation with his German counterpart last week, chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.
"The new administration has comfortably stated to us that we need to conduct a thorough review, cradle to grave, in all areas," Gen. Tod Wolters, head of U.S. European Command and NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, said in a news conference from Mons, Belgium. After the review, he said, "We'll go back to the drawing board."
GAY-RIGHTS PROTECTION
Biden said he also would issue a presidential memorandum that will address protecting gay and transgender people worldwide. As a candidate, Biden pledged to prioritize gay rights on the international stage, promising to use "America's full range of diplomatic tools" to promote equality.
Biden also announced plans to increase the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the United States to more than eight times the level at which the Trump administration left it.
Trump drastically reduced the cap to only 15,000. Biden's plan would raise it to 125,000, surpassing the ceiling set by President Barack Obama before he left office by 15,000.
The timing of Biden's visit so early in his term is deliberate, as much symbolic as it is a nod to his interest in foreign policy and his years as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he represented Delaware.
Trump had waited more than a year to visit the department, making his first appearance only for the swearing-in of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2018, and repeatedly assailed it as part of a "deep state" out to undermine his administration. Trump denigrated and dismissed its employees and tried over several years to slash its budget by up to 35%.
Biden, by contrast, chose longtime confidant Antony Blinken to be his secretary of state, aiming to reinvigorate an American diplomatic corps that reportedly had been depleted and demoralized under four years of the Trump administration.
He was greeted by employees eager to hear that diplomacy has returned to the top of the presidential agenda and that the expertise of long-serving foreign service officers will be valued.
"I promise I will have your back," Biden told the department staff members. "And I expect you to have the back of the American people."
Although Biden's first nominations and appointments to senior positions at the State Department have trended heavily toward political appointees, the president and Blinken have pledged to promote career staff members.
To that end, Biden announced he was appointing a longtime U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, Tim Lenderking, as his special envoy in Yemen. The move was made as Biden is searching for a diplomatic end to the Saudi Arabia-led military campaign that has deepened humanitarian suffering in the Arabian peninsula's poorest country.
Lenderking, a career foreign service member, has served in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
In ending U.S. support for offensive Saudi operations in Yemen's civil war -- which he said had "created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe" -- Biden is delivering on a campaign promise, days after his administration announced a review of major U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia that were approved by the Trump administration. The U.S. also has provided intelligence, targeting data and logistical support for the Saudi intervention. Biden said he would work to revive dormant peace talks and announced the appointment of the special envoy for Yemen.
The State Department visit took place after Biden moved on Wednesday to extend the last remaining treaty limiting Russian and American stockpiles of nuclear weapons, acting just two days before the pact was set to expire. It also follows days after a coup in Burma that has emerged as an early proving ground of Biden's approach to multilateralism.
Information for this article was contributed by Aamer Madhani, Matthew Lee, Darlene Superville, Ellen Knickmeyer and Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press; and by Helene Cooper, Michael Crowley and Lara Jakes of The New York Times.
