On January 27, just one week into his new administration, President Biden made a huge down payment on the ambitious climate agenda he promised during his campaign for office. Calling climate change an “existential threat” and a “profound crisis,” Biden issued a sweeping set of executive orders prioritizing climate action across the entire federal government. Every federal agency now has a mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for the consequences of climate change.  

Critically, this also includes the foreign policy, defense, and national security agencies—arms of the federal government that aren’t often associated with environmental policy. Under Biden’s order, the administration will put climate action at the center of US foreign policy and national security strategy and employ the diplomatic and economic tools at its disposal to address the climate crisis. For example, the United States will use its leverage in multilateral forums like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Group of Seven (G7), and institutions like the World Bank, to advance climate action. The defense and intelligence agencies will assess the implications of a changing climate on America’s national security and craft appropriate responses. And US funding and foreign assistance agencies will marshal financial resources to help poorer countries reduce their emissions, improve their resilience, and protect critical ecosystems. 

This centering of climate change in US foreign policy is unprecedented. If done well, it will do much more than strengthen US climate diplomacy: It will transform our foreign policy writ large. Biden has offered a paradigm-shifting vision for the next era of foreign relations—a kind of Long Telegram for the Anthropocene. It’s still far too early to name a “Biden Doctrine,” but the president clearly sees addressing climate disruption as a vital national interest and is organizing his foreign policy and national security strategy around it.    

This focus has the potential to reshape the way the world responds to the climate emergency. President Biden is fond of saying that when it comes to solving global challenges, “the world does not organize itself.” And he’s right. The international community confronts common threats like the climate crisis far more effectively when America is committed to the effort and can bring other countries along. Even with all the damage Trump inflicted on the United States’ standing and credibility in the world, no other country welds comparable influence and leverage.  

For this reason, climate progress greatly depends on the extent to which the United States prioritizes climate change in its international engagements, facilitates climate-friendly global rules and agreements, and exerts its leverage to advance climate objectives. Biden has made clear that the United States is now prepared to do all three.

What’s more, Biden’s executive orders convey an urgency and clarity of purpose that have not always been demonstrated by even the most committed climate champions. Biden is obviously not the first national leader to perceive the risks to core interests; many leaders—of all political persuasions—have recognized that a warming climate will imperil their security and prosperity in novel and unpredictable ways. Few heads of state, however, have been able to muster the kind of focused determination that they bring to other risks to core national interests, like terrorist threats and aggression by hostile powers. Too often, they have tended to be distracted by more fleeting demands on their attention or to subordinate climate concerns to narrow commercial interests.

Biden’s order cuts through all that and signals from the very start of his administration that climate change will guide all of his foreign policy and security decision-making. Saying up front that climate change will be a key organizing principle of America’s international engagement does not magically make other pressures disappear. But it sets clear expectations—domestically, internationally, and across government—that the United States is committed to the fight and won’t stray very far from this objective.

Progressive countries can now look to the United States as an ally and supporter of their own climate efforts. The European Union will be a willing partner, providing a basis for a rejuvenated transatlantic climate alliance or even a reboot of the broader “High Ambition Coalition” that was instrumental in delivering the Paris Agreement. The EU recently adopted its own Climate and Energy Diplomacy Strategy that shares many of Biden’s climate priorities and describes a range of issues that could be addressed in such collaboration—including driving enhanced commitments ahead of the COP26 climate negotiations later this year, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and new investments in high carbon infrastructure, increasing climate finance, aligning climate and security efforts, and strengthening the resilience of vulnerable countries and communities.  

At the same time, the order puts recalcitrant countries on notice that their ability to secure US cooperation in achieving their diplomatic objectives may turn on their climate ambition. And it warns the worst climate scofflaws—for example, Brazil—that they are risking reproach and even sanction if they do not reform their behavior.   

Besides leveraging a broad range of foreign policy tools, Biden’s climate-centered foreign policy is innovative in another way—it is thoughtfully tailored to advance his domestic agenda. In order to be successful over the long run, any big foreign policy initiative must be responsive to domestic priorities and popular concerns. In the past, presidents have sought to do this by hedging their climate ambition. Obama, for instance, pursued an aggressive climate change agenda while simultaneously embracing a contradictory “all of the above” energy strategy.

Biden is taking a very different tack. Rather than trying to balance the perceived trade-offs between climate action and his domestic priorities, Biden is leaning into the synergies between them. He has emphasized that taking bold climate action, both at home and abroad, will create millions of high-wage American jobs, speed the post-pandemic economic recovery, and reduce economic inequality and the disproportionate pollution burdens on fenceline communities. Biden knows that he must bring the world along to avoid climate disaster. He also knows that climate action is in America’s interest regardless of what other countries choose to do.     

It’s long overdue that governments treat climate change as the existential crisis it is and confront it with the same intensity and resolve that they address other threats to their core interests. With Biden putting climate change front and center in his foreign policy and grounding it in his domestic agenda, his executive order finally gives the climate crisis the attention it deserves. 

All in all, not a bad first week of work.