华盛顿——总统乔·拜登过去的一周，他发现自己在寻找一个外交政策的甜蜜点:在对四年的特朗普主义进行尖锐的大转弯和小心翼翼地接近现实世界之间。

最近几天，拜登对俄罗斯实施了新的制裁，宣布他将从俄罗斯撤出所有美国军队阿富汗在不到五个月的时间里，他们放弃了大幅提高难民接纳上限的竞选承诺。

拜登在解释他从阿富汗撤军的决定时说:“你知道，从长远来看，如果我们在未来20年而不是最后20年作战，我们的对手和竞争对手将会更加强大。”这也概括了他最高的外交政策希望。

然而，正如过去一周所显示的那样，拜登发现，当谈到艰难的治国之道时，实用主义的拖累可能会减缓向大局抱负的冲刺。

首先是拜登宣布，他将在引发美国最长冲突的9.11袭击20周年之际结束阿富汗的“永远的战争”。

拜登长期以来一直对美国在阿富汗的战略持怀疑态度，他正着手实现他的前三任前任发誓要实现但从未实现的目标。

拜登竞选时承诺结束战争——前总统唐纳德·特朗普为此设定了5月1日的最后期限。不过，最终拜登说他会让美国人离开，但他不会在前任的时间表下“仓促”撤退。相反，他呼吁延长一个月的退出时间，尽管共和党人和一些民主党人批评退出是不明智的。

丽莎·柯蒂斯(Lisa Curtis)曾在特朗普政府中担任国家安全委员会(National Security Council)南亚和中亚事务高级主任，她说，拜登今年结束战争的愿望失败了，因为美国实际上已经用大约2500人的兵力调整了美国的存在。她指出，这并不便宜，但这是防止阿富汗再次成为恐怖分子避风港的相对适中的成本。

一名美国军人在阿富汗的战斗中丧生已经一年多了。柯蒂斯认为，由于美军的存在相对较少，美国可以在世界上一个危险的地区保持重要的情报立足点，拜登的中情局局长威廉·伯恩斯承认，美国计划的撤军可能会削弱这一点。

拜登在过去一周对俄罗斯的态度中也表现出推拉式的校准。

总统因网络攻击和干涉2020年选举对莫斯科实施了新的制裁，驱逐了10名俄罗斯外交官，并通过禁止美国金融机构购买俄罗斯债券来打击莫斯科的借款能力。

但拜登在2月份宣布结束美国对弗拉基米尔·普京“翻身”的日子，同时暗示他对俄罗斯总统越来越强硬，并声称他希望与他建立“稳定、可预测的”关系。总统还建议与普京举行夏季峰会。

拜登说，在制裁公开宣布的两天前，他在周二的电话中向普京明确表示，他本可以对俄罗斯采取更强硬的措施。

拜登说:“我和普京总统都清楚，我们可以走得更远，但我选择不这样做。”。“我选择了相称。”

过去一周，拜登在难民接纳问题上也采取了新的步骤，表明政府努力应对这个问题令人担忧的政治。总统发表了一份紧急声明，称特朗普为今年设定的15，000名难民入境限额“仍然是出于人道主义考虑，否则符合国家利益”。

此举标志着拜登的竞选承诺发生了戏剧性的变化，他承诺将难民人数限制提高到12.5万，此后每年至少提高到9.5万。与此同时，拜登政府正在努力应对来自萨尔瓦多、危地马拉和洪都拉斯的孤身年轻移民激增的问题。

在民主党议员铺天盖地的批评之后，白宫在几个小时内就在周五做出了快速的路线调整。它表示，拜登下月将提高特朗普设定的历史最低难民上限——但可能甚至不会达到2月份提交给国会的一项计划中的62500人的水平。实际录取人数预计接近15000人。

在拜登政府做出让步之前，特朗普强硬移民政策的设计师斯蒂芬·米勒(Stephen Miller)在一条推特上为拜登的举动欢呼，这条推特揭露了这个问题的政治影响。

米勒在推特上写道:“这反映了拜登团队的认识，即如果共和党把问题放在首位，边境洪水将导致创纪录的中期损失。”。

拜登多年来一直表现出在外交政策问题上与他的政党唱反调的意愿。作为副总统，他经常发现自己与巴拉克·奥巴马总统的一些外交政策顾问不同步。

前国防部长罗伯特·盖茨(Robert Gates)在回忆录中写道，拜登“在过去40年里，几乎在每一个重大外交政策和国家安全问题上都是错误的”。在奥巴马任职初期，斯坦利·麦克克里斯托将军公开表示，拜登敦促总统在阿富汗集中精力进行较小规模的反恐努力，而军事领导人则敦促增兵，这是“短视的”。

当拜登希望在总统任期的头几个月在外交政策上树立自己的标志时，奥巴马世界的其他人说，总统和他的团队在早期展示了一个雄心勃勃的目标。

迈克尔·麦克福尔(Michael McFaul)在奥巴马执政期间担任美国驻俄罗斯大使，他认为拜登的团队迈出了独特的一步，在政府被要求这样做的几个月前，于3月份发布了临时国家安全战略指导。麦克法尔说，早期的指导向全球发出了一个信息，即他们认真对待与过去四年的决裂。

“他们对自己的外交政策有更大的野心，”麦克福尔说，他现在是斯坦福大学弗里曼·斯波格利国际研究所的主任。"我想不出有哪个政府以前做过这种事。"

On foreign policy decisions, Biden faces drag of pragmatism

WASHINGTON -- PresidentJoe Bidenthis past week found himself in search of a foreign policy sweet spot: somewhere between pulling a screeching U-turn on four years of Trumpism and cautiously approaching the world as it is.

In recent days, Biden has piled new sanctions on Russia, announced he would withdraw all U.S. troops fromAfghanistanin less than five months and backed away from a campaign promise to sharply raise refugee admission caps.

“You know, we’ll be much more formidable to our adversaries and competitors over the long term if we fight the battles for the next 20 years, not the last 20,” Biden said in an explanation of his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan that also summed up his topline foreign policy hopes.

Yet, as this past week has shown, Biden is finding that when it comes to the painstaking process of statecraft, the drag of pragmatism can slow the sprint toward big-picture aspirations.

First there was Biden's announcement that he would end the “forever war” in Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. that triggered America’s longest conflict.

Biden, long a skeptic of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, is setting out to do what his last three predecessors vowed to accomplish but were never able to deliver.

Biden campaigned on the promise to end the war — and former President Donald Trump set a May 1 deadline to do just that. In the end, though, Biden said he’ll get Americans out, but he won’t beat a “hasty” retreat under his predecessor's timeline. Instead, he called for a monthslong exit ramp even as Republicans — and a few Democrats — criticized the withdrawal as ill-advised.

Lisa Curtis, who served as National Security Council senior director for South and Central Asia in the Trump administration, said lost in Biden’s desire to end the war this year is that the U.S. had effectively right-sized the American presence with roughly 2,500 troops. It’s not cheap, she noted, but it's a relatively modest cost to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a terrorist safe haven.

It’s been more than a year since an American service member has been killed in combat in Afghanistan. Curtis argued that with the relatively modest troop presence, the U.S. could maintain a crucial intelligence foothold in a dangerous part of the world, something that Biden’s CIA director, William Burns, acknowledged could be diminished by the planned U.S. withdrawal.

Biden's push-pull calibrations were also evident this past week in his approach to Russia.

The president levied new sanctions on Moscow for cyberattacks and interference in the 2020 election, expelling 10 Russian diplomats and targeting Moscow’s ability to borrow money by prohibiting U.S. financial institutions from buying Russian bonds.

But Biden, who in February had declared an end to the days of the U.S. “rolling over” to Vladimir Putin, simultaneously suggested that he was getting tough on the Russian president and asserted that he wants a “stable, predictable” relationship with him. The president also suggested a summer summit with Putin.

Biden said he made clear to Putin during a phone call on Tuesday, two days before the sanctions were publicly announced, that he could have been much tougher on the Russians.

“I was clear with President Putin that we could have gone further, but I chose not to do so,” Biden said. “I chose to be proportionate.”

The past week also brought new steps from Biden on refugee admissions that showed the administration's efforts to navigate the fraught politics of the issue. The president issued an emergency declaration stating that the limit of 15,000 refugee admissions set by Trump for this year “remains justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest.”

The move marked a dramatic departure from Biden’s campaign promise to raise the refugee limit to 125,000 and then to at least 95,000 annually after that. It came as the Biden administration is struggling to deal with a sharp increase in unaccompanied young migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras arriving at the border.

After an avalanche of criticism from Democratic lawmakers, the White House within hours made a quick course correction on Friday. It said Biden next month would increase the historically low cap on refugees set by Trump — but probably not even to the 62,500 level that was in a plan submitted to Congress in February. The number actually admitted is expected to be closer to 15,000.

Before the Biden administration did its walk-back, Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, cheered Biden’s move in a tweet that laid bare the political ramifications of the issue.

“This reflects Team Biden’s awareness that the border flood will cause record midterm losses (asterisk)if(asterisk) GOP keeps issue front & center,” Miller tweeted.

Biden over the years has displayed a willingness to cut against his party's grain at times on foreign policy matters. As vice president, he frequently found himself out of sync with some of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in his memoir, wrote that Biden had been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Early in Obama’s tenure, Gen. Stanley McCrystal publicly suggested Biden was “shortsighted” in urging the president to focus on a smaller counterterrorism effort in Afghanistan while military leaders were urging a troop buildup.

As Biden looks to lay down his own markers on foreign policy in the opening months of his presidency, others in Obama world say the president and his team have shown an ambitious reach in the early going.

Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia during the Obama years, credits Biden’s team for taking a unique step by issuing interim national security strategic guidance in March, months before the administration was required to do so. The early guidance sent a message around the globe that they’re serious about breaking from the past four years, McFaul said.

“They have a much bigger ambition for their foreign policy,” said McFaul, now director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “I cannot think of an administration that has ever done that before.”