Trump May Find Things to Like About Biden’s ‘Horrible’ Foreign Policy

President-elect Donald J. Trump comes to office with a view of America’s place in the world that is dramatically different from his predecessor’s.

Branding President Biden’s foreign policy as “historically horrible,” Mr. Trump is vowing to reinstate an America First approach that in his first term swept away years of policy consensus and shook U.S. alliances around the world.

He wants friendly relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, may slash U.S. support for Ukraine and has threatened to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He admires foreign autocrats and shows little interest in Mr. Biden’s goal of championing democracy abroad. He is hostile to international organizations and treaties including the United Nations and the Paris climate accord.

But amid the many areas of potential disruption, Mr. Trump will also find plenty of things to like in Mr. Biden’s policies. Beyond the glaring exceptions of Europe and his plans for Russia and Ukraine, Mr. Trump’s initial approach could bear a surprising resemblance to the Biden status quo.

One reason is that abrupt foreign policy swerves are rare and difficult to execute, analysts say. America’s military, economic and political power tends to provide a fairly fixed amount of leverage over other countries. Pressure from allies, Congress and the federal bureaucracy push commanders-in-chief toward consensus views.

“There tends to be more continuity between administrations of different parties — even administrations of very different styles, like Trump and Biden — than the casual observer might expect,” said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “We tend to focus on the big differences.”