During the spring of 2020, the Trump administration continued efforts to reduce the ability of individuals to seek asylum in the United States, particularly at its southern border. The administration received temporary authorization from the U.S. Supreme Court to put into effect the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP)—an arrangement that requires non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings—while the administration petitions the Court to reverse a lower court decision enjoining the MPP's implementation. The administration has also sought to implement its asylum cooperative agreement with Guatemala, whereby the United States sends certain non-Guatemalan migrants to Guatemala to apply for asylum there. The legality of this agreement is presently being challenged, and, in March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused Guatemala to stop accepting flights of migrants sent by the U.S. government. Citing COVID-19, the Trump administration itself issued various suspensions of entry into the United States of noncitizens during the spring of 2020, including with respect to asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

On March 26, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the indictment of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, along with fourteen current and former regime officials, on charges mostly related to drug trafficking. Specifically, an indictment unsealed in the Southern District of New York charges Maduro with leading the Venezuelan narcotrafficking group Cártel de Los Soles and conspiring with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People's Army (FARC) guerilla group to “‘flood’ the United States with cocaine” and “us[e] cocaine as a weapon against America.” Although the United States, consistent with international law, normally treats sitting heads of state as immune from prosecution, U.S. Attorney General Barr indicated that Maduro did not qualify for head-of-state immunity because the United States does not recognize him as the president of Venezuela. Instead, the United States and fifty-seven other countries recognize Interim President Juan Guaidó. The indictment may mark a shift in the broader U.S. policy toward Venezuela, which had largely relied on targeted sanctions against key Maduro allies to encourage defection.

Over the last few years, the United States has been pressuring the World Trade Organization (WTO) to reform the Appellate Body by refusing proposals to fill vacancies. On December 10, 2019, the terms of two Appellate Body members expired, leaving one member left for the seven-member body. This has brought new appeals to a standstill, as an appeal from a panel established by the Dispute Settlement Body must be heard by three Appellate Body members. In February of 2020, the United States elaborated on its complaints about the Appellate Body in a report published by the Office of the United States Trade Representative. In the spring of 2020, in response to the continued U.S. resistance to filling vacancies on the Appellate Body, a group of WTO members established an interim arrangement to handle appeals through arbitration. Also in the spring of 2020, the United States described as invalid a recent Appellate Body report regarding a dispute between Canada and the United States, asserting that none of the three persons who issued the report were in fact bona fide Appellate Body members.

The Trump administration released an updated policy on landmine use on January 31, 2020, significantly changing the prior U.S. policy. Whereas previously the United States supported landmine use only on the Korean peninsula, the revised policy now allows for the universal use of “non-persistent” landmines, i.e., those that have self-destruction mechanisms and self-deactivation features. This policy significantly diverges from provisions of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (Ottawa Convention), a treaty to which the United States is not a party but which has widespread international support.

In late 2016, officials at U.S. and Canadian diplomatic posts in Havana, Cuba, began reporting a cluster of symptoms, including nausea, severe headaches, and dizziness, that came to be known as “Havana Syndrome.” The illnesses prompted the departure of U.S. personnel from Havana in 2017, and subsequent cases have been reported among personnel assigned to the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China and elsewhere. In recent months, three reports related to the illnesses and the government's response have become public. A Center for Disease Control (CDC) report examined medical records and produced a case definition. A National Academies for Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) standing committee considered possible causes, including “directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy, . . . chemical exposures, infectious diseases and psychological issues,” and concluded that the symptoms were consistent with RF effects. Additionally, a recently declassified Accountability Review Board (ARB) report criticized the Trump administration's response to the illnesses in Havana. Amid reports of increasing cases, including some occurring in the United States, the Biden administration is attempting to determine the cause of the illness and has committed to support affected personnel.

On February 29, 2020, the United States signed an “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan” with the Taliban. The agreement provides that the United States and its allies will withdraw all forces from Afghanistan in stages over a fourteen-month period and that the Taliban will not allow actors within its controlled territory to attack the United States and its allies. The agreement contains additional provisions with respect to prisoner exchanges, sanctions relief, and future negotiations regarding a permanent ceasefire and broader political settlement that the Taliban will pursue with the government of Afghanistan. On the same day, the United States and Afghanistan issued a Joint Declaration reflecting some, though not all, of the terms of the U.S. agreement with the Taliban. Over the three months following the signing of the U.S. agreement with the Taliban, the parties have implemented some aspects of its terms. But others remain unfulfilled, despite the passage of deadlines.

The Biden administration's foreign policy emphasizes repairing U.S. alliances and returning the United States to a “position of trusted leadership” to counter increasing challenges from Russia and especially China. The U.S. Interim National Security Strategic Guidance (INSSG), released in March 2021, notes that the United States must “contend with the reality that the distribution of power across the world is changing.” It highlights that China, which has “rapidly become more assertive,” is the only country “potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system,” while “Russia remains determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage.” To reaffirm established international norms, the Biden administration has acted both unilaterally and in coordination with long-standing allies to impose sanctions in response to human rights abuses, malicious cyber activity, and election influence. The administration has also taken steps to cement alliances in the Indo-Pacific and with the West.

The Biden administration has undertaken to reset U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, making early moves to break with the Trump administration's policy toward the country on several key fronts. White House officials have shifted the locus of diplomatic contact between the two countries from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who enjoyed a close relationship with the Trump administration, to his father, King Salman. U.S. officials publicly released an intelligence report accusing Prince Mohammed of ordering the 2018 killing of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and levied travel sanctions against seventy-six Saudi nationals in the crown prince's orbit. President Biden has also taken steps to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen's civil war, revoking the terrorist designation assigned to the Houthi rebels in the final days of the Trump administration and initiating a review of U.S. arms sales.

In Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that a country's taking of property from its own nationals does not fall within the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) exception for “rights in property taken in violation of international law.” The case involved a claim that Nazi officials coerced a consortium of three art firms owned by Jewish residents of Germany to sell a collection of “medieval relics and devotional objects known as the Welfenschatz” to Prussia for “approximately one-third of their value.” The plaintiffs—descendants of the members of the consortium—argued that the coerced sale constituted genocide, thus bringing their claim within the FSIA exception. The Supreme Court disagreed, holding that “the expropriation exception is best read as referencing the international law of expropriation rather than of human rights” and that international law does not bar a state's taking of the property of its own nationals. The Court declined to reach Germany's alternative argument that international comity required dismissal of the case, and it vacated and remanded a companion case, Republic of Hungary v. Simon, that also posed the comity question.

On February 1, 2021, the military in Burma overthrew the democratically elected government, declared a one-year state of emergency, and installed Senior General Min Aung Hlaing as the head of government. Since the coup, the military has cracked down on protestors, killing over 800 people and detaining many more. Numerous countries and international organizations, including the United States and the United Nations, have condemned the coup and ensuing violence and called for the restoration of a democratic government. The United States and other countries have also imposed rigorous sanctions on the Burmese military, its officials and affiliated corporations, and social media companies have imposed content restrictions to prevent the spread of pro-military propaganda.

On February 25, 2021, the United States conducted a strike targeting Iranian-backed militia group facilities in Syria. The strike, which came in response to a February 15, 2021 attack on U.S. interests in Iraq, marked the Biden administration's first known exercise of executive war powers. As domestic authority for the strike, President Joseph Biden, Jr. cited his authority under Article II of the U.S. Constitution and did not rely on the 2001 or 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs). For international legal authority, Biden relied on individual self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, stating that Syria was “unwilling or unable” to prevent further attacks on the United States by these non-state actors within its territory. The strikes garnered mixed reactions from Congress, where efforts are underway to repeal or reform extant AUMFs as well as the War Powers Resolution (WPR). The Biden administration is also undertaking a review of current U.S. military policy on the use of force, and during this process, it has prohibited drone strikes outside of conventional battlefields, absent presidential approval.