List of international trips made by the President of the United States

The President and First Lady's private quarters on Air Force One, 1990

Presidential international travel first occurred during the 20th century. The first six presidents to travel went by ship. President Woodrow Wilson spent almost seven months in Europe in the Aftermath of World War I. The first four presidential trips by airplane were the four World War II conferences: Casablanca, Tehran, Yalta (Franklin D. Roosevelt attended), and Potsdam (Harry S. Truman attended).

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first to travel by jet and the first to travel via helicopter. At the end of his term, he went on several "goodwill tours" . President John F. Kennedy had one of the most memorable trips to Europe as his final trip before he was assassinated. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson preferred travel to Asia. Richard Nixon set a number of firsts, in particular China. Jimmy Carter spent a great deal of time in the Middle East and went on the first state visit to Africa. Ronald Reagan had a number of noteworthy state visits, particularly his summit meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

International travel by a sitting President or a President elect has increased dramatically since George H. W. Bush became president in 1989. In 1990 the military version of the Boeing 747, the VC-25, was introduced for the use of the president. The planes have over 4,000 square feet (372 m2) of floor space, a bedroom and a shower, and enough secure communications to allow the plane to be a reasonable place to run the country. The plane is accompanied by a heavy lift aircraft that carries the helicopters and the limousines.

Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have individually visited 74 different countries over their two terms apiece. Together they went to 94 different countries with a combined population of 85% of the world total. President Obama visited 35 countries during his first term in office. As of May 2015, President Obama visited 15 more countries during his second term in office.

Presidential visits of over 10,000 miles (16,093 km) are common. Round the world trips were first done by Johnson and Nixon and have been done by presidents Bush and Clinton. Trips to Europe are almost routine.

It is customary for the first international trip of a Presidency to be to Canada; since 1981 all Presidents save George W. Bush have made Canada their first visit as President.[1]

The trips are color-coded to unite multiple stops on one trip and the majority of stops in one trip. Yellow indicates a trip mostly to Europe, silver is a trip mostly in Asia, orange is a trip mostly to Latin America, and green is a trip mostly to sub-saharan Africa.

Foreign trips of US Presidents: Countries in light blue have not been visited since their exit from the USSR, while those in grey have never hosted a visit by a sitting president.

President Barack Obama

President George W. Bush

George W. Bush pays a surprise visit to Baghdad International Airport in Iraq in 2003.

President George W. Bush made a secret trip to Iraq on Thanksgiving 2003 to dine with the troops. His father had made a similar visit to the U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia just after receiving the new VC-25 planes just before Thanksgiving 1990.

Like President Clinton, President Bush made two separate trips to Sub-Saharan Africa. On one trip he visited three of the poorest countries in the world: Liberia, Rwanda, and Benin.

According to the State Department only two of Bush's overseas presidential visits were deemed state visits. One invitation was by Queen Elizabeth II, which Buckingham Palace claimed was the only state visit from an American president. All the other visits were at the invitation of the prime minister who is not the head of state. The second state visit was to Poland.

On 15–20 November 2006, President Bush made the third round the world presidential flight (after LBJ and Nixon). He went to Russia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

President Bill Clinton

Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin meet on the sidelines of an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe summit in Istanbul in 1999.

President George H. W. Bush

George H. W. Bush riding in a humvee with General Schwarzkopf in Saudi Arabia in 1990.

President Ronald Reagan

Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachov at the first Summit in Geneva in 1985.

President Reagan made 7 trips to continental Europe, 3 to Asia and 1 to South America during his presidency. He is perhaps best remembered for his speeches at the 40th anniversary of the Normandy landings, for his impassioned speech at the Berlin Wall, his summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev, and riding horses with the Queen at Windsor Park.

Reagan's presidency would be transitional in international travel. During his term in office, he ordered the two special mission Boeing 747s that would become the new presidential transport to replace the aging Boeing 707s. Heavy lift aircraft could bring security, limousines, and helicopters. After that time, the president had access to inflight bedrooms and showers, boardrooms, and communication equipment and with refueling virtually unlimited range. Summit meetings would proliferate, and international travel would become more of a constant expectation of the presidency.

President Jimmy Carter

Carter and Liberian President William R. Tolbert, Jr. wave from their motorcade during a visit to Monrovia in 1978.

President Gerald Ford

Ford with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Vladivostok in 1974.

President Ford made the first visit of a sitting president to Japan, and followed it with a trip to the Republic of Korea and the Soviet Union (to attend the Vladivostok Summit). He traveled internationally only his first year in office. He stayed within the US for all of 1976.

President Richard Nixon

Nixon's 1972 visit to China was a groundbreaking trip. Here he is shaking hands with Mao Zedong.

President Lyndon Johnson

Johnson during a 1966 visit to South Vietnam.

President Johnson ended up flying 523,000 miles aboard it during his term as president. In his first two years in office he made only one international trip, which was to Canada. He did all of his other international travel from April 1966 to July 1968, and he left the North American continent only four times.

During his full term, LBJ eschewed Europe in favor of Southeast Asia and Latin America. He is the only president serving during Queen Elizabeth II's reign to have never met her. LBJ went to Germany once briefly for the funeral of Konrad Adenauer.

One of the most unusual international trips in presidential history occurred before Christmas in 1967. The President began the trip by going to the memorial service for Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt, who had disappeared in a swimming accident and was presumed drowned. The White House did not reveal in advance to the press that the President would make the first round-the-world presidential trip. The exhausting trip was 26,959 miles completed in only 112.5 hours (4.7 days). The trip crossed the equator twice, stopped in Travis Air Force Base, Calif., then Honolulu, Pago Pago, Canberra, Melbourne, Vietnam, Karachi and Rome.

President John F. Kennedy

Kennedy speaking at an event in Caracas with Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt in 1961.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Eisenhower in Madrid in 1959 with Spanish leader Francisco Franco.

President Harry S Truman

Truman at the Potsdam conference with Clement Attlee and Joseph Stalin.

After FDR died, Truman attended the Potsdam conference 9 weeks after Germany's unconditional surrender. Nineteen months later he went on state visits in Canada, Mexico and Brazil all within a 6-month period. For the next five years he did not go abroad.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

The "Big Three" Allied leaders (left to right) at Yalta in February, 1945: Winston Churchill, Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin.

Presidential International Trips Pre-Aircraft

Wilson attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Toronto Sun". 17 February 2009. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
  2. ↑ Travels of President Barack Obama U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian
  3. ↑ Travels of President George W. Bush U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  4. ↑ Travels of President Bill Clinton U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  5. ↑ Travels of President George H. W. Bush U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  6. ↑ Travels of President Ronald Reagan U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  7. ↑ Travels of President Jimmy Carter U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  8. ↑ Joseph, Joel (November 4, 2010). "How Daulatpur Nasirabad became Carterpuri". The Times of India. Retrieved October 21, 2013. Daulatpur Nasirabad in Gurgaon was a sleepy nondescript village on the outskirts of Delhi but it found a prominent place on the global map after Carter paid a visit to this village...This village has since then been renamed Carterpuri.
  9. ↑ Travels of President Gerald R. Ford U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  10. ↑ Travels of President Richard M. Nixon U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  11. ↑ Travels of President Lyndon B. Johnson U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  12. ↑ Travels of President John F. Kennedy U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  13. ↑ Travels of President Dwight D. Eisenhower U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  14. ↑ Travels of President Harry S. Truman U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  15. ↑ Travels of President Franklin D. Roosevelt U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  16. ↑ Travels of President Theodore Roosevelt U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  17. ↑ Travels of President William Howard Taft U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  18. ↑ Travels of President Warren G. Harding U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  19. ↑ Travels of President Woodrow Wilson U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  20. ↑ Travels of President Calvin Coolidge U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive
  21. ↑ Travels of President Herbert C. Hoover U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian WebCitation archive

External links

Media related to Presidents of the United States in foreign countries at Wikimedia Commons