Washington, DC – United States President Joe Biden has delivered a soaring speech defending his administration’s foreign policy, just days before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office.
Monday’s address, delivered at the State Department, served as a coda for Biden’s four years in office. He had pledged to re-establish US leadership on the global stage, pursue a foreign policy centred on human rights and rally alliances.
“We’re in an inflection point. The post-Cold War era is over. A new era has begun,” Biden said in his speech.
“In these four years, we’ve faced crises that we’ve been tested. We’ve come through those tests stronger, in my view, than we entered those tests.”
Critics, however, have given his administration poor marks in several areas, particularly with regards to US support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Still, the outgoing president sought to drive home a defining message: that the US is more powerful and its enemies weaker than before he entered the White House.
“New challenges will emerge in the years and months ahead, but even so, it’s clear my administration is leaving the next administration with a very strong hand to play,” Biden said.
“We’re leaving them an America with more friends and stronger alliances, whose adversaries are weaker and under pressure – an America who once again is leading, uniting countries, setting the agenda, bringing others together behind our plans and visions.”
Biden spoke just seven days before Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
The president-elect had condemned Biden’s foreign policy on the campaign trail, accusing the Democrat of weakening the US’s standing abroad while allowing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to fester.
Biden offered a different picture on Monday. His leadership, he argued, had strengthened the US’s technological, economic and strategic position against China, a competing world power.
The Democrat also praised his administration’s role in rallying NATO support for Ukraine, which has faced a full-scale invasion from Russia since February 2022.
He also defended the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which fulfilled an agreement with the Taliban reached under Trump. The withdrawal ended two decades of US presence in the country.
“ When I took office, I had a choice. Ultimately, I saw no reason to keep thousands of servicemen in Afghanistan,” Biden said.
“By ending the war, we have been able to focus our energy and resources on more urgent challenges.”
He added that he was “the first president of decades who’s not leaving a war in Afghanistan to his successor”.
‘Positive spin’
Israel’s war on Gaza perhaps loomed largest over Biden’s speech. As he arrived, the president was greeted by protesters who shouted, “War criminal!”
Critics have charged that Washington’s continued transfer of military aid to Israel has been tantamount to supporting atrocities abroad.
An estimated 46,584 Palestinians have been killed since the war began in October 2023, with United Nations experts warning that Israel’s actions in the Palestinian enclave are “consistent with genocide”.
The US supplied Israel with a record of nearly $17.9bn in military aid during the war’s first year and has thus far refused to leverage continued funding to bring the war to an end.
Experts have speculated that Biden’s “unwavering” support for Israel will be a permanent scar on his legacy.
Still, in Monday’s speech, the US president focused on the ceasefire plan that the UN Security Council approved in June, one that his administration spearheaded.
A final agreement between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas remains elusive. Still, Biden spoke about the latest diplomatic flurry with hope.
“We’re on the brink of a proposal that I laid out months ago finally coming to fruition,” Biden said.
He added that he had recently spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and would soon be speaking to fellow mediator Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
“I’ve learned [over] many years of public service to never, never, never, ever give up,” Biden said. “So many innocent people have been killed, so many communities have been destroyed. Palestinian people deserve peace.”
Responding to the speech, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said Biden was trying to “put positive spin on so many things that are obviously incredibly negative”.
The latest round of talks comes “eight months too late”, Bishara explained.
He described that time span as “eight months of procrastination from the Netanyahu government and complicity from this administration”.
‘Diplomatic and geopolitical opportunities’
All told, Biden’s speech represented a full-circle moment in US politics.
Entering the White House in 2021, Biden pledged to be a counterpoint to the isolationist and mercurial foreign-policy platform of Trump’s first term.
Leaving in 2025, he appealed to the incoming second Trump administration to avoid returning to the policies of the past.
He touted his own efforts to combat climate change, including by rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, an international treaty to limit carbon emissions.
Trump had previously withdrawn from the accord in 2020. As his second term approaches, his incoming administration is expected to do so again, as part of his broader pledge to de-regulate the US energy sector. Biden took a jab at those plans in Monday’s speech.
“I know some in the incoming administration are sceptical about the need for clean energy. They don’t even believe climate change is real,” he said.
“I think they come from a different century. They’re wrong. They are dead wrong. It’s the single greatest existential threat to humanity.”
Biden also sought to strike another contrast with Trump by touting US alliances.
“Compared to four years ago, America is stronger. Our alliances are stronger. Our adversaries and competitors are weaker. We have not gone to war to make these things happen,” Biden said.
“We’ve increased our diplomatic power, creating more allies than the United States has ever had in the history of our nation.”
His remarks served as a foil to recent comments from Trump. While Biden played up “strengthened partnerships all across the Americas”, Trump has pledged to impose sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico. He also has called to seize control of the Panama Canal from Panama.
Biden also praised renewed alliances in the Indo-Pacific region, including with regional allies like Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. And Biden used his speech to underscore the importance of the NATO alliance, despite Trump repeatedly floating the possibility of withdrawal.
“The United States should take full advantage of the diplomatic and geopolitical opportunities we’ve created,” Biden said.
He advised the US to “keep bringing countries together to deal with challenges posed by China, make sure [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s war ends and, lastly, capitalise on a new moment for a more stable, integrated Middle East”.