In the midst of the countdown to leaving the White House, on his last full Monday as president of the United States – he will leave office at noon next Monday – Joe Biden has vindicated his foreign policy of cultivating alliances and relationships with other countries, to ensure that thanks to it, and to the abandonment of the isolationism that Donald Trump practiced in his first term, the country has strengthened its global leadership and is in better conditions to “win the future.” And that the incoming Trump Administration must take advantage of the opportunities that its own has created to continue expanding those advantages.
“We are at a turning point… in these four years a new era has begun,” the US president said in a speech at the State Department. “Thanks to our Administration, the United States is winning the world competition. America is stronger. Our alliances are stronger, our competitors and adversaries are weaker, and we haven’t had to fight a war to achieve it.”
“The United States should take full advantage of the diplomatic and geopolitical opportunities we have created. “Continue collaborating with other countries to face the challenges presented by China, to ensure that Putin’s war ends, that Ukraine achieves a just and lasting peace, that a more stable and integrated Middle East is achieved,” called the outgoing president. Among his recommendations to the future Donald Trump Government: prevent the fall of Bashar Al Assad in Syria from allowing the return of the Islamic State to the country, or preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
His speech at the State Department begins a week of farewell events as head of state, which will include a speech to the nation next Wednesday, to defend his legacy before history decides and before an electorate that bids farewell to him with a enormous skepticism. Polls suggest that, days before his departure, he is the most unpopular outgoing president in recent times: only a quarter of citizens consider that he has been a “good” or “great” president. In 2021, a third had that impression of Donald Trump. In 2017, half of Americans had a positive opinion of Barack Obama’s administration.
The president, who with his departure from the White House closes a political career of more than half a century focused on international relations during his time as senator, and who prides himself on personally knowing a good part of global leaders for years, defended its internationalist policy of strengthening alliances and creating new ones as the best way to shore up the leadership of the United States.
In his first speech on foreign policy as president, in February 2021, Biden announced that the United States was back after Trump’s isolationist period, and noted that the big focus would be China. He ordered the return to the Paris climate agreements, strengthened relations with NATO partners, launched new alliances, such as the Aukus with Australia and the United Kingdom in the Asia Pacific. But just a year later, the Russian invasion of Ukraine destroyed those goals, which would be blown up with the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.
During his term, Biden has been a strong ally of kyiv, to which the United States has sent nearly $183 billion in military assistance since the beginning of the invasion. Faced with growing skepticism among the Republican opposition—and its leader Trump, who assured that once he came to power he would end the conflict within 24 hours—about the usefulness of this aid, the Democrat reiterated time and time again that Washington would hand over everything to Ukraine. whatever he needed, for as long as he needed it. Their argument, then and now, has always been that the defeat of Ukraine would embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin and endanger other European territories, and with them, the national security of the United States.
“Ukraine remains a free and independent country, with the potential for a bright future, and we have laid the foundation so that the next administration can protect the bright future of the Ukrainian people,” he insisted in his speech.
Despite the enormous investment, and having been granting with more or less enthusiasm the requests for weapons that came from kyiv – Abrams tanks, ATACMS defense systems, F-16 fighters – the war remains stagnant, the Ukrainian forces are exhausted, and no It appears that the conflict is close to a conclusion or that no plan is underway to achieve peace imminently.
The war in Gaza has been the other major turning point in its foreign policy. From the first moment the American president, who defines himself as a “Zionist,” decisively supported Israel by sending billions of dollars in weapons. While negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage exchange agreement have received new momentum, and the White House once again expresses optimism about the possibility of an imminent pact between Israel and Hamas, the United States had recently announced a new transfer of arms to its allied country worth 8 billion dollars.
That unconditional support, and his refusal to use military aid as a pressure tool, may have played a fundamental role in the Democratic defeat in the November elections, by alienating the president with the Arab American community – very numerous in the hinge state of Michigan – and earn criticism from the progressive wing of his party.
If Gaza has earned him criticism, it has also been criticized for his management of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Upon his arrival at the White House, he promised to end that war, one of the “endless conflicts” dragged on since the George W Bush era, and assured that the Afghan forces would resist the Taliban push. It was not like that: the speed of the fundamentalist group’s advance took Washington by surprise, which hurriedly evacuated 125,000 people in the midst of chaos that included a suicide attack in which dozens of Afghans and thirteen American soldiers died at the airport in Kabul. Many Afghan allies of the United States were left behind. Afghan women were deprived of the most basic rights.
But Biden recalled yesterday: “I am the first president in decades who does not hand responsibility for a war in Afghanistan to his successor.” “Ending the war there was necessary, and I think history will prove me right,” he defended himself.
Regarding China, Biden has ended up developing a policy similar to that of Trump, who launched a trade war with Beijing. The Democrat has maintained the tariffs imposed by his predecessor, and a vision in which the Asian giant not only represents an economic risk, but also a national security risk. This same Monday, the White House announced new measures to protect its advanced semiconductor industry and prevent China from having access to them. During his mandate he has woven and reinforced a tight network of security alliances in the Asia Pacific, from the Aukus to military agreements with Japan and the Philippines, to a renewal of cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo.
