Biden says he leaves Trump with a ‘strong hand to play’ in world conflicts

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Monday that his stewardship of US foreign policy has made the US safer and more economically secure, arguing that the President-elect Donald Trump will inherit a nation seen as stronger and more reliable than it was four years ago.

Biden trumpeted his administration’s work to expand NATO and gather allies give Ukraine military aid to fight Russia and strength American chip manufacturing to better compete with China during a wide-ranging speech to reflect on his foreign policy legacy a week before handing over the White House to Trump.

Biden’s case for his achievements will be shadowed and shaped, at least in the short term, by the messy counterfactual that American voters once again turned against Trump and his protectionist worldview. And he will leave office at a turbulent moment for the globe, with a series of conflicts raging.

“Thanks to our administration, the United States is winning the worldwide competition compared to four years ago,” Biden said in his speech at the State Department. “America is stronger. Our alliances are stronger. Our adversaries and competitors are weaker. We have not gone to war to make these things happen.”

The one-time democrat took office in the violence of the worst global pandemic for a century, and his plans to repair alliances strained by four years of Trump’s “America First” worldview were quickly stress-tested by international crises: America’s Chaotic Withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022and Hamas’s brutal 2023 attack on Israel that triggered war in the Middle East.

Biden claimed he lent a firm hand when the world needed it most. He was tested by war, misfortune and miscalculation.

“My administration is leaving the next administration with a very strong hand to play,” Biden said. “America leads again.”

Trump said hours after the remarks that Biden had overseen “a terrible four years” in American foreign policy.

“When you look at what happened over this last four-year period, I think it was the lowest point in the history of our country,” Trump said in a Newsmax interview. “It’s been so bad.”

Chaotic US exit from Afghanistan was an early setback for Biden

As the United States completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Biden fulfilled a campaign promise to decommission America’s Longest War.

But the 20-year conflict ended in a disturbing way: The US-backed Afghan government collapseda horrible bombing killed 13 American troops and 170 others, and thousands of desperate Afghans descended on Kabul’s airport in search of a way out before the last American plane departed over the Hindu Kush.

The Afghanistan debacle was a major setback just eight months into Biden’s presidency, from which he struggled to recover.

“Ending the war was the right thing to do, and I believe history will reflect that,” Biden said. “Critics said that if we ended the war, it would damage our alliances and create threats to our homeland from foreign-directed terrorism out of a safe haven in Afghanistan — neither of which has occurred.”

Biden’s Republican opponents, including Trump, presented it as a signal moment in a failed presidency.

“I will tell you what happened, he was so bad with Afghanistan, it was such a terrible embarrassment, the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country,” Trump said in his lone presidential debate in 2024 with Bidenjust weeks before the Democrat announced that he was end his re-election campaign.

Biden’s legacy in Ukraine may depend on Trump’s approach going forward

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden gathered allies in and outside of Europe to give Ukraine billions in military and economic aid – including more than 100 billion dollars from the USA alone. It allowed Kiev to stay in the fight with the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s much larger and better equipped military.

Biden’s team also coordinated with allies to hit Russia with a steady stream of sanctions aimed at isolating the Kremlin and making Moscow pay an economic price for prosecuting its war.

Biden marveled Monday that Putin believed at the beginning of the war that Russian forces would easily defeat Ukraine in a matter of days. It was an assessment shared by American and European intelligence officials.

Instead, Biden said his administration and its allies have “laid the groundwork” for the Trump administration to help Ukraine reach a moment when it can negotiate a just end to the nearly three-year-old conflict.

“Today, Ukraine remains a free and independent country with the potential for a bright future,” Biden said.

Trump has criticized the war’s cost to American taxpayers and has vowed to bring the conflict to a swift end.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan argued that Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, should consider supporting Ukraine through the prism of a dealmaker.

“Donald Trump has built his identity around deal-making, and the way you make a good deal is with leverage,” Sullivan said in an interview. “Our case publicly and privately to the incoming team is to build the leverage, show the stamina, support Ukraine, and that’s a long way down the road.”

Biden’s Middle East diplomacy shadowed by the destruction of Gaza

In the Middle East, Biden has stood by Israel as it has worked to eradicate Hamas from Gaza. That war spawned another in Lebanon, where Israel has destroyed Iran’s most powerful ally, Hezbollah, even as Israel has launched successful air strikes openly inside Iran for the first time.

The dismantling of Hezbollah, in turn, played a role when Islamist-led rebels last month ousted longtime Syrian leader Bashar Assada brutal part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance.”

“Iran is weaker than it has been in decades,” Biden said.

Biden’s relationship with Israel’s conservative leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been strained by the enormous Palestinian death toll in the fighting – which now stands at more than 46,000 died — and Israel’s blockade of the territory, which has left large parts of Gaza a hell, with access to food and basic healthcare severely limited.

Pro-Palestinian activists have called for an arms embargo on Israel, but US policy has remained largely unchanged. In recent days, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has informed Congress about a planned $8 billion arms sales to Israel.

Aaron David Miller, a former State Department Middle East negotiator, said the approach has put Iran on its heels, but Biden will pay a reputational cost for the destruction of Gaza.

“The administration was either unable or unwilling to create any kind of restraint that normal people would consider significant pressure,” Miller said. “It was beyond Joe Biden’s emotional and political bandwidth to apply the kind of sustained or significant pressure that might have led to a change in Israeli tactics.”

More than 15 months after the Hamas-led attack that led to the war, some 98 hostages remain in Gaza. More than a third of them are presumed dead by the Israeli authorities.

Biden’s Middle East adviser, Brett McGurk, is in the Middle East seeking to hammer out an elusive hostage and cease-fire deal as time runs out on the presidency.

“We are on the verge of a proposal that I laid out in detail months ago finally coming to fruition,” Biden said.

Trump for his part warns that “hell” will be unleashed on Hamas if the hostages are not freed before the inauguration day.

Sullivan declined to comment on Trump’s threats against Hamas, but offered that the two sides agree on the most important thing: getting a deal done.

“Having aligned the outgoing and incoming administrations so that a hostage deal at the earliest possible opportunity is in the American national interest,” he said. “It’s a good thing to have a common message about that, and we’ve been coordinating closely with the incoming team to that end.”