Biden defends foreign policy despite ongoing crises
WASHINGTON—Outgoing President Joe Biden sought to burnish his foreign policy record on Monday and said US adversaries are weaker than when he took office four years ago despite global crises that erupted during his term and remain unresolved.
A week before handing over to President-elect Donald Trump, Biden addressed US diplomats at the State Department and touted his administration’s backing for Ukraine against Russia’s 2022 invasion and for Israel’s wars in the Middle East.
Biden said the United States was “winning the worldwide competition” and would not be surpassed economically by China as had been predicted, while Russia and Iran have been weakened by wars without direct US involvement.
“Compared to four years ago, America is stronger, our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are weaker,” Biden said.
While wars continue to rage in Ukraine and the Middle East, officials hope a deal between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas can be reached before Biden departs the White House on Jan. 20.
Over the past year, the White House announced several times that deals to release hostages held by Hamas were “close” only for negotiations to fail again and again.
Last December, Trump warned that there would be “all hell to pay” in the Middle East if hostages were not freed before he assumed office on Jan. 20.
Biden said negotiators were close to reaching a deal that would free hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip and halt the fighting in the Palestinian enclave to allow a surge of humanitarian aid.
“And so we’re working urgently to close this deal.”
‘War criminal’
Biden has faced criticism for providing Israel with weapons and diplomatic support, since the latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed over 46,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas health ministry.
Protesters shouting “war criminal” greeted Biden outside the State Department on Monday.
Biden said he had helped Israel defeat adversaries including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both backed by Iran.
The US president also hailed Washington’s support for Israel during two Iranian attacks in 2024.
Biden acknowledged that authoritarian states China, Iran, North Korea and Russia were now more closely aligned with one another, but he said that was more “out of weakness than out of strength.”
Ukraine, with US backing, had thwarted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal of wiping the country off the map, Biden said, touting his 2023 visit to Kyiv as the first by a sitting president to a war zone outside the control of US forces.
‘Admission’
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, writing on Telegram, said Biden’s address amounted to an acknowledgment “that US support for Kyiv created the risk of triggering a nuclear confrontation with Russia.”
“Today’s statement by Biden is an admission of a deliberately executed provocation,” Zakharova wrote. “The Biden administration knew it was pushing the world toward the brink and still chose to escalate the conflict.”
Biden defended his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, saying there was nothing adversaries like China and Russia would have liked more than seeing the United States continue to be tied down there for another decade.
