Speaking as much to the history books as to the civil servants gathered at the State Department on Monday afternoon, President Joe Biden said U.S. foreign policy during his term had put the United States and its allies on a stronger footing, another effort to use his final days in office to burnish his presidential legacy.
The nearly 30-minute speech touched on dozens of issues on nearly every continent, from fraying alliances Biden said he encountered after he took office to recent Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks that he expressed optimism about as he makes his exit. Biden said he had sought at nearly every turn to have the United States lead alliances on global issues — a rebuke, if oblique, to the “America First” agenda of Donald Trump, who will begin his second term in the White House on Monday.
“My administration is leaving the next administration with a very strong hand to play,” Biden said. “And we’re leaving them an America with more friends and stronger alliances, whose adversaries are weak and under pressure — an America who once again is leading.”
Biden spoke just days before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, which will probably herald a sharp change in U.S. foreign policy; the president-elect has already created a stir by talking about expanding U.S. sovereignty to Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. Biden’s remarks seemed aimed in part at declaring that he is leaving the United States in strong shape before whatever turmoil the second Trump era brings.
This week marks the last of what has been a months-long effort by Biden to highlight his handling of issues at home and abroad, and rebut critics who say his party’s defeat in November was a rebuke of his record. What was probably his final speech on foreign policy as an elected official, after 50 years in the public arena, comes a month after an economic address that also sought to shape history’s perception of his record.
Biden is scheduled to deliver a broader farewell address to the nation Wednesday night, speaking from an Oval Office that will shortly be occupied by a man he has declared unfit for the presidency.
Biden has faced criticism for the United States’ turbulent withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 — although it was Trump who first agreed to the U.S. departure — and his unwavering embrace of Israel’s war in Gaza, while earning praise for rebuilding coalitions against Russia and China. In Monday’s remarks, Biden said his diplomatic efforts and dealings with foreign leaders had advanced the United States’ values and aims.
Biden has spent a large chunk of his five-decade career focused on foreign policy, including a dozen years as chairman or ranking Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As vice president, Biden played a significant role in President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and he has frequently touted his deep understanding of global issues as well as his close relationships with leaders around the world.
The president said his report card shows the United States with more allies than at any point in its history, adding that this helped him rally the world and strengthen NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
“When Putin invaded Ukraine, he thought he’d conquer Kyiv in a few days. But the truth is, since that war began, I’m the one that stood in the center of Kyiv, not him,” Biden said, referring to a cloak-and-dagger trip he took to the Ukrainian capital in 2023 in the middle of the full-scale Russian invasion.
Biden also said he was optimistic that a deal for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was imminent. “We’re on the brink of a proposal that I laid out in detail months ago finally coming to fruition,” he said.
The White House has said several times previously that an Israel-Hamas ceasefire is within reach, only to see the talks collapse amid mutual blame. But officials say this time is different.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday that Biden officials have coordinated with Trump’s incoming team to present a united message to Israel and Hamas. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s pick for Middle East envoy, has been in Qatar for much of the past week for the negotiations, and he visited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Biden negotiator Brett McGurk over the weekend.
Israeli and U.S. officials indicated Monday that virtually all outstanding issues have been resolved: from how many hostages will be released — and when — to how many Palestinian prisoners will be freed and whether Israeli troops will remain in Gaza.
The extent of the Israeli military’s continued presence in the Netzarim Corridor, an east-west passage dividing the enclave, remained unclear Monday. Israel has agreed that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians who have fled Israel’s bombardment in the south of Gaza can return to their homes in the north as long as unspecified security measures are in place.
While the administration has offered similar expressions of optimism in the past, this time the warring parties seem to concur that a deal is near. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said at a news conference Monday that there is “progress in the negotiations.” Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official, agreed there had been “significant progress” in the talks over a final draft agreement presented by the mediators — Qatar, Egypt and the United States.
“We are so close,” Naim said in a message to The Washington Post.
At the State Department on Monday, Biden also defended his decision to end the war in Afghanistan during the first year of his presidency, a move that became highly controversial, especially after 13 U.S. service members and about 170 Afghans died in a suicide bomb attack outside Kabul’s airport.
Pentagon officials had warned that ending U.S. involvement in Afghanistan too quickly could cause the situation in the country to unravel. As the United States’ presence dwindled, scenes of chaos in Afghanistan spread around the world, including of people plummeting from planes in a desperate attempt to flee the country.
Biden has said the deaths were a tragedy but has stood by his decision to end a 20-year war. On Monday, Biden noted that he was the only president in that span who did not hand off the messy war to his successor, saying history would support his judgment that the benefits of ending the war outweighed the costs.
“In my view, it was time to end the war and bring our troops home, and we did,” he said. “We grieve all of the 2,461 Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan. … Ending the war was the right thing to do, and I believe history will reflect that.”
As he has made the case for his legacy in recent months, Biden has been at times contemplative and at times combative.
On Friday, during a back-and forth with reporters following a speech on the economy, the president was pensive about his historic decision to drop out of the presidential race last summer amid concerns by fellow Democrats that he was too old to serve another four years. Although he withdrew, Biden said, he remained confident that “he would have beaten Trump” if he had remained atop the ticket.
“I thought it was important to unify the party,” Biden said when asked if he regretted ending his reelection bid. “Even though I thought I could win again, it was always better to unify the party. And I had the greatest honor in my life to be president of the United States, but I didn’t want to be the one who caused a party that wasn’t unified to lose an election. And that’s why I stepped aside.”
Still, his resentments have at times seeped through, reflecting the defiance of a man whom Democrats two years ago were hailing as the most consequential president in recent memory, only to then push him out of the race after a stumbling debate performance. Two months ago, Biden saw his chosen successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, lose decisively to Trump.
Biden’s supporters argue that history will render a more favorable verdict to Biden than his contemporaries have. Other presidents, such as Harry S. Truman and Jimmy Carter, whom Biden eulogized last week, were viewed far more favorably decades later than when they left the White House. Biden and his advisers say the achievements of his presidency will not be fully appreciated for years, when the projects funded by the bills he pushed through Congress will come to fruition.
But for now, Biden faces the reality that the White House will shortly be occupied by a man who has blasted both his domestic and foreign policy, and vowed to overturn them in virtually every way possible. Given that, Biden has sought to use his final days in office to offer the most robust defense he can, with at least one eye on history.
On foreign policy, where Trump has generally promoted a more isolationist approach, Biden says it is critical that the United States use its might to advance freedom and democracy, and to prevent autocrats and other bad actors from gaining too much sway on the world stage.
“I’ll put it this way: If we’re not leading the world, who does?” he said at the Brookings Institution last month. “Not a joke. I’m not being a wise guy. If we do not lead the world, what nation leads the world? Who pulls Europe together? Who tries to pull the Middle East together? … What do we do in Africa?”
