Jan. 13 (UPI) — In his last foreign policy speech as president, Joe Biden on Monday made an argument that the United States is better positioned diplomatically now than four years ago.
“I’ve said many times, we are at an inflection point,” Biden said Monday at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., in one of his final major speeches as commander in chief and at an event with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The departing president outlined a number of foreign policy topics including NATO, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war in Ukraine, the Paris Accords, Indo-Pacific alliances as they relate to China, Israel and Palestinian issues, and growing tension on the Korean peninsula.
“Today, I can report to the American people, our alliances are stronger than they’ve been in decades,” he said. “NATO is more capable than it’s ever been. And many more of our allies are paying their fair share.”
The post Cold-War era “is over,” he said, and “a new era has begun.”
Additionally, Biden called for “a stable, more integrated Middle East.”
In his four years in the White House, Biden said of his administration, “we faced crises, we’ve been tested, we’ve come through those tests, stronger in my view, than we entered those tests.” He added that the United States under his administration is “winning the world-wide competition.”
Biden said his administration “restored” America’s leadership on myriad “priorities.”
However, he briefly touched on the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal under his leadership.
“We grieve [for] all 2,461 Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in the longest war in American history,” Biden commented. “And I grieve [for] those brave service members whose lives were lost.”
Echoing a common theme expressed in many of Biden’s past speeches, the president said of America, “we’re the only country on earth founded by an idea” as opposed to geography or geopolitical machinations.
In a sign of U.S. strength and a reason for optimism, more than 75 Americans held hostage overseas, at last count, have been returned to the United States after “complex negotiations,” Biden added.
And Biden said that in the last four years he has conserved “hundreds of millions of acres more than any other president in American history.”
Meanwhile, the war between Israel and Iran’s proxy militias is reportedly on the brink of a cease-fire deal in a proposal that is “finally coming to fruition,” the outgoing president indicated.
On Sunday, Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and on Monday with the emir of Qatar. Biden in his speech called for a “surge” in aid to afflicted Palestinians.
“We’re working urgently to close this deal,” Biden said Monday. And the outgoing administration has tried to “solve problems by diplomacy wherever possible.”
On artificial intelligence, he said, “we are in the lead and we must stay in the lead.” AI has the power, he added, to reshape governments, economies “and entire societies.”
He also called on the global community to continue the transition to clean energy as he took aim at the incoming Trump administration.
“Some are skeptical of the need for clean energy,” Biden said. “They think climate changes isn’t real. They are wrong, they are dead wrong.”
“The clean energy transition is already happening,” he stated, adding also that China is taking steps to “dominate” the industry.
Biden’s view of the world and America’s role in it isn’t shared by all.
The United States is “in a worse geopolitical position today than it was four years ago,” Stephen Wertheim, an historian and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CBS.
According to Wertheim, the United States is currently immersed in “a massive war on the European continent with serious escalation risks; it’s back to bombing the Middle East with no end in sight,” adding that America has entered into a “full-spectrum strategic rivalry with China.”
But on Monday, Biden stated that he’s leaving the Trump administration with a “very strong hand to play.”
“And we’re leaving an America with more friends and stronger alliances, whose adversaries are weaker and under pressure,” he said, adding it’s an America that “once again is leading, uniting countries, setting the agenda, bringing others together behind our plans and visions.”
