President Biden said Monday that his stewardship of American foreign policy has left the US safer and economically more secure, arguing that President-elect Trump will inherit a nation viewed as stronger and more reliable than it was four years ago. Biden trumpeted his administration's work on expanding NATO, rallying allies to provide Ukraine with military aid to fight Russia, and bolstering American chip manufacturing to better compete with China during a wide-ranging speech reflecting on his foreign policy legacy a week before ceding the White House to Trump, the AP reports.
Biden's case for his achievements will be shadowed and shaped, at least in the near term, by the messy counterfactual that American voters once again turned to Trump and his protectionist worldview. And he will leave office at a turbulent moment, 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 address 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 Democrat took office in the throes of the worst global pandemic in 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: the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and Hamas' brutal 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war in the Middle East. Biden argued that he provided a steady hand when the world needed it most, per the AP. He was tested by war, calamity, and miscalculation. "My administration is leaving the next administration with a very strong hand to play," Biden said. "America is once again leading."
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