Joe Biden has sought to defend his foreign policy achievements on the world stage with an address to the United Nations general assembly against a backdrop of three brutal, intractable wars that have stymied world diplomats seeking an end to the bloodshed.
Addressing the assembly hall in New York on Tuesday, Biden took on the mantle of elder statesman as he alternated between a message of hope and a full-throated defense of his record on foreign policy.
Without giving a clear vision of how the wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan might end, he drew on his five decades in government service to exhort leaders to serve their people and find ways to make peace.
“I’ve seen a remarkable sweep of history,” he said. “Things can get better, we should never forget that, I’ve seen that throughout my career.”
Biden first turned his attention to Ukraine, where he once again condemned Vladimir Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion and called for continued support for Kyiv.
“We cannot grow weary,” he said, as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, looked on. “We cannot look away. We will not let up on our support for Ukraine. Not until Ukraine wins a just and durable peace.”
He also said that “Putin’s war has failed at his core aim,” leading to a strategic reordering that strengthened Nato and brought two new countries, Finland and Sweden, into the security pact.
Biden condemned Hamas for its 7 October attack on Israel but also expressed sympathy for the millions of people in Gaza who were “going through hell” amid the ongoing Israeli operation there.
“Now is the time for the parties to finalize the terms, bring the hostages home and secure security for Israel and Gaza free of Hamas’s grip, ease the suffering in Gaza and end this war,” he said to applause.
Addressing the risk of a potential full-scale war in Lebanon, Biden said that a “full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest” and added that “even though the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible.”
But the speech was more about emotions and atmosphere, a kind of diplomatic elegy, than it was a policy brief for a path forward. At one point, he paraphrased the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who after the first world war wrote that “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”.
“I see a critical distinction,” he said. “In our time, the center has held.”
“I know many look at the world today and see difficulties and react with despair, but I do not and I won’t,” Biden said. “As leaders we don’t have the luxury.”
Biden’s vision was delivered amid criticism at the UN and abroad. Shortly after the speech, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, defended continued strikes in Lebanon, claiming that Israel was targeting Hezbollah arms storehouses and urging civilians to distance itself from the Shia militant group.
Taking the stage at the UN after Biden, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused America of continuing to arm Israel so it can continue its “massacre”, while pretending to look for a ceasefire.
He asked Washington, a fellow Nato member, “How long are you going to be able to carry the shame of witnessing this massacre?”, adding that what had happened in Gaza was a great moral collapse. “Countries that have a say over Israel are openly complicit in this massacre,” Erdoğan said.
Biden is said to recognize that he is running out of time to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, which he sees as the main goal for his final months in office.
On Monday, the New York Times reported that many members of Biden’s national security team were exasperated with the Netanyahu. The report said that Biden had held “shouting matches” during phone calls with the prime minister, and that the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had held “frustrating” visits to Jerusalem where he was given private assurances from Netanyahu, only to see him publicly contradict them hours later.
US officials have described frenetic efforts to find a way to de-escalate the growing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where a strike on Tuesday killed six and injured 15 in Dahieh in Beirut’s southern suburbs. That attack came one day after a heavy Israeli bombardment killed nearly 500 people in the country’s deadliest day of conflict since the war in 2006.
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Israeli officials have told reporters that they are seeking “de-escalation through escalation”, driving Hezbollah and its backer Iran to the negotiating table by demonstrating Tel Aviv’s military superiority.
But in remarks on the sidelines of the summit, US officials have voiced doubt that this policy could work, and said they are focused on “reducing tensions … and breaking the cycle of strike-counterstrike”.
“I can’t recall, at least in recent memory, a period in which an escalation or intensification led to a fundamental de-escalation and led to profound stabilization of the situation,” a senior state department official said in a briefing.
The official did not say whether the administration believed Israel was planning to launch a ground invasion. “We obviously do not believe that a ground invasion of Lebanon is going to contribute to reducing tensions in the region,” he said.
At the same time, the official said, the US was constrained by diplomatic relations and protocol considerations with Hezbollah’s main backer, Iran.
“I don’t think we’re going to be talking to the Iranian government anytime soon,” the official said.
A portion of Biden’s speech was dedicated to defending his foreign policy as president. In particular, he reaffirmed his decision to exit Afghanistan 20 years after a US invasion following the terror attacks on 9/11.
The United States’ chaotic withdrawal was marred by the Abbey Gate terrorist attack, where 13 US soldiers and more than 170 Afghan civilians were killed, and led to the Taliban’s return to power just days later.
But Biden said that he had fulfilled a key promise to end the US’s longest war since Vietnam.
“It was a hard decision but the right decision,” Biden said. “Four American presidents had to face that decision. But I was determined not to leave it to a fifth.”
Biden also addressed his “difficult decision” not to seek another term in office but recast his own story as an exhortation against autocracy.
“As much as I love the job, I love my country more,” he said. “I decided after 50 years of public service it’s time for a new generation of leadership to take my nation forward. My fellow leaders, let us never forget some things are more important than staying in power.”