By Andrea Shalal, Simon Lewis and Daphne Psaledakis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Outgoing President Joe Biden sought to burnish his foreign policy record on Monday and said U.S. adversaries are weaker than when he took office four years ago despite global crises that remain unresolved.
A week before handing over to President-elect Donald Trump, Biden addressed U.S. 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 U.S. involvement.
“Compared to four years ago, America is stronger, our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are weaker,” Biden said. “We have not gone to war to make these things happen.”
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.
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.
“So many innocent people have been killed, so many communities have been destroyed. Palestinian people deserve peace, a right to determine their own futures. Israel deserves peace and real security. The hostages and their families deserve to be reunited,” Biden said. “And so we’re working urgently to close this deal.”
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 local health ministry, while also drawing accusations of genocide in a World Court case brought by South Africa and of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. Israel denies the allegations. The assault has displaced nearly Gaza’s entire 2.3 million population and drawn the concern of the world’s main hunger monitor.
Protesters shouting “war criminal” greeted Biden outside the State Department on Monday, some with signs and some throwing red liquid intended to look like blood.
Biden said he had helped Israel defeat adversaries like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both backed by Iran. The U.S. president also hailed Washington’s support for Israel during two Iranian attacks in 2024.
“All told, Iran is weaker than it’s been in decades,” he added, noting the collapse of the Syrian Assad government. “There’s no question that our actions contributed significantly.”
AUTHORITARIAN ALLIANCE
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 U.S. 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 U.S. forces.
“When Putin invaded Ukraine, he thought he (could) conquer Kyiv in a matter of days. Truth is, since that war began, I’m the only one that stood in the center of Kyiv, not him,” Biden said.
Biden defended his decision to withdraw U.S. 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.
Biden said when he entered the White House, experts predicted it was inevitable that China would surpass the United States in economic terms. Now, he predicted, that will never happen. He said the U.S. economy was moving forward, but there was still work to do.
“Now, make no mistake, there are serious challenges the United States must continue to deal with,” Biden said, including in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. He said the Biden administration was leaving the next administration “a very strong hand to play.”
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, Simon Lewis, Daphne Psaledakis, Kanishka Singh and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Howard Goller)
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