As Israel’s brutal campaign against Hamas in Gaza approached its one-year anniversary, US President Joe Biden declared in his farewell speech to the UN General Assembly that the US could not retreat from the globe. He was referring to the threat of full-scale conflict between Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and Israel.
During his extensive speech, Biden discussed the need to put an end to the violence in the Middle East and the 17-month-old civil war in Sudan. He also emphasized the support that the US and its allies have given to Kyiv since Russia invaded the country in February 2022. Concerns about artificial intelligence’s potential for repression were also brought up by him.
Biden’s address to the international organization provided him with one of his final prominent chances as president to argue for continued strong support for Ukraine, which may be called into question if former President Donald Trump defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in November. In spite of international conflicts, Biden emphasized that he is optimistic about the future.
Biden remarked, “I’ve seen a remarkable sweep of history.” “I know many look at the world today and see difficulties and react with despair but I do not.”
He went on, “When the world acts together, we are stronger than we think.”
As he assumed office, Biden made a commitment to improve US relations with other countries and remove the US from the “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq, which had dominated US foreign policy for the previous 20 years.
About his decision to leave Afghanistan, Biden remarked, “I was determined to end it, and I did,” characterizing it as a “hard decision but the right decision.”
He admitted that during the disorderly withdrawal, it was “accompanied by tragedy,” as hundreds of Afghans and 13 American soldiers perished in a suicide attack.
But his foreign policy legacy may eventually be formed by his administration’s response to two of the largest conflicts in Europe and the Middle East since World War II.
“There will always be forces that pull our countries apart,” Biden stated, rejecting “a desire to retreat from the world and go it alone.”
He said, “Our task, our test, is to make sure that the forces holding us together are stronger than the forces pulling us apart.”
On Monday, the Pentagon declared that it will be adding a modest number of US soldiers to the approximately 40,000 that are now stationed in the Middle East. The White House maintains that there is still time for Israel and Hezbollah to back down and defuse the situation.
Despite the rising violence, Biden stated that diplomacy is the best way to bring about peace, adding that “full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest.”
When Biden spoke to the UN just one year ago, he had a positive outlook on the Middle East. Biden mentioned a “sustainable, integrated Middle East” emerging in the speech.
With the implementation of the Abraham Accords, which Israel had signed during the Trump administration with Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates, economic ties between Israel and several of its Arab neighbors were improving at the time.
A protracted maritime dispute between Israel and Lebanon that had impeded gas exploration in the area was resolved with the assistance of Biden’s team.
And if a deal could be struck, the normalization of negotiations between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be a game-changer for the region.
“I suffer from an oxymoron: Irish optimism,” Biden confided in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their encounter on the fringes of the UN assembly the previous year.
He continued, “If you and I, 10 years ago, were talking about normalisation with Saudi Arabia … I think we’d look at each other like, ‘Who’s been drinking what?'”
Biden’s ambitions for the Middle East collapsed eighteen days later. Over 41,000 Palestinians have been slain in Gaza as a result of the brutal conflict that began when Hamas militants rushed into Israel, murdering 1200 people and seizing over 250 hostages. The conflict also sent the region into a complex downward spiral.
The fight now poses a threat to spread into a war with multiple fronts and permanently damage Biden’s presidency.
As thousands of civilians left southern Lebanon and the dead toll from a huge Israeli bombardment rose to nearly 560, Israel and Hezbollah exchanged strikes once more on Tuesday. This bombardment is the bloodiest since the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006.
Israel has warned people living in southern Lebanon to leave houses and other structures where it believes Hezbollah has secretly stockpiled weapons, threatening “extensive strikes” by the Israeli military against the terrorist organization.
While everything was going on, Hezbollah was launching drones, rockets, and missiles into northern Israel as payback for last week’s strikes that claimed the lives of numerous fighters and a prominent commander. In a sophisticated attack that was widely suspected to have been carried out by Israel, hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah terrorists exploded last week, resulting in dozens more fatalities and hundreds more injuries.
Following Hamas’s outrageous attack on October 7, which ignited the conflict, Israel’s leadership began mounting counterattacks at a time when frustration with Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s continuous firing of drones and missiles across the Israel-Lebanon border was mounting.
Biden reaffirmed his demand that the parties reach a cease-fire and hostage-release agreement, declaring that it was time to “end this war” despite the fact that optimism over such a settlement was dwindling as the fighting continued.
In his speech, Biden urged the West to continue assisting Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. In response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, Biden assisted in organizing an international coalition to provide Ukraine with financial and military support.
“We can’t get tired,” stated Biden. “We cannot look away.”
Despite growing doubts about the cost of the war from certain Republican senators as well as from Trump, Biden has been able to maintain US backing.
In order to enable Ukrainian forces to strike deeper into Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine is pressuring Biden to slacken limitations on the employment of long-range missiles provided by the West.
Zelenskyy hasn’t been able to convince the Pentagon or the White House to relax those limits thus far. The Defense Department has emphasized that Ukraine is already capable of hitting Moscow using drones built in the country, and there is reluctance to consider the strategic ramifications of a missile made in the US possibly hitting the Russian capital.
Putin has threatened to put the US and its NATO allies “at war” with Russia if they permit Ukraine to utilize the long-range missiles.
Zelenskyy will meet separately with Biden and Harris on Thursday in Washington. Additionally, Ukrainian officials were attempting to set up a meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump for this week, but a Trump campaign official stated that it was not going to happen.
Additionally, the president expressed concern about the quick developments in artificial intelligence, especially with regard to misinformation, respect for human life, and potential abuse by authoritarian regimes. “There may well be no greater test of our leadership than how we deal with AI,” he said to the world leaders.
“We must make certain that the awesome capabilities of AI will be used to uplift and empower everyday people, not to give dictators more powerful shackles on the human spirit,” he said.
Later, he met one-on-one with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and participated in an event with other world leaders to emphasize their joint efforts to stop the manufacture and trafficking of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which are responsible for tens of thousands of fatalities in the US alone each year.
Throughout his speech, Biden expressed regret and referenced his first visit to the General Assembly over 50 years ago, as well as passages from Irish poetry.
As he spoke to an audience that included a sizable number of autocratic and non-democratic leaders, Biden cited his choice to resign as a teaching moment.
“Some things are more important than staying in power,” Biden stated. “The most important thing is your people. Never forget that our purpose is to assist the public. Not the other way around.
