In a series of farewell addresses during his final week in office, U.S. President Joe Biden is making the case that he’s left the United States in a much stronger position than he found it. During his four years, the country has far outpaced Europe, left Russia engulfed in quagmire, outperformed China economically, and hung on to its global leadership role in spite of the nation’s internal divisions.
In a speech at the State Department on Monday, Biden declared that “during my presidency, I have increased America’s power in every dimension.” He said that “thanks to our administration, the United States is winning the worldwide competition” and added that “our adversaries and competitors are weaker.” Washington’s No. 1 competitor, China, “will never surpass us,” Biden added.
In a series of farewell addresses during his final week in office, U.S. President Joe Biden is making the case that he’s left the United States in a much stronger position than he found it. During his four years, the country has far outpaced Europe, left Russia engulfed in quagmire, outperformed China economically, and hung on to its global leadership role in spite of the nation’s internal divisions.
In a speech at the State Department on Monday, Biden declared that “during my presidency, I have increased America’s power in every dimension.” He said that “thanks to our administration, the United States is winning the worldwide competition” and added that “our adversaries and competitors are weaker.” Washington’s No. 1 competitor, China, “will never surpass us,” Biden added.
And yet, in what has come to be all too characteristic of Biden, the outgoing president also avoided admitting any errors—though clearly, he’s made his share. In the end, it was this stubbornness that was perhaps the biggest pitfall of Biden’s presidency. (His hubris on foreign policy was aligned with his disastrous insistence on running for a second term even though his faculties were obviously failing at age 82, and despite most of his own party opposing the decision.)
No mistake was more impactful than Biden’s precipitous departure from Afghanistan only half a year into his presidency, a debacle that he never recovered from. Biden insisted that the Taliban wouldn’t simply take over, which they did in just two weeks. And then in subsequent years, right up until this week, Biden and his acolytes continued to insist that there was no better way to leave, though his military advisor had predicted havoc if a small contingent of U.S. troops wasn’t left behind, and the projection of U.S. weakness there was arguably a factor in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
Even at the time, some European diplomats told me that Biden’s ill-conceived withdrawal plan was brazenly unilateralist—that it was not vetted with major U.S. allies such as Britain, France, and Germany, nations that also sacrificed considerable funding and lives in Afghanistan.
It wasn’t the only time that Biden cost himself credibility with pronouncements meant to signal strength and leadership—but which often only led to policy confusion and flip-flopping.
He telegraphed his entire policy on Ukraine by declaring at the outset that Putin wouldn’t have to worry about direct U.S. military involvement, before crossing his own red lines by gradually ratcheting up U.S. military aid. He initially described the Ukraine conflict as a war for democracy and then, without acknowledging the shift, turned it into a war over territorial norms.
Biden repeatedly inflamed relations with Beijing by coming closer than any other president to saying that he would defend Taiwan—only to have his own administration walk those comments back. He often looked ineffectual on the Middle East with what even his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, conceded were many “Lucy and the football” moments—a reference to the Peanuts cartoon—in which Biden repeatedly, and credulously, allowed both Israel and Hamas to endlessly string along negotiations.
When it came to the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, Biden found himself in a state of continual self-contradiction over whether he should use real leverage, such as withholding U.S. weapons, in order to moderate Israeli behavior. He threatened to do so several times—but never did.
As a result, anti-American attitudes in the region are at a level not seen since the Iraq War, Brett Holmgren, the acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told 60 Minutes recently.
Much of the dysfunctional nature of Biden’s foreign policy can be attributed to the fact that he had very few naysayers around him.
During his presidency, the only senior official who might have been considered a peer was John Kerry, Biden’s erstwhile climate envoy. But in other respects—especially in making his longtime aide, Blinken, the secretary of state, and another former junior aide, Jake Sullivan, his national security advisor—Biden mostly hired his old staffers.
“He doesn’t surround himself with peers,” said one Democratic foreign-policy expert.
As a result, Biden developed a false sense of confidence about his record that likely contributed to his decision to run for a second term. Speaking to reporters the day after the 2022 midterm elections—when the Democrats performed far better than pundits had predicted, which was mistakenly ascribed to anti-Trump sentiment—Biden was asked what he might do differently to address voters’ concerns about the economy and the widespread sentiment that the country was moving in the wrong direction.
He replied, “Nothing.”
And in the subsequent two years, Biden rejected all internal advice that he was almost certainly going to lose in 2024, even as his approval ratings barely budged beyond 40 percent or so.
In his speech on Monday—which is to be followed by a final Oval Office address on Wednesday—Biden ticked off what he saw as his greatest triumphs, saying that he’d made the largest investment in clean energy in U.S. history and beefed up the country’s industrial base. He also touted his leadership of an expanded NATO against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine as well as his shoring up of U.S. power in Asia, including in the form of an agreement between Japan and South Korea to expand security.
All this will benefit Biden’s successor, Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, even as the president-elect continues to deride the United States as a “disaster” and a “laughingstock all over the world.”
But Biden showed that he hasn’t learned much about adjusting positions to fit changing facts. He failed to come to any substantive deal with China on climate change or artificial intelligence. He boasted of Iran’s new weakness in the post-Oct. 7, 2023, Middle East without noting that his own diplomatic policies had little to do with it. Three years of failed talks with Tehran over resurrecting the 2015 nuclear pact came to nothing—along with so many other negotiations.
It is a mixed record at best, and a decidedly unfinished one, thanks in part to Biden’s unwillingness to change course.
