Biden says he's leaving Trump with 'strong hand to play' in world conflicts

Associated Press

Washington: President Joe Biden said on Monday that his stewardship of American foreign policy has left the US safer and economically more secure, arguing that Presidentelect Donald Trump will inherit a nation viewed as stronger as 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 wideranging speech to reflect on his foreign policy legacy a week before ceding the White House to Trump. Biden's case for his achievements will be shadowed and shaped, at least in the near term, by the messy counter factual that American voters once again turned to Trump and his protectionist worldview.

And he will leave office at a turbulent moment for the globe, with a series of conflicts raging. "Thanks to our administration, the US 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 one-term 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.

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."Chaotic US exit from Afghanistan was early setback With the US completing its 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden fulfilled a campaign promise to wind down America's longest war.

But the 20-year conflict ended in disquieting fashion the US-backed Afghan government collapsed, a grisly bombing killed 13 US troops and 170 others, and thousands of desperate Afghans descended on Kabul's airport in search of a way out before the final US aircraft departed over the Hindu Kush.The Afghanistan debacle was a major setback just eight months into Biden's presidency that he struggled to recover from.