Biden says he is leaving Trump with a ‘strong hand to play’ in world conflicts

President Joe Biden said on Monday that his stewardship of American foreign policy has left the US safer and economically more secure, and that President-elect Donald Trump will inherit a country viewed as stronger and more reliable than it was four years ago.

Mr 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 wide-ranging speech to reflect on his foreign policy legacy a week before ceding the White House to Mr Trump.

Mr Biden’s case for his achievements will be shadowed and shaped, at least in the near term, by the messy counterfactual that American voters once again turned to Mr Trump and his protectionist world view.

And he will leave office at a turbulent moment for the globe, with a series of conflicts raging.

“Thanks to our administration, the United States is winning the worldwide competition compared to four years ago,” Mr 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 Mr Trump’s America First world view were quickly stress-tested by international crises: the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and Hamas’ 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war in the Middle East.

Mr Biden said 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,” Mr Biden said. “America is once again leading.”

With the US completing its 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mr 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 Mr Biden’s presidency that he struggled to recover from.

“Ending the war was the right thing to do, and I believe history will reflect that,” Mr Biden said.

Mr Biden’s Republican detractors, including Mr Trump, cast it as a signal moment in a failed presidency.

“I’ll tell you what happened, he was so bad with Afghanistan, it was such a horrible embarrassment, most embarrassing moment in the history of our country,” Mr Trump said in his lone 2024 presidential debate with Mr Biden, just weeks before he announced he was ending his re-election campaign.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr Biden rallied allies in Europe and beyond to provide Ukraine with billions in military and economic assistance,  including more than 100 billion dollars (£82 billion) from the US alone.

That allowed Kyiv to stay in the fight with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vastly bigger and better-equipped military.

Mr Biden said his administration and its allies have “laid the foundation” for the Trump administration to help Ukraine eventually arrive at a moment where it can negotiate a just end to the nearly three-year old conflict.

“Today, Ukraine is still a free and independent country with the potential for a bright future,” Mr Biden said.

Mr Trump has criticised the cost of the war to US taxpayers and has vowed to bring the conflict to a quick end.

In the Middle East, Mr Biden has stood by Israel as it has worked to root out Hamas from Gaza.

That war spawned another in Lebanon, where Israel has mauled Iran’s most powerful ally, Hezbollah, even as Israel has launched successful airstrikes openly inside Iran for the first time.

The degradation of Hezbollah in turn played a role when Islamist-led rebels last month ousted longtime Syrian leader Bashar Assad, a brutal fixture of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance.”

“Iran is weaker than it’s been in decades,” Mr Biden said.

Mr Biden’s relationship with Israel’s conservative leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been strained by the enormous Palestinian death toll in the fighting, now at more than 46,000 dead, and Israel’s blockade of the territory, which has left much of Gaza a hellscape where access to food and basic health care is severely limited.

Mr Trump, for his part, is warning that “all hell” will be unleashed on Hamas if the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza are not freed by Inauguration Day.