The whole world waited to see whether Joe Biden would stumble. He was walking to the podium at the UN General Assembly floor to deliver what could be his last foreign policy speech as president. Days before, Biden had an awkward moment when he got mildly confused on stage with President Modi. Incidents like these meant his audience at the UN was perhaps listening for the slip-up, not to what he said – the problem which the Democrats belatedly realised doomed his candidacy.
Biden admitted that this was the “last time” he would address the room. His tone was avuncular. He shied away from the Manichean rhetoric about a fight between democracy and autocracy which has long animated his speeches. Instead, this address seemed to have been written in order to serve as a eulogy for his career in foreign policy. He began recounting his election as a senator in 1972, moving onto his opposition to apartheid, the September 11 attacks and bringing “justice” to Osama Bin Laden. The former chair of the Senate foreign relations committee has always taken pride in his acumen abroad. And he noted with pride that as president he enacted his long-held belief that America should leave Afghanistan. “Painful as it was,” he admitted.
Indeed, he had to defend a record blemished by the fatal evacuation from Kabul, an unbroken stalemate in Ukraine and an uncontrolled Israeli war machine in the Middle East. He said that America’s backing had kept Ukraine free. He called, unconvincingly, for a ceasefire in Gaza. But Israel’s unfolding conflict with Hezbollah hung over his speech as a reminder that more bloodshed was imminent on his watch.
In the face of such threats, Biden called for the UN to remember that its purpose is to secure peace and promote cooperation. He quoted “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” from WB Yeats, whose poems Biden used to recite in the bathroom mirror to overcome his stutter. On the contrary, Biden insisted, the centre can hold. He drew on his decades of experience to encourage his fellow leaders to be optimistic. “Things can get better, we should never forget that,” he said. He told the Assembly that “we cannot grow weary and we cannot look away” from the war in Ukraine.
Despite these directives, Biden’s optimism is not shared by his entire audience. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, painted a dark picture before Biden spoke, castigating wealthy countries for their lack of progress on the green transition. His words were permeated with angst. He cautioned the room that “the current order always feels fixed until it is not”. The Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, went so far as to cast the UN as “empty and paralysed”, with too few women in senior roles and a charter designed for an era with half the present number of countries.
Biden himself has infuriated other leaders by blocking efforts at the UN to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, and reports suggest his White House knows that a ceasefire will not come before he vacates power. His boast that the US will donate mpox vaccines to the developing world will grate against the widespread anger at the West’s vaccine hoarding. The escalation of the conflict in Lebanon would serve as a final blow for those who accuse him of successively failing to prevent war, from Ukraine to Gaza.
How this speech will be remembered depends on the election result in November. Trump would pursue a departure from the international cooperation that Biden now preaches. For all her ambiguity, Harris would probably pursue a continuation of his efforts. Biden will therefore either be remembered as a brief aberration between two terms of America First isolationism, or the Democrats’ first attempt to restore an internationalism which was so damaged during Trump’s presidency.
[See also: Volodymyr Zelensky takes his war to small-town America]
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