Washington, DC – United States President Joe Biden has delivered a soaring speech defending his administration’s foreign policy, just days before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office.
Monday’s address, delivered at the State Department, served as a coda for Biden’s four years in office. He had pledged to re-establish US leadership on the global stage, pursue a foreign policy centred on human rights and rally alliances.
“We’re in an inflection point. The post-Cold War era is over. A new era has begun,” Biden said in his speech.
“In these four years, we’ve faced crises that we’ve been tested. We’ve come through those tests stronger, in my view, than we entered those tests.”
Critics, however, have given his administration poor marks in several areas, particularly with regards to US support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Still, the outgoing president sought to drive home a defining message: that the US is more powerful and its enemies weaker than before he entered the White House.
“New challenges will emerge in the years and months ahead, but even so, it’s clear my administration is leaving the next administration with a very strong hand to play,” Biden said.
“We’re leaving them an America with more friends and stronger alliances, whose adversaries are weaker and under pressure – an America who once again is leading, uniting countries, setting the agenda, bringing others together behind our plans and visions.”
Biden spoke just seven days before Trump’s inauguration on January 20.