Joe Biden bid farewell to international politics on Tuesday, to which he has dedicated most of his over five decades in politics. He did so on the most transcendental stage that a statesman interested in global affairs can aspire to: the Plenary of the United Nations General Assembly.
His speech, therefore, had a certain sense of closure to a political career in which foreign policy has been his main area of interest, with its highs and lows. Ultimately, it was his former cabinet colleague, Robert Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush and Barack Obama - when Biden was vice president - who wrote of him, "I think he has been wrong on virtually every major foreign policy issue over the past four decades."
Gates included that quote in his memoirs, published exactly a decade ago. No one has asked him whether Biden's reactions to the world's crises in the last ten years have redeemed him from those four decades. However, today, Gates supports the candidate Kamala Harris, as well as his successor under Obama, Chuck Hagel, who is also a Republican, and even one of the Defense Secretaries under Trump, Mark Esper. This seems to indicate that for the former Secretary of Defense, there are worse options than Biden or his designated heir (at least as a candidate), Kamala Harris. Many attendees at the UN General Assembly share that view. Especially the Europeans.
Biden began by saying, "Esteemed leaders: today is the fourth time I have had the great honor of speaking before this Assembly as President of the United States. It will be the last. I have witnessed the enormous movements of History." And he concluded: "The power of the people is immense, and it makes me more optimistic than I have ever been. Since I was first elected to the United States Senate in 1972, every era has its challenges. I saw them when I was young, and I see them today. But we are stronger than we think. We are stronger together than alone. And what people call 'impossible' is just an illusion. Nelson Mandela said: 'It always seems impossible until it's done.' My fellow leaders, there is nothing we are incapable of if we work together. Let's work together."
Coming from a skilled orator like Barack Obama, that closing would have been more impactful. But Biden's message was very clear. Even more so because he supported it with a framework of examples from his political life. Over these five decades, the US and Vietnam have gone from being at war to having a close political, economic, and military relationship. The specter of atomic conflict has almost completely faded. And poverty in the world has experienced the greatest reduction in history.
But Biden could not escape reality. The conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti, and, above all, the Middle East, marked part of his message. Particularly, the escalation of the clashes between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The US President called on an ally, Israel, to halt the military escalation in Lebanon and avoid "widespread war" which, he said, "is not in anyone's interest." Biden insisted that "even though the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible. In fact, it remains the only path to a lasting security system that allows residents of both countries to return to their homes in peace."
Biden said, "Since October 7, we have been trying to prevent a regional war," referring to the message sent by Washington to Tel Aviv after the Hamas attacks that triggered the war, urging it not to repeat the mistakes of the US after 9/11, when it not only invaded Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda was, but also Iraq.
Although he explicitly attributed all responsibility for the conflicts to Hamas and Hezbollah, Biden indirectly urged Israel to show restraint, which Tel Aviv rejects. In fact, and although he did not mention that country, Biden sent a message of distancing. He mentioned the situation in the West Bank twice, where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by settlers and the Israeli Armed Forces since the war in Gaza erupted. He also equated the suffering of the families of hostages taken by Hamas after the terrorist attacks on October 7, which triggered the current war, with that of civilians in Gaza. "They are going through hell," Biden reminded the families of the hostages, before adding that "innocent civilians in Gaza are also going through hell." The US President also called for the creation of a Palestinian state, something the current Israeli government opposes.
The quasi-war between Israel and Hezbollah was a topic touched upon by other heads of state and government. Particularly harsh was the President of Turkey, the Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who described Gaza as "the largest cemetery of children and women in the world," and used the word "genocide" to refer to the actions of the Israeli Armed Forces in the Palestinian territory from which the Hamas terrorists who killed nearly 1,300 people - a third of them civilians - in Israel on October 7 emerged.
Turkey, along with Qatar and Iran, is one of the main supporters of Hamas. Tehran is also the 'brain' behind Hezbollah, the group currently fighting against Israel - although, judging by the news, it would be more accurate to say that Israel is pulverizing them - in Lebanon. Biden did not mention Iran - which was scheduled to speak at the Assembly last night - except to repeat the mantra repeated by all US presidents since George W. Bush that "it will not have atomic bombs." The Iranian President, Massoud Pezeshkian, who spoke in the afternoon, reiterated his country's intention to return to the nuclear agreement signed by Tehran and the international community in 2015, which was broken by Donald Trump. However, Pezeshkian maintained the anti-Israeli rhetoric that has characterized his regime since 1979 and is at the root of the current conflict.
The risk of a large-scale regional war in the Middle East is the main concern of this Assembly. But the paralysis of the UN, fractured between powers that do not speak to each other - China and Russia on one side; the US, Great Britain, and France on the other - and with a power structure that, as Brazilian President Lula da Silva pointed out, resembles that of the world eighty years ago, prevents it from playing a role beyond being a mere debating forum. The UN is what countries want. And each country has a different agenda. A good example of this was Lula himself, who did not even mention in passing the electoral fraud in Venezuela, but did find time to criticize the inclusion of Cuba on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism and to launch a subtle attack on Elon Musk, who has been seen accepting Brazilian content regulation rules for his X social network (formerly Twitter).