Joe Biden gave a somber farewell address to the United Nations on Tuesday, using his own decision to drop out of the US presidential election to warn of the dangers of autocrats around the globe refusing to quit.
“My fellow leaders, let us never forget, some things are more important than staying in power,” Biden said to applause in his final speech at the UN General Assembly in New York.
The 81-year-old exhorted world leaders to stand up for democracy in the face of spiraling turmoil and conflict, urging support for Ukraine and pushing for peace in the Middle East.
But with six weeks until a vote that could bring the isolationist and election-denying Donald Trump back to the White House, Biden closed his speech by drawing lessons from his own life.
“This summer, I faced a decision whether to seek a second term as president. It was a difficult decision. Being president has been the honor of my life, there’s so much more I want to get done,” Biden said.
“As much as I love the job, I love my country more. I decided after 50 years of public service it’s time for a new generation of leadership to take my nation forward,” he added.
“It’s your people that matter the most.”
SWEEP OF HISTORY
Biden quit the White House race in July after a disastrous TV debate against Trump fueled concerns about his mental acuity, and he has endorsed his vice president Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.
Countries around the world are now nervously watching the knife-edge November 5 US election amid fears that a Trump victory would mark a return of his hardline foreign policy.
Biden’s speech marked an attempt to burnish his own legacy, while effectively urging other world leaders to protect it from being reversed by the Republican if he wins.
He said he’d seen a “remarkable sweep of history” during five decades of public service and, as the world reels from a series of crises, “things can get better, we should never forget that.”
Reflecting on the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 to end his country’s two decades of involvement, Biden said he thought of the US troops killed by a bomb during the pull-out “every single day.”
The US president, who often talks about his family’s Irish roots, also returned to many familiar themes from his presidency, quoting the Irish poet W.B. Yeats’s line about how the “center cannot hold” while insisting it can.
Biden even raised a laugh from the assembled world leaders when he joked that “I know that I look like I’m only 40.”
For all the lofty themes, Biden’s speech offered few details on how to solve the foreign policy issues that either Trump or Harris will have to deal with.
CRISIS AND UNCERTAINTY
He warned against a “full-scale war” in Lebanon without saying how to avoid it, after Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah that killed at least 558 people.
Biden’s prized goal of a ceasefire in the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas meanwhile looks further off than ever.
On Ukraine Biden was firmer, saying that “Putin’s war has failed” in Ukraine and warned that Kyiv’s allies “cannot grow weary” in their support.
He is due to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — who was in the hall at the UN to watch Biden’s speech — at the White House for talks on Thursday.
During his speech Biden also pushed the importance of US alliances that he has tried to bolster after the Trump years — during which the Republican repeatedly threw long-standing US ties into question.
Biden held a joint event on tackling the fentanyl trade with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, met UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and was due to give a speech on climate.
Biden’s UN swan song comes amid a wider attempt to “Trump-proof” his legacy in his last four months in power.
He himself noted that he “came to the presidency at another moment of crisis and uncertainty,” just days after pro-Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to try to stop lawmakers certifying Biden’s election victory.
Trump still falsely claims he won the 2020 US presidential election and has repeatedly refused to say he would accept the result if Harris wins this time.
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