Biden walks off the U.N. stage, leaving behind ‘purgatory’ |
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| President Joe Biden after addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters) |
| President Joe Biden’s final speech from the dais of the U.N. General Assembly may well be remembered for one of his concluding lines. “My fellow leaders, let us never forget some things are more important than staying in power,” he said to a wave of applause from delegates in New York, as he gestured to his decision to bow out of the upcoming presidential election. “It’s your people that matter the most. Never forget, we are here to serve the people, not the other way around.” Biden assumed the role of an elder statesman shuffling off the world stage, offering wisdom and perspective to the assembled heads of state. He wistfully summoned “the remarkable sweep of history” that he’s experienced during more than a half-century in political life — the bloodshed of the Vietnam War, the racism of South Africa’s apartheid regime, the fall of the Soviet Union, the turbulence that followed the attacks of 9/11. “Things can get better,” Biden said, urging his counterparts not to indulge in “despair” at the perilous state of global affairs. “Maybe because of all I’ve seen and all we have done together over the decades, I have hope.” It was a somewhat timid coda for a leader brimming with bravura on the campaign trail four years ago. Biden had vowed to fully “restore” U.S. leadership in the world after the disruptions and anxieties provoked by former president Donald Trump’s ultranationalism. But on Tuesday, he took a more defensive pose, highlighting his work to preserve democracy and to bring resolution to the disastrous wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Biden’s characteristic optimism struck a discordant note amid the frustrations and gloom on show at the United Nations. That tone was set at the start of the day by Secretary General António Guterres, who lamented the absence of the “guardrails” and “red lines” that existed during the Cold War and were supposedly maintained by the United States and the Soviet Union, even at the darkest moments of their rivalry.
The present day may be more volatile, the U.N. chief suggested, as states and rogue actors break international law with growing impunity. The rise of new powers, chiefly China, and the waning of the United States’ “unipolar” moment — when the nation seemed a paramount, peerless superpower — is leading to an uncertain future. “We are moving to a multipolar world, but we are not there yet. We are in a purgatory of polarity,” Guterres said. “In this purgatory, more and more countries are filling the spaces of geopolitical divides, doing whatever they want with no accountability.” Though his aides and allies would argue otherwise, Biden has spent his single term in office stumbling through this purgatory. He started his presidency with grandiose visions of leading democracies against the world’s autocracies. He may exit office in January in a more morally compromised place. He limply yoked his strategy for the Middle East to the oil-rich rulers of Saudi Arabia, after declaring that he would make the kingdom a pariah for its grim human rights record. He is seen by some foreign officials and domestic opponents as the hapless enabler of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, and by a separate set of critics as the knowing enabler of Israel’s devastation of Gaza and a rapidly expanding war in Lebanon. Biden can point, as he did Tuesday, to the relative success of his administration’s efforts to rally Western support for Ukraine — coordinating a robust response with European partners to the Russian invasion and reinvigorating the transatlantic alliance. Biden officials emphasize the subtle, important diplomatic work carried out in recent years, reinforcing allies in Asia (and by extension, U.S. interests) through a “latticework” of strengthened partnerships and new security arrangements. On Tuesday, Biden stressed that he didn’t want to see a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and called for the war in Gaza to end. “Innocent civilians in Gaza are also going through hell. Thousands and thousands killed, including aid workers,” he said. “Too many families dislocated, crowding into tents, facing a dire humanitarian situation. They didn’t ask for this war Hamas started.”
Other speakers at the dais of the General Assembly were notably unimpressed by Biden’s leadership. “Those who appear to be working for a cease-fire onstage continue to send weapons and ammunition to Israel in the background, enabling it to continue its massacres,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, a clear jab at the White House and some European governments. “The Israeli government’s assault has resulted in one of the fastest death rates in recent conflicts, one of the fastest rates of starvation caused by war, the largest cohort of child amputees and unprecedented levels of destruction,” Jordan’s King Abdullah II said. “The world is watching, and history will judge us by the courage we show,” he added in another veiled criticism of Western leaders. “It is not just the future that will hold us accountable. So will the people of the here and now.” To that end, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa justified his government’s decision to press genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice, with the support of numerous other countries but also the direct opposition of the United States. “We South Africans know what apartheid looks like. We lived through it. We suffered and died under it,” Ramaphosa said, nodding to the assessments of human rights groups about the condition of Palestinians living in the occupied territories without many of the same rights as their Israeli neighbors. “We will not remain silent and watch as apartheid is perpetrated against others.” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also decried the war in Gaza while touting the need for Russia and Ukraine to settle their differences diplomatically. He stressed that both parties would have to compromise and that Brazil, along with China, would be happy to help negotiate a peace. It was a tacit repudiation of Biden’s own insistence of indefinite support for Ukraine’s resistance to Russia. As is his wont, Biden turned to an Irish poet during his U.N. swan song. He quoted the famous line from William Butler Yeats — “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” — before saying he sees “a critical distinction in our time: The center has held.” Other statesmen aren’t so sure. In a fiery speech later in the morning, leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned of the rise of far-right demagogues in various parts of the world, the ascent of white supremacy during the American election campaign, the “barbarism” of Israel’s war against Hamas, and the predations of a “global oligarchy” poisoning the earth and deepening social inequity. Petro invoked the American writer Ernest Hemingway: “The bells are tolling not just for you, but for all of human life.” | ||||||||||
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