My Take | Joe Biden is leaving behind a legacy of ashes
Russia has exposed the limits of Western power while Israel has dragged the West’s global standing through the mud. Meanwhile, a cold war with China will be a lose-lose for everyone
US President Joe Biden tried to use his final address at the United Nations General Assembly this week to defend democracy, the value of alliance and collective security as his legacies.
In truth, his presidency has weakened every one of them, thus he is leaving office in a world much more dangerous than when he entered it. That’s saying a lot when his predecessor was the supposedly much more unreliable and unstable Donald Trump.
Biden declared America is back as the world leader, but most people around the UN chamber, and not a few Americans as well, may read that as ironic rather than triumphal.
A lame-duck presidency can do very little other than try to convince the world that it has done good. That will be very difficult.
Under his leadership, America has committed to supporting two major wars whose outcomes will likely be anything but what US policymakers claim to have been their goals.
In the meantime, he has launched the US inexorably into a cold war redux with China – assuming it’s not turning into a hot war, yet – that’s guaranteed to be a lose-lose for all sides, including bystander nations.
