Biden’s final UN speech will be a farewell defense of his legacy

NEW YORK – President Joe Biden will seek to cement his legacy on the world stage and secure his vision of a strong U.S. engagement in the world when he addresses the U.N. General Assembly for the last time Tuesday before leaving office.

With the unresolved wars in Ukraine and Gaza and his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, locked in a race with his hand-picked successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, the speech will be Biden’s last chance to make a convincing case for his worldview before the November election.

Biden, 81, arrives at the annual gathering of world leaders in New York as a “lame duck” president, having dropped out of the race days after a NATO summit at which he failed to prove he could save his candidacy.

Now the president will have a chance to redeem himself, saying the Biden-Harris administration’s focus on revitalizing alliances with the U.S. has made the country safer and deserves the reward of four more years of Democratic leadership.

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“This speech can be the foundation for the actions this country needs to take to protect our national security and the principles and values a president needs to stand for,” former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in an interview.

“He will essentially be setting the agenda for Kamala Harris’ presidential term,” Panetta told USA TODAY.

Biden’s argument is the opposite of Trump’s. The former Republican president insists that conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine would not have erupted had voters not given him a boost. He has promised to prevent new foreign entanglements if voters give him a second chance.

Biden’s allies have vehemently rejected the claims. Former undersecretary of state for political affairs Victoria Nuland said in an interview that Trump “did nothing” to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin while he was in power.

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“All the seeds of the current conflicts were sown during the Trump administration, and Trump is directly responsible for things that did not happen during his administration but encouraged both Putin and Hamas,” she said.

Harris’ views are similar to Biden’s. As vice president, she argued that threats to national security and economic prosperity will only grow as America isolates itself from its allies.

The vice president will not be in New York for a diplomatic conference. He leaves that moment entirely to Biden.

“I’m sure the speech will be a legacy speech, designed to defend his accomplishments in their entirety,” said John Bolton, who served as U.N. ambassador to George W. Bush. “It will be a recitation of what he sees as his accomplishments. Whether that helps Harris or not, I don’t know.”

Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who is not endorsing any major party candidate this year, expressed doubt that Americans would pay attention.

Middle East Threatens to Explode at UN Meeting

As the president prepared to address the UN General Assembly, there was no sign of a deal to end the war between Israel and Hamas and free the remaining hostages, including seven Americans.

Instead, his administration was forced to take action to stem the rapidly escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants in neighboring Lebanon.

More than 270 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon on Monday, according to the country’s health ministry. Israel said the attack was necessary to prevent a suspected Hezbollah attack that had been firing across the border since Hamas’s surprise invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7. An airstrike on Friday killed Hezbollah commanders, the Israeli government said.

The White House said it had no knowledge of Israel’s plans to attack Beirut. It also denied U.S. involvement in electronic device explosions in Lebanon linked to Israel last week that killed dozens and wounded 3,000.

Biden had not spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the attacks until Monday and does not plan to meet with the difficult ally while he is in the U.S.

More: US to send more troops to Middle East after Israel attacks Hezbollah in major attack on Lebanon

Biden has at times criticized Netanyahu, who is scheduled to address the United Nations on Friday. The president’s national security communications adviser, John Kirby, said last week that Hamas was a “primary obstacle” to reaching a deal to end the 11-month war.

“We’re not looking in the rearview mirror too much here. We’re really looking forward and trying to figure out a way forward, which has proven difficult,” Kirby said. “But that doesn’t diminish the energy we’re putting into the problem set.”

Biden spent the weekend at his residence in Wilmington, Del., meeting with the partner he has successfully shaped. He held closed meetings with the leaders of Australia, India and Japan, a group known as the Quad.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has cited the deepening Indo-Pacific partnership as “one of the things he will be very proud of when he leaves office.”

China opposes the partnership, which is intended to counter Beijing’s efforts to dominate the Pacific region.

In New York, the president plans to address a climate summit on Tuesday and hold bilateral talks with the president of Vietnam on Wednesday. He then returns to Washington to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Thursday. Biden met in Washington on Monday with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates.

Harris met separately with bin Zayed, known as MBZ, and will hold a solo meeting with Zelensky. She has said she would continue to arm Ukraine if elected. Meanwhile, her campaign has highlighted Trump’s refusal to say whether he wants the U.S. ally to win the war.

Biden’s mobilization of NATO countries to defend Ukraine is one of the most important U.S. foreign policy decisions of this century, said Panetta, a former CIA chief who now co-hosts the One Decision podcast.

“I really think this is a topic that needs to be emphasized over and over again because I think if the United States doesn’t provide that leadership, nobody else will,” he said.