Biden in UN address: Peace still possible, US must not retreat from the world

NEW YORK - President Joe Biden on Tuesday gave his farewell address to the U.N. General Assembly as conflicts rage in the Middle East and Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine continues. 

Biden used his wide-ranging address to speak to the need to end the Middle East conflict and highlight U.S. and Western allies’ support for Kyiv after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The president insisted the U.S. must not retreat from the world, and said that despite global conflicts, he remains hopeful for the future. 

His appearance before the international body, which included nearly 120 heads of state and governments in New York City, offered Biden one of his last high-profile opportunities as president to make the case to keep up robust support for Ukraine. Such support could be in doubt if former President Donald Trump, who has criticized the cost of the war, defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in November.

FILE - U.S. President Joe Biden addresses the 78th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City on Sept. 19, 2023. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)

US sending more troops to the Middle East 

When Biden entered the White House as president, he came promising to rejuvenate U.S. relations around the world and to extract the U.S. from "forever wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq that have consumed American foreign policy over the last two decades.

Although the withdrawal from Afghanistan was chaotic and deadly, Biden achieved both goals. However, his foreign policy legacy may ultimately be shaped by his administration's response to two of the biggest conflicts in Europe and the Middle East since World War II, the Associated Press noted. 

On Monday, the Pentagon announced that it was sending a small number of additional U.S. troops to the Middle East to supplement the roughly 40,000 already in the region, because of the rising tensions. 

All the while, the White House insists Israel and Hezbollah still have time to step back and de-escalate.

"We do not believe a wider conflict in the north is in their interest or in Lebanon’s interest, " Jon Finer, White House principal deputy national security adviser, told NPR on Tuesday.

Finer added that Biden administration officials would be engaging allies on the sidelines of this week's U.N. high-level meetings in conversations about finding an endgame to the growing crisis.

Israel–Hezbollah conflict

On Tuesday, Israel and Hezbollah traded strikes again as the death toll from a massive Israeli bombardment climbed to nearly 560 people and thousands fled from southern Lebanon. It's the deadliest barrage since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, according to the AP.

Israel has urged residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate from homes and other buildings where it claimed Hezbollah has stored weapons, saying the military would conduct "extensive strikes" against the militant group.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, has launched dozens of rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in retaliation for strikes last week that killed a top commander and dozens of fighters, according to the AP. Dozens were also killed last week and hundreds more wounded after hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah militants exploded, a sophisticated attack that was widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.

Israel's leadership launched its counterattacks at a time of growing impatience with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah's persistent launching of missiles and drones across the Israel-Lebanon border after Hamas started the war with its attack on Oct. 7.

The stepped-up Israeli operations were launched shortly after a White House senior adviser, Amos Hochstein, visited Israel last week and urged the Israelis to avoid an escalation that could risk spurring a regional conflict.

"Reality is intervening," Bradley Bowman, a defense strategy and policy analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, told the AP. "There are contrasting interests that transcend the politics and the politicians of the U.S.-Israel relationship. For Israel, Oct. 7 did happen, and the reality is they are facing a multifront threat and the current status quo is unacceptable. Sometimes to get to a better status quo, you have to escalate."

Biden has seemed more subdued in recent days about the prospects of Israel and Hamas agreeing to a temporary cease-fire and hostage deal, the AP noted. But the president insists that he hasn't given up.

"If I ever say it’s not realistic then I might as well leave," Biden said last week when asked if the chances for a deal were quickly fading under his watch. "A lot of things don’t look realistic until we get them done."

Western support for Ukraine against Russia 

Biden helped create an international coalition to back Ukraine with weapons and economic aid in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's February 2022 assault on Ukraine.

So far, Biden has managed to keep up American support in the face of rising skepticism from Trump and some Republican lawmakers about the high cost of the conflict.

At the same time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is pressing Biden to loosen restrictions on the use of Western-supplied long-range missiles so that Ukrainian forces can hit deeper in Russia. So far, Zelenskyy has not persuaded the Pentagon or White House to loosen those restrictions. 

The Defense Department has emphasized that Ukraine can already hit Moscow with Ukrainian-produced drones, and there is hesitation about the strategic implications of a U.S.-made missile potentially striking the Russian capital.

Putin has warned that Russia would be "at war" with the United States and its NATO allies if they allow Ukraine to use long-range weapons.

Biden and Harris are scheduled to hold separate meetings with Zelenskyy in Washington on Thursday. The Ukrainian leader also is expected to meet with Trump this week, according to the AP.