“The real question is: Does the rest of the world today believe that the United States is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world when it comes to our reservoir of national strength, our economy, our innovation base, our capacity to attract investment, our capacity to attract talent?” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an Associated Press interview. “When we took office, a lot of people probably would have said China. ... Nobody’s saying that anymore.”
After a turbulent four years around the globe, the Democratic administration argues that Biden provided the world a steady hand and left the United States and its allies on a stronger footing.
But Biden, from the outset of his presidency, in which he frequently spoke of his desire to demonstrate that “America's back,” was tested by war, calamity and miscalculation.
Afghanistan
With the U.S. completing its 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden fulfilled a campaign promise to wind down America's longest war.
But the 20-year conflict came to an end in total chaos: The U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed, a grisly bombing killed 13 U.S. troops and 170 others, and thousands of desperate Afghans descended on Kabul’s airport in search of a way out before the final U.S. aircraft departed over the Hindu Kush.
Billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment were left behind
The Afghanistan debacle was a major setback just eight months into Biden's presidency that he struggled to recover from.
Biden's Republican detractors, including Trump, cast it as a signal moment in a failed presidency.
“I’ll tell you what happened, he was so bad with Afghanistan, it was such a horrible embarrassment, most embarrassing moment in the history of our country,” Trump said in his lone 2024 presidential debate with Biden, just weeks before the Democrat announced he was ending his reelection campaign.
Middle East
In the Middle East, Biden, on the surface, has stood by Israel as it has worked to root out Hamas from Gaza. That war spawned another in Lebanon, where Israel has mauled Iran’s most powerful ally, Hezbollah, even as Israel has launched successful airstrikes openly inside of Iran for the first time.
Biden's relationship with Israel's conservative leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been strained as Biden has attempted to appease the anti-Israel element within the Democratic party. At one point during its war with the Hamas terrorists, Biden threatened to withhold some weapons from Israel as the death toll climbed in Gaza.
