Conflicts in Mideast, Ukraine will loom over Biden’s farewell address at UN

President Joe Biden is set to deliver his final address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday as Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon are edging toward all-out war and Israel’s bloody operation against Hamas in Gaza nears the one-year mark.

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Biden is expected to use his wide-ranging address to speak to the need to end the Middle East conflict and the 17-month-old civil war in Sudan and to highlight US and Western allies’ support for Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

His appearance before the international body also offers Biden one of his last high-profile opportunities as president to make the case to keep up robust support for Ukraine, which could be in doubt if former President Donald Trump, who has scoffed at the cost of the war, defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in November.

Biden came to office promising to rejuvenate US relations around the world and to extract the US from “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq that consumed American foreign policy over the last 20 years.

He achieved both goals. But 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 Pentagon announced on Monday that it was sending a small number of additional US 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.

“It’s in everyone’s interest to resolve it quickly and diplomatically,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters as Biden made his way to New York on Monday ahead of his address at the UN.

Biden administration officials will be speaking to their counterparts on the sidelines of the UN about ideas that they believe could prevent the fighting between Israel and Lebanon from escalating, according to two senior administration officials.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, declined to offer any further details on the potential off-ramps. One of the officials said that other countries were also keen to present ideas to reduce tensions.

Biden had a hopeful outlook for the Middle East when he addressed the UN just a year ago. In that speech, Biden spoke of a “sustainable, integrated Middle East” coming into view.

At the time, economic relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbours were improving with implementation of the Abraham Accords that Israel signed with Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates during the Trump administration.

Biden’s team helped resolve a long-running Israel-Lebanon maritime dispute that had held back gas exploration in the region. And Israel-Saudi normalisation talks were progressing, a game-changing alignment for the region if a deal could be landed.

“I suffer from an oxymoron: Irish optimism,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when they met on the sidelines of last year’s UN gathering.

He added, “If you and I, 10 years ago, were talking about normalisation with Saudi Arabia ... I think we’d look at each other like, ‘Who’s been drinking what?’”

Eighteen days later, Biden’s Middle East hopes came crashing down. Hamas militants stormed into Israel killing 1,200, taking some 250 hostages, and spurring a bloody war that has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza and led the region into a complicated downward spiral.

Now, the conflict is threatening to metastasize into a multi-front war and leave a lasting scar on Biden’s presidential legacy.

Israeli strikes on Lebanon on Monday killed more than 490 people, including more than 90 women and children, Lebanese authorities said, in the deadliest barrage since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.