Joe Biden’s lamentable legacy (+Español)

Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election against Donald Trump was greeted with relief but without enthusiasm. However, he ended up being a huge disappointment and will be remembered among the worst presidents in the recent history of that country.

More than a million deaths, severe impacts on the economy, as well as the discredit of government management, was the panorama Biden found when he assumed the presidency of the United States. Correcting the disastrous Trumpist policy in the face of the pandemic, Biden proposed mass vaccination of citizens and promoted a stimulus package that reactivated some sectors of the economy and significantly reduced unemployment. However, he could not avoid high levels of inflation throughout his term, which increased feelings of dissatisfaction and, according to most analysts, was the main cause of the Democrats’ defeat last year. The immigration issue was at the heart of his administration’s concerns and, in reality, his policies tried to distance themselves from the inhumane “zero tolerance” applied by Donald Trump. At least in theory, he recognized the systemic causes of international migration and established migration agreements with some issuing and transit countries, as well as economic aid measures, which supposedly would improve the living conditions of potential migrants and prevent them from leaving their countries. Domestically, he implemented optional programs for irregular immigration and for the temporary protection of those from certain countries.

In any case, no palliative was sufficient and, under converging pressure from Republicans and sectors of his own party, he finally resorted to many of the policies he had previously criticized. Biden said goodbye by closing the borders, ignoring the right to due process of the majority of irregular immigrants, and breaking the deportation records previously established by Barack Obama and Donald Trump. In foreign policy, he set about restoring relations with allies, which had been badly damaged by Trump’s chauvinism, as well as rescuing the international prestige of the United States. ‘America is back’ was the message that guided his policy and which he claims to have fulfilled during his term in office. The issue is to analyze how this return occurred and its consequences for the world.

Considered one of the “last warriors of the Cold War,” Biden looked at the world from that prism and almost led us to the third world war in his eagerness to confront anyone who questioned “American exceptionalism” and his place as “leader of the civilized world.”

El lamentable legado de Joe Biden

His first major foreign policy decision was the necessary withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, which ended up being a political disaster, reminiscent of the stampede in Vietnam. As in other countries in the area, in Afghanistan, the United States left behind the chaos and destruction caused by the ‘civilizing war’ against terrorism. Europe was the scene of the new American war and where Biden could display all his ‘globalist’ instinct, as imperialism is now called. Faced with Russia’s progressive economic concertation with the rest of Europe, especially with Germany in the energy field, a strategic problem for American supremacy on that continent, the United States took on the task of militarily surrounding Russia and encouraging conflicts with its neighbors. Such a policy led to Russia’s war with Ukraine, a ‘flowery war’ for the Americans, as the Aztecs would say when the conflict was convenient for them.

Without committing a single soldier, the United States was able to deploy a good part of its military potential once again far from its borders while taking advantage of a fabulous business for the military complex of that country and its foreign partners. Although the main financier of the war has been the American taxpayer itself, Europe has been forced to commit its resources to the adventure, as well as to sacrifice other aspects of its economic and political interests in order to subordinate itself to American designs.

The ‘return’ of the United States has resulted in the deterioration of the standard of living of Europeans, of their competitiveness in the commercial sphere, and of their international political influence. For the United States, although the war in Ukraine has meant an economic stimulus that compensates for other deficits in its economy and increased political power over Europe, the evident failure of the adventure will imply a reversal of these achievements and a greater deterioration of American hegemony in the medium term. Beyond its fragility, the recent announcement of a ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip does not change the fact that the Biden administration has been complicit in the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians and a bulwark to prevent effective international condemnation of these and other aggressive actions by the Zionists in the region. In addition to international discredit, this complicity had internal repercussions, which harmed the performance of the Democrats in the elections and caused deep schisms within the party.

Continuing with another strategic budget of American foreign policy, Biden established among his priorities countering China’s advances on a global scale. Around this objective, his government implemented measures ranging from military provocations in Taiwan to the trade war with China in various spheres. According to the president, thanks to his management, the United States is winning in the global competition with China, but most specialists question this statement.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, Biden’s policy was, at the very least, inconsequential. The confrontation with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba unsuccessfully consumed US efforts aimed at promoting regime change in those countries, caused the failure of two American summits, one of them held in the United States itself, and stalled any significant progress in its policy in the area.

So much so that, although there is no shortage of those who want to ingratiate themselves with the U.S. government and there can be no talk of an effective return of ‘progressivism’ in the region, it is difficult to single out a Latin American country with ‘special relations’ with the United States in the last four years. The ups and downs regarding the elections in Venezuela, and the late removal of Cuba from the list of countries promoting terrorism, a global claim that established a convenient distance from Trumpist policy, demonstrate the lack of common sense that governed the actions of the Biden administration in this regard.

With all Donald Trump insisting that he can “make America great again” and Biden assuring that he is giving him a “good hand” to achieve it, the panorama he leaves is a cracked American hegemony–which does not mean finished–in a world where multipolarity is consolidated, expressed in the BRICS, with China as the main emerging power, expanding its influence throughout the world.

Internally, Biden’s government was great in projects but mediocre in results, led by a decrepit president, whose stubbornness was one of the causes of the defeat in the 2024 elections. Biden’s calls to “rescue democracy threatened by Donald Trump,” a real and evident threat, mattered little to an electorate tired of demagoguery and made little impact among the fervent followers of the tycoon, who became a populist leader with the support of the richest men in the world.

Political polarization reached levels reminiscent of the Civil War, and the Democratic Party was plunged into confusion, disunity and lack of leadership, and faced with a Republican Party that not only won everything, but did so by violating the rules of the game and imposing a convicted criminal as the Messiah of the far right in the world, which will have inevitable consequences for the international political balance.

The only renewing proposal of the Democrats lies in empowering the most progressive sectors of the party, who were marginalized during the Biden administration. It is true that the logic of the system tends to project social discontent by shifting the popular sectors to the right, but it has been proven that there is a latent progressive mass in the ranks of the Democratic Party or in its periphery which can burst into American political life with its own force. As the saying goes: “The good thing about it is how bad things will get” or “Every cloud has a silver lining.”

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