Opinion Express View on President Biden’s exit: Triumph and tragedy

In his farewell, there are notes of bitterness and rancour, his party is divided. In recent decades, his was the most 'pro-India' presidency

Express View on President Biden’s exit: Triumph and tragedyBiden has been the most “pro-India” president in recent decades and in Trump's second term, Delhi will hope it can build on that legacy.
indianexpress

By: Editorial

January 20, 2025 07:34 AM IST First published on: Jan 20, 2025 at 07:34 AM IST

Four years ago, Joe Biden was hailed as the saviour of the Democratic Party from the unprecedented political and economic shockwaves generated by Donald Trump’s presidency (2017-21). Trump’s first term in the White House culminated in the January 6 riots by his political supporters protesting against the alleged unfairness of the 2020 polls that elected Biden as president. As a long-standing figure of the Washington establishment, who had served for decades in the US Senate and as Vice President of President Barack Obama (2009-17), Biden was expected to heal the political divisions within America, revitalise US democracy, and restore Washington’s global image as a responsible great power. This Monday, Biden walks out of the White House with a deeply divided Democratic Party and a triumphant return of Trump to the White House for a second term with an impressive political mandate.

It is no secret that Biden was bitter over the Democrats ousting him as the party’s presidential candidate last summer and replacing him with Kamala Harris. Biden was confident that only he could defeat Trump, but Democrats thought he was a certain loser and panicked and changed horses midstream. In his farewell speech and interviews, Biden insisted that history would treat his presidency more kindly than his contemporaries. His critics say Biden yielded too much ground to the Democratic Party’s left-wing factions that promoted a new woke ideology, opened doors for unrestricted immigration, triggered massive inflation, and ignored the concerns of the traditional support base among the working class. Biden rightly takes credit for the big effort to restore America’s manufacturing and technological edge that it had ceded to China over the last few decades. Biden ended his term with rancour about the tech titans of America betraying him to support Trump. In his farewell address, he warned against the dangers of growing economic inequality and a rising oligarchy. He also slammed the new “techno-industrial-complex” in America that has garnered far too much power.

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The critics of his foreign policy point to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the weakening of deterrence in Europe that emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine in 2022, and his failure to persuade Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to stop his brutal military campaign in Gaza and accept a ceasefire. There is much praise, however, for Biden’s Asia policy, including an intense effort to upgrade the strategic partnership with India. Biden had reinforced the Indo-Pacific initiative unveiled in Trump’s first term, elevated the Quad to the summit level, created a new AUKUS forum for nuclear powered submarine and other advanced military technological cooperation with Australia and the United Kingdom, set up trilateral arrangements with Japan and South Korea in North East Asia, and another quad with Australia, Japan and the Philippines. On the bilateral front with India, the initiative for cooperation on critical and emerging technologies was the highlight. Arguably, Biden has been the most “pro-India” president in recent decades and in Trump’s second term, Delhi will hope it can build on that legacy.

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