Trudy Rubin

President Joe Biden’s farewell speech to the United Nations General Assembly was clearly not the speech he wanted to deliver. He had hoped to announce the beginning of a cease-fire in Gaza in return for the release of Israeli hostages.

That, in turn, could have halted the tit-for-tat fighting between Israel and Iran’s Lebanese proxy militia, Hezbollah, which claims it is firing across the Lebanese-Israeli border to support Hamas. Instead, negotiations for such a deal are deadlocked, and Israel has newly plunged into a major cyber and air attack on Hezbollah that could draw in Iran and the United States.

At the same time, the other major conflict roiling global stability — Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine — has come to a critical juncture.Biden’s speechwriters had to shift gears, with the president stressing his trademark optimism about the potential for resolving these conflicts — along with the pressing new threats from climate and world-changing new technologies like artificial intelligence — if nations work together.

But there was no escaping the fact that a negative outcome in Gaza and Ukraine will shred what remains of the U.N.’s tattered relevance to resolving conflicts — and will undermine the security of the United States. Let me state up front that Biden’s foreign policy flaws pale beside those of Donald Trump on both issues.

Trump’s unswerving support for Israel seems less tied to its security than to the evangelical votes it brings him — as well as to the Jewish votes he grossly demands (with antisemitic language) as a matter of gratitude. And were Trump reelected, he’d quickly hand Ukraine over to Vladimir Putin.But back to Biden at the United Nations.

There was no point in his repeating........

© The Korea Times