President Joe Biden’s administration has come under heavy criticism, both domestically and from overseas, over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan by American and NATO forces. Since Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, Biden’s approval rating has dipped nearly five points, to 45 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average of opinion polls. And Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, bluntly criticized the U.S. earlier this week for making “very few—if any—consultations with their European partners” regarding plans for the exit from Afghanistan.
The fallout from this crisis will follow Biden to United Nations headquarters in New York later this month, where he will deliver his first address to the U.N. General Assembly. In his remarks, the president “will be attempting to underline that, whatever happened in the Afghan case, he is still a genuine believer in international cooperation,” Richard Gowan, U.N. director at the International Crisis Group, told WPR’s Elliot Waldman this week on the Trend Lines podcast. But Biden will have his work cut out for him.
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