By JOSH BOAK and AAMER MAD­HANI, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

UNIT­ED NA­TIONS (AP) — Pres­i­dent Joe Biden used his first ad­dress be­fore the U.N. Gen­er­al As­sem­bly on Tues­day to de­clare that the world stands and at an “in­flec­tion point in his­to­ry” and must move quick­ly and co­op­er­a­tive­ly to ad­dress the fes­ter­ing is­sues of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, cli­mate change and hu­man rights abuse.

Amid grow­ing Chi­na ten­sions Biden al­so de­clared the U.S. is “not seek­ing a new Cold War.”

With­out men­tion­ing Chi­na di­rect­ly, Biden ac­knowl­edged in­creas­ing con­cerns about ris­ing ten­sions be­tween the two na­tions. But he said, “We are not seek­ing a new Cold War or a world di­vid­ed in­to rigid blocs.”

The pres­i­dent not­ed his de­ci­sion to end Amer­i­ca’s longest war last month, in Afghanistan, and set the ta­ble for his ad­min­is­tra­tion to shift U.S. at­ten­tion to in­ten­sive diplo­ma­cy with no short­age of crises fac­ing the globe. He said he is dri­ven by a be­lief that “to de­liv­er for our own peo­ple, we must al­so en­gage deeply with the rest of the world.”

“We’ve end­ed 20 years of con­flict in Afghanistan,” Biden said. “And as we close this pe­ri­od of re­lent­less war, we’re open­ing a new era of re­lent­less diplo­ma­cy of us­ing the pow­er of our de­vel­op­ment aid to in­vest in new ways of lift­ing peo­ple up around the world.”

Biden, who ar­rived in New York on Mon­day evening to meet with Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res ahead of Tues­day’s ad­dress, of­fered a full-throat­ed en­dorse­ment of the body’s rel­e­vance and am­bi­tion at a dif­fi­cult mo­ment in his­to­ry.

The pres­i­dent, in brief re­marks at the start of his meet­ing with Guter­res, re­turned to his mantra that “Amer­i­ca is back” — a phrase that’s be­come pres­i­den­tial short­hand meant to en­cap­su­late his promise to take a dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent tack with al­lies than pre­de­ces­sor Don­ald Trump. In his re­marks, he de­clared the Unit­ed States was “back at the ta­ble.”

“We will lead not just with the ex­am­ple of our pow­er but God will­ing with the pow­er of our ex­am­ple,” Biden said Mon­day night.

But the pres­i­dent was fac­ing a healthy mea­sure of skep­ti­cism from al­lies dur­ing his week of high-lev­el diplo­ma­cy. The open­ing months of his pres­i­den­cy have in­clud­ed a se­ries of dif­fi­cult mo­ments with friend­ly na­tions that were ex­pect­ing greater co­op­er­a­tion from Biden fol­low­ing four years of Trump’s “Amer­i­ca first” ap­proach to for­eign pol­i­cy.

Eight months in­to his pres­i­den­cy, Biden has been out of sync with al­lies on the chaot­ic end­ing to the U.S. war in Afghanistan. He has faced dif­fer­ences over how to go about shar­ing coro­n­avirus vac­cines with the de­vel­op­ing world and over pan­dem­ic trav­el re­stric­tions. And there are ques­tions about the best way to re­spond to mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic moves by Chi­na.

Biden al­so finds him­self in the midst of a fresh diplo­mat­ic spat with France, the Unit­ed States’ old­est al­ly, af­ter an­nounc­ing plans — along with Britain — to equip Aus­tralia with nu­clear-pow­ered sub­marines. The move is ex­pect­ed to give Aus­tralia im­proved ca­pa­bil­i­ties to pa­trol the Pa­cif­ic amid grow­ing con­cern about the Chi­nese mil­i­tary’s in­creas­ing­ly ag­gres­sive tac­tics, but it up­end­ed a French de­fense con­tract worth at least $66 bil­lion to sell diesel-pow­ered sub­marines to Aus­tralia.

French For­eign Min­is­ter Jean-Yves Le Dri­an said Mon­day there was a “cri­sis of trust” with the U.S. as a re­sult of the episode.

Biden down­played the ten­sions with France. Asked by a re­porter as he ar­rived at the U.N. on Tues­day how he planned to re­pair re­la­tions with the French, Biden re­spond­ed mere­ly, “They’re great.”

Be­fore Biden’s ar­rival, EU Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Charles Michel strong­ly crit­i­cized the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion for leav­ing Eu­rope “out of the game in the In­do-Pa­cif­ic re­gion” and ig­nor­ing the un­der­ly­ing el­e­ments of the trans-At­lantic al­liance — trans­paren­cy and loy­al­ty — in the with­draw­al from Afghanistan and the an­nounce­ment of the U.S.-U.K.-Aus­tralia al­liance.

De­spite such dif­fer­ences, Biden hoped to use his ad­dress to the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly as well as a se­ries of one-on-one and larg­er meet­ings with world lead­ers this week to make the case for Amer­i­can lead­er­ship on the world stage.

“There are points of dis­agree­ment, in­clud­ing when we have dis­agreed with the de­ci­sions oth­er coun­tries are mak­ing, the de­ci­sion points of when coun­tries have dis­agreed with the de­ci­sions we’re mak­ing,” White House press sec­re­tary Jen Psa­ki said. “But the larg­er point here ... is that we are com­mit­ted to those al­liances, and that al­ways re­quires work from every pres­i­dent, from every glob­al leader.”

President Joe Biden addresses the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York on Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021. (Timothy A. Clary/Pool Photo via AP)

In an in­ter­view be­fore his meet­ing with Biden, Guter­res told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that he was con­cerned about the “com­plete­ly dys­func­tion­al” U.S.-Chi­na re­la­tion­ship and that it could lead to a new cold war. Psa­ki said the ad­min­is­tra­tion dis­agreed with the as­sess­ment, adding that the U.S.-Chi­na re­la­tion­ship was “one not of con­flict but of com­pe­ti­tion.”

The sec­re­tary-gen­er­al did not back off his con­cerns about the U.S.-Chi­na ten­sions as he ad­dressed lead­ers at the open­ing of Tues­day’s gath­er­ing. “It will be im­pos­si­ble to ad­dress dra­mat­ic eco­nom­ic and de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges, while the world’s two largest economies are at odds with each oth­er”

Biden put a heavy em­pha­sis on a need for world lead­ers to work to­geth­er on the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, meet past oblig­a­tions to ad­dress cli­mate change, head off emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy is­sues and firm up trade rules.

“We will choose to build a bet­ter fu­ture. We, you and I, we have the will and ca­pac­i­ty to make it bet­ter. Ladies and gen­tle­men, we can­not af­ford to waste any more time. ... We can do this.”

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion on Mon­day an­nounced plans to ease for­eign trav­el re­stric­tions to the U.S. be­gin­ning in No­vem­ber. The U.S. has large­ly re­strict­ed trav­el by non-U.S. cit­i­zens com­ing from Eu­rope since the start of the pan­dem­ic, an is­sue that had be­come a point of con­tention in trans-At­lantic re­la­tions.

The new rules will al­low for­eign­ers in if they have proof of vac­ci­na­tion and a neg­a­tive COVID-19 test, the White House said Mon­day.

Biden planned to lim­it his time at the Unit­ed Na­tions due to coro­n­avirus con­cerns. He was to meet with Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Scott Mor­ri­son while in New York be­fore shift­ing the rest of the week’s diplo­ma­cy to vir­tu­al and Wash­ing­ton set­tings.

At a vir­tu­al COVID-19 sum­mit Biden is host­ing Wednes­day, lead­ers will be urged to step up vac­cine-shar­ing com­mit­ments, ad­dress oxy­gen short­ages around the globe and deal with oth­er crit­i­cal pan­dem­ic-re­lat­ed is­sues.

The pres­i­dent is al­so sched­uled to meet with British Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son on Tues­day at the White House, and in­vit­ed the prime min­is­ters of Aus­tralia, In­dia and Japan — part of a Pa­cif­ic al­liance known as “the Quad” — to Wash­ing­ton on Fri­day. In ad­di­tion to the gath­er­ing of Quad lead­ers, Biden will sit down for one-on-one meet­ings with In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di and Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Yoshi­hide Suga.

___

Aamer Mad­hani re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Jonathan Lemire in New York and Edith Led­er­er at the Unit­ed Na­tions con­tributed to this re­port.