Visiting the State Department 10 days after his inauguration, President Joe Biden said his foreign policy would prioritize an approach to diplomacy defined by: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity.

Nearly three years later, Bidens handling of the biggest international crisis of his presidency a shock Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and a devastating U.S.-backed Israeli campaign of retaliation since has shattered any credibility he had in claiming those guiding lights.

Bidens narrative of championing human rights globally crumbled in striking ways throughout his presidency. But foreign affairs watchers say his actions over the last three months have dealt a knockout blow to that image and to Bidens pledge to represent America in the world in a meaningfully more humane way than his predecessor and likely 2024 presidential election rival Donald Trump.

Biden and his administration told us in their own words how all this stuff is important, so this is the standard that they created for themselves, said Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow at the Arab Center think tank. The scale of destruction of Palestinian life, the mass killing, the cruelty that were seeing the United States support and stand by is unlike anything we have ever seen, and not like anything we saw during the Trump administration.

Israels onslaught in Gaza, where Hamas is based, has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the vast majority women and children, local health officials say, and displaced nearly 2 million people. The Biden administration has rejected nearly all global calls to force Israeli restraint. Officials say they are encouraging Israel to avoid hurting civilians, but repeatedly note Biden is establishing no red lines in support for the U.S. ally that the president has long defended , even despite concerns from other Israel supporters who see its war strategy as self-defeating .

The U.S.s reluctance to rein in Israel drove United Nations Secretary General Antnio Guterres to invoke a rarely used emergency article of the U.N. charter for the first time in his seven-year tenure, and has sparked huge anxiety among American partner nations and U.S. officials .

The internal effect of Bidens hardline views on Israel-Palestine was clear to Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who resigned over the Gaza policy in a development first reported by HuffPost. I have had my fair share of debates and discussions, he told HuffPost in his first interview after quitting. It was clear that theres no arguing with this one.

Widespread frustration among rights proponents and international relations experts extends to the rest of the Biden administration, notably controversial advisers like White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk .

Yet the presidents specific influence over foreign policy makes the Biden administrations rights record even more disturbing for many observers.

No principal in this administration is an equivalent heavyweight when it comes to experience or foreign policy to the president himself, Munayyer noted. He anticipates political headwinds for Biden in 2024 given his prominence on global affairs and his limited ability to sell himself as different.

I dont find it a very convincing argument to tell people your only chance of saving democracy is voting for this one candidate because the alternative is youre going to get deported, Munayyer said, referring to the Biden reelections campaigns recent focus on emphasizing Trumps hardline immigration policies. Thats not exactly how democracy works, and the fact that its come to that speaks volumes about how much things have deteriorated already.

Early Hope, Rapid Disappointment

In his first months in office, rights advocates celebrated as Biden took steps to address a policy that began with President Barack Obama and expanded under Trump, ultimately creating the worlds worst humanitarian crisis: U.S. support for one side in the civil war in Yemen.

Biden barred American offensive weapons for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, close U.S. partners in the Middle East that had been bombing Yemen since 2015 and arming fighters there to battle an Iran-backed militia called the Houthis. He appointed a special envoy to try to end the Yemen war. And he moved to make good on his campaign promise of a less pro-Saudi policy than Trump by declassifying a U.S. intelligence determination that de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

Yet it soon became clear the old-school president would not truly break with the old U.S. foreign policy habit of treating human rights as a secondary concern. In April 2021, HuffPost broke the news that Biden greenlit the biggest arms deal of the Trump era, a $23 billion package for the UAE that many lawmakers and national security experts saw as destabilizing, given the Emirates pattern of fueling conflicts across the Middle East.