President Biden delivered his final remarks on American foreign policy and national security from the State Department on Monday, as his term concludes in one week when President-elect Trump is set to return to office.

While Biden did not mention Trump by name, he alluded to both the outgoing and incoming Trump administration, emphasizing that he is leaving a “strong hand to play” for his successor.

The president highlighted several nations critical to U.S. national security but also revisited the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. This decision, one of the most controversial of his presidency, led to the deaths of 13 American service members and approximately 170 Afghan civilians in an ISIS-K attack during the evacuation at Abbey Gate.

“[I am] the first president in decades who’s not leaving a war in Afghanistan to his successor,” Biden — who was widely criticized by both the left and right, as well as by parents of the servicemembers killed — said.

The president referenced the 2011 assassination of 9/11 mastermind Usama bin Laden during the Obama administration, stating that he evaluated large numbers of American forces to be unnecessary upon taking office.

Biden, of course, was Obama’s vice president; the decision to go after bin Laden wasn’t his to make, but rather the then-commander-in-chief’s decision.

“So when I took office, I had a choice – only I saw no reason to keep thousands of servicemen in Afghanistan,” he added. “In my view, it was time to end the war and bring our troops home, and we did.”

The Trump administration had been negotiating an exit from Afghanistan and there had not been any American casualties in the country for more than a year before he left office in January 2021. Biden came in, however, and changed plans, choosing a quick and chaotic exit that had older Americans comparing it to the way the U.S. hastily left South Vietnam in 1975.

The president attempted to counter the criticism he received of the withdrawal and said, “Remember, critics said if we ended the war it would damage our alliances and create threats to our homeland from foreign directed terrorism out of a safe haven in Afghanistan. Neither has occurred.”

“Our alliances have stayed strong, we’ve used our over-the-horizon capabilities of striking Afghanistan and elsewhere when we had to. And by ending the war, we’ve been able to focus our energy and resources on our urgent challenges,” the president said, pointing to issues the U.S. continues to face from adversaries like Russia and China.