WATCH: Biden says leaving Afghanistan has allowed U.S. to focus on more 'urgent challenges'

President Joe Biden touted the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan during a speech on Monday and said it was ‘the right thing to do’ to improve the country’s security.

“By ending the war, we've been able to focus our energy and resources on more urgent challenges. There is nothing, I can tell you from my conversations with both [Chinese President] Xi and [Russian President] Putin, nothing our adversaries and competitors like Russia and China would have liked more than seeing us continue to be tied down in Afghanistan for another decade,” Biden said in a farewell address from the State Department.

“For all those reasons, ending the war was the right thing to do and I believe history will reflect that," he said.

Biden will leave office next week. He has argued that his one-term presidency has repaired diplomatic damage that will benefit the U.S. for years to come.

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