STIMSON COMMENTARY
Security & Strategy
2024 Showdown: Expert Insights from the Presidential Debates
Stimson experts break down the pivotal moments from the first 2024 U.S. Presidential Debates
By Christopher Preble • Barbara Slavin • Yun Sun • Yuki Tatsumi • Robert A. Manning
Grand Strategy
June 28, 2024
Biden and Trump Debate US Foreign Policy
Biden and Trump Debate on Israeli-Palestinian Relations and Middle East Policy
China’s Perspective on the Biden-Trump Debate
Japans Post-Debate Concerns About a Trump 2.0
Reflections on Leadership, Vision, and the Reality of Today's America
Biden and Trump Debate US Foreign Policy
Christopher Preble
Senior Fellow and Director
Post-debate commentaries are mostly focused on President Biden’s terrible performance and former President Trump’s falsehoods. There were a few foreign policy issues engaged by the two candidates, but the optics from last night have wider implications for America’s role in the world.
On specifics, President Biden noted that no US service personnel were being killed in foreign wars on his watch. He deserves credit for terminating the US war in Afghanistan, the longest in our history.
While 13 US troops were killed in August 2021, as the mission there was ending, none are dying there now. Biden also committed early on that US troops would not be involved directly in the war in Ukraine — and they have not been. Trump, by contrast, faulted Biden for withdrawing from Afghanistan, saying that this encouraged Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, a highly dubious claim.
With respect to that war, Biden is convinced that Putin will attack other countries if he succeeds in Ukraine. Such speculation is worth scrutinizing more closely. Trump, for example, raised a valid point that countries in Europe could and should do more to stop that from happening, including by spending more on their militaries. They, after all, are close to any possible Russian threat, while Americans are far away.
President Biden doubled down on his assertion that the United States, and only the United States, can save Ukraine – and by extension much of the rest of the world. This is hard to believe at a moment when the two leading candidates for America’s highest office are held in such low regard, even by the people who will ultimately vote for them.
To be sure, the president is just one person in a sprawling US government, and continuity may prevail mostly by inertia. But the president has a particularly important role in crafting foreign policy. If other countries are hedging their bets because they lack confidence in Americans’ willingness and ability to defend them from harm, who can blame them?
Biden and Trump Debate on Israeli-Palestinian Relations and Middle East Policy
Barbara Slavin
Distinguished Fellow
Those seeking resolutions to end the devastating war in the Middle East were left disappointed by last night’s debate.
Much of the discussion revolved around verbal muscle-flexing by the two candidates, with Donald Trump boasting about killing the leaders of ISIS and the Iranian Quds Force. He reiterated claims that Hamas would never have attacked Israel on Oct. 7 had he still been in office, because “Iran was broke” after he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions.
The false implication was that the $100 million Iran is said to give Hamas annually had motivated the militant group, not long-standing Palestinian grievances against Israel.
Joe Biden emphasized the significantly increased U.S. support for Israel – $4 billion annually plus a recent $14 billion supplemental — and highlighted that the U.S. had “saved” the country by intercepting missiles and drones fired by Iran after Israel’s killing of seven Iranian military officers in Damascus. Biden also referred to a three-phase peace plan he outlined on May 31, accusing Hamas for failing to accept it. Interestingly, Trump countered by suggesting that it was Israel that rejected the plan and urged them to “finish the job” without specifying how to achieve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated goal of “destroying” Hamas after nine months of bombardment in Gaza and 37,000 Palestinian deaths have not achieved this. The cease-fire plan remains uncertain, as concerns mount that the war is expanding into a new conflagration between Israel and Lebanon.
One area where the Trump and Biden administrations have found common ground is in support for the so-called Abraham Accords.” The policy allowed Israel to normalize relations with important Arab states while circumventing Palestinian aspirations for statehood. Concerns that Saudi Arabia was about to join the accords was reportedly a factor in the timing of Hamas’s attack on Israel. However, the CNN debate moderators made no mention of this or any motivation for Palestinian militancy. Neither Trump nor Biden put forward a vision for resolving the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When asked if he would accept the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Trump responded only with, “I’d have to see.”
China’s Perspective on the Biden-Trump Debate
Yun Sun
Senior Fellow and Co-Director
Other than a few references, China was not a top issue in the first presidential debate between President Biden and former President Trump on June 27. Domestic policies, the Ukraine war and the Middle East crisis are evidently much more central in the current political environment. While China may secretly enjoy the lack of attention, what are the primary Chinese takeaways from the debate?
There are two key observations.
First, for the Chinese, Biden’s weak performance during the debate could indicate a growing chance of Trump winning the election. Prominent Chinese media, such as Caixin, described Biden as “not as agile” in his reaction as Trump, noting that “both his expression and vigor were so much more feeble.” Observations in China suggest that within minutes of the debate, Democrats fell into “a massive sense of crisis” due to Biden’s “sluggish” performance. As the Chinese closely follow the U.S. election and the significance of the presidential debate, they increasingly feel that Biden’s chances reelection are dimming. A second Trump term is seen as likely to bring more uncertainty and volatility to U.S. policy toward China and U.S.-China relations. Consequently, the Chinese are in a heightened sense of urgency to vigorously prepare policies to protect China’s interests and countermeasures.
The second takeaway, as illustrated by the Chinese official media such as Xinhua News Agency, is the deepening divide and polarization of the American politics, with the 2024 election manifesting the intensification of internal conflicts within American society. The conclusion is that U.S. is at a higher risk of political turmoil internally and therefore a destabilizing force in the world. The narrative aims not only to dampen the U.S. reputation but also to portray China as the responsible and stabilizing great power in contrast. As China continues to leverage the U.S. election to question and undermine the credibility of the U.S. democratic system, this angle will remain a high priority for Chinese media.
Japans Post-Debate Concerns About a Trump 2.0
Yuki Tatsumi
Senior Fellow and Co-Director
Predictably, U.S.-Japan alliance, or alliances and partnerships at large, was not the focal point of the presidential debate last night. Still, Biden’s unexpected reference to Japan as one of the allies that stepped up its commitment to the alliance with the United States in the context of support for Ukraine may have been the testament of the importance the U.S.-Japan alliance now holds in the Biden administration as a global partner.
Having said that, Japanese media’s “morning after” coverage of last night’s debate was dominated by renewed concerns about President Biden’s age, his fitness to serve another 4 years, and how the debate might work to the advantage of Trump and his bid to return to the White House. Simply put, last night’s debate may have sparked a real concern in Japan about “Trump 2.0”.
Japanese have already coined a couple of catchy phrases to express this concern. During the primaries, the word “Hobo Tora” (almost Trump) became prevalent as media speculated about when Trump might clinch Republican nomination. The word “Moshi Tora” (if Trump comes back) followed as Japanese pundits discussed the possibility of Trump’s return to the White House. Last night’s debate will no doubt generate the third phrase that will be used to discuss “WHEN Trump returns to the White House”.
Reflections on Leadership, Vision, and the Reality of Today's America
Robert A. Manning
Distinguished Fellow
The story of the debate unfortunately strayed far from issues and policy. It was difficult to discern any substantial thoughts on policies conveyed to voters. At a hinge of history where the global order is in flux, major nuclear powers teeter on the brink of confrontation, climate change threatens the planet, and inequality widens both within nations and among them, a sense of urgency was notably absent. Instead, the debate was an indictment of our gerontocracy, an inadvertent plea for generational change.
TV debates tend to be as much about body language and projection of character as policy content. Biden appeared raspy and frail, at times stumbling over sentences. Trump, ever the master showman, was literally a firehose of lies, inventing an alternative universe where everything is upside down, all he was accused of, convicted of, never happened. His fearmongering tactics, exaggerating threats of criminals, rapists, and terrorists pouring across an open border and taking over the country, were endlessly repeated. On the other extreme, Biden struggled to persuasively explain the failures of his immigration policies. A serious discussion eluded both.
This is the first election in my lifetime where the vast majority of voters would prefer neither of the candidates run. Elections are supposed to be about the future, yet neither candidate appeared capable of conveying a vision at a moment in history. Our social contract, and indeed our political system, appears broken. The debate reflected that America seems to no longer have a shared reality. To paraphrase Daniel Moynihan, deviancy has been defined down to levels I never thought possible. AS T.S. Eliot wrote in The Waste land, ”What branches grow out of this stony rubbish?”
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