On foreign policy, Biden and Trump trade insults, present diff views of the world and wars

WASHINGTON: From Afghanistan to Ukraine, from Gaza to climate, from trade to China, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump presented two different visions, sometimes fully etched out and often in somewhat general and abstract terms with a degree of overlap, of America and the world at the first presidential debate on Thursday night.

India came up only once in the debate when Trump clubbed Russia, China and India together as countries that benefited from the Paris Climate Agreement while the US had to foot the bills — this statement isn’t true.

Also Read: The debate on US presidency | HT Editorial

Foreign policy came up early when Biden referred to Afghanistan and claimed that, under him, for the first time this century, American troops weren’t dying on foreign soil. Trump picked the Afghanistan reference and said, “I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we were getting out with dignity, with strength, with power. He got out, it was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country’s life.” The drop in Biden’s approval ratings began on August 15, 2021, the day the US withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban took Kabul, and he hasn’t recovered since.

The Ukraine debate

Later in the debate, Trump brought back Afghanistan to suggest that the manner of American withdrawal had emboldened Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine and claimed this would never have happened under his watch. He made a similar claim about the war in Gaza, suggesting that Hamas would never have attacked Israel if he was president. “You know why? Because Iran was broke with me. I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything. No money for terror.”

Biden, who was listening intently, responded: “I have never heard so much malarkey in my whole life.” On Ukraine, Biden alleged, instead, that Trump had encouraged Putin to go in and pointed out that Russia had hoped to take Kyiv in five days and wasn’t able to do it.

Asked if Putin’s terms for ending the war — Russia gets to keep the territory it now controls, and Ukraine abandons its bid to join NATO — were acceptable to him, Trump said these terms weren’t acceptable but used the moment to slam Biden for his support to Ukraine, including providing what he said was $200 billion to the country. Trump claimed, “I will have that war settled between Putin and (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy as president-elect before I take office on January 20th. I will have that war settled.”

Calling Putin a “war criminal”, Biden said that the Russian president wanted all of Ukraine and wished to re-establish parts of the Soviet empire. “Do you think he will stop if he takes Ukraine? What do you think happens to Poland? What do you think of Belarus? What do you think happens to those NATO countries?” Biden also said that the money the US was spending on Ukraine was being used to produce weapons in the US.

Ukraine became a peg for a wider debate on European security and the US role across the Atlantic.

Trump claimed that there was an ocean separating America and Europe and the stakes for European countries were much higher in Ukraine than for America. He also took credit for pushing other NATO countries to pay more for their security. “European nations together have spent $100 billion or maybe more than that, less than us. Why doesn’t he call them so you got to put up your money like I did with NATO? I got them to put up hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Biden pointed out that wars in Europe affected American security and hadn’t remained contained in the continent. “Were we ever able to avoid a war in Europe, a major war in Europe? What happens if in fact you have Putin continue to go into NATO? We have an Article Five agreement, attack on one is attack on all…He has no idea what the hell he is talking about.”

The war in Gaza

On the war in West Asia, both candidates competed to show they were more committed to Israel than the other.

Biden reiterated his three-stage peace plan that entailed the exchange of hostages for a ceasefire and blamed Hamas for obstructing the deal. Biden said that he had denied Israel only 2000-pound bombs because he believed these weren’t appropriate for heavily populated areas.

But he doubled down on his support for Israel even as large segments of his base have expressed their opposition to this US support. “I am the guy that organised the world against Iran when they had a full-blown kind of ballistic missile attack on Israel…We saved Israel. We are the biggest producer of support for Israel than anyone in the world.” Biden said that Hamas cannot be allowed to continue and declared that the US was sending its experts and intelligence officials to Israel to show “how they can get Hamas like we did Bin Laden”. “They should be eliminated.”

Trump said it was not Hamas but Israel that wanted to persist with the war and indicated that was fine. In a sign of how the American Right sees Biden as not doing enough for Israel, Trump said, “Israel is the one that wants to go. He said the only one who wants to keep going is Hamas. Actually, Israel is the one, and you should..let them finish the job. He doesn’t want to do it. He has become like a Palestinian. But, they don’t like him because he is a very bad Palestinian. He is a weak one.”

Asked if he would support the creation of an independent Palestinian state — a commitment that Biden has made repeatedly — Trump evaded the question.

Climate and trade

The divergent positions of the two candidates were also visible in the realm of climate crisis.

Responding to a specific question on whether he would do anything to slow the crisis, Trump first chose not to answer it at all, and when reminded he had 38 seconds in his allotted two minutes to take on the question, said, “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever. And we did – we were using all forms of energy, all forms, everything. And yet, during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever.”

Biden hit back, saying he had no idea “where the hell” Trump had been. “I have passed the most extensive..climate change legislation in history… He had not done a damn thing with the environment.” Pointing out that Trump took the US out of the Paris accord while he rejoined it, Biden said, “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it. He wants to undo all that I have done.” It was in this backdrop that Trump said that the Paris pact would cost the US a trillion dollars, “and China nothing, and Russia nothing, and India nothing”. “I ended it because I didn’t want to waste that money because they treat us horribly. We were the only ones who was costing us money. Nobody else was paying into it. And it was a disaster.”

On trade and tariffs, Biden cited economists to claim that Trump’s promise of imposing a 10% tariff, across the board, for all imports coming into the US will have inflationary consequences. “That’s going to cost the average American $2,500 a year and more, because they are going to have to pay the difference in food and all the things that are very important.” He also said the US had the lowest trade deficit with China since 2010.

Trump rebutted the claim on the trade deficit and instead alleged that Biden was on China’s payroll. “He gets paid by China. He’s a Manchurian Candidate. He gets money from China.” He then said that Biden stayed the course with the tariffs imposed during the Trump administration — it is true — because it brought in revenues and saved American industries such as steel. But he slammed Biden on China again, saying, “He has got the worst situation with China. China is going to own us if you keep allowing them to do what they’re doing to us as a country. They are killing us as a country, Joe, and you can’t let that happen. You are destroying our country.”