Matt Kroenig: Yaawwwn.
I have usually been up working for hours by the time we do our column, but I am just getting going this morning. I was up late last night watching the presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, and then I stayed up later to provide my initial take on television.
Did you manage to watch the debate?
Emma Ashford: Honestly, I tried. I really did. But I had to give up at about 10 p.m. when I decided that the whole thing was ridiculous. I hear it didn’t get any better after I went to bed, though.
I certainly agree with the consensus that Harris came out of the debate looking better. But I doubt it’s going to shake up the race. At least there was a lot of fodder for us to talk about on foreign policy: tariffs, Israel, Ukraine, and even whether an endorsement from Hungarian leader Viktor Orban is a good thing.
Who do you think won the evening?
MK: To keep myself honest before the debate started, I jotted down what I thought each candidate needed to do. Trump needed to keep coming back to immigration, the economy, and global disorder; these are the issues on which the polls show he has an advantage. He also needed to avoid lengthy personal attacks that could make him look like a bully. Harris needed to be sharp and informed and demonstrate to voters who do not yet know her that she is a plausible leader of the free world and commander in chief.
I honestly thought they both did what they needed to do. It was, therefore, essentially a draw, and I don’t think the exchange is going to move the needle in the polls.
EA: Agreed. Let’s talk foreign policy then.
MK: Could I interrupt first? I am somewhat surprised that you don’t think Harris had the superior performance.
I shared my take on social media Tuesday night and was pilloried by legions of people who thought Harris creamed Trump. Of course, my criteria were different. I was not choosing the better performance, but rather gauging whether the debate would shake up the race. So, I took it as evidence that maybe the people tweeting at midnight are not undecided voters in swing states.
EA: Oh, Harris clearly had the better debate. Her opponent kept going off script and throwing in strange references that make sense if you’re inside the Republican media bubble but just confuse normal folks (such as windmills, Sean Hannity, and rumors about immigrants eating people’s pets). It sounded unhinged! I just don’t think it’s going to shift the needle that much.
The foreign-policy section of the debate is a case in point. Both Harris and Trump tried to use it as a way to appear tougher and more competent. And both are in a strange, semi-incumbent situation, where they can be blamed for foreign-policy mishaps—Trump for his first term, and Harris as a representative of the Biden administration. Harris was undoubtedly more coherent and polished than Trump. But I’m not sure anyone listening necessarily thought her foreign-policy record was better than the former president’s.
MK: I would add that political scientists believe that foreign policy is not a major factor in deciding presidential elections. With ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East, however, I would guess that swing voters were looking for reassurance and maybe more detailed plans about how the candidates planned to solve these crises.
If so, however, they likely left disappointed. The candidates essentially repeated previously stated positions.
EA: Well, Harris has very few stated positions, so it was slightly helpful there. In general, she doubled down on Biden’s existing policies. That was particularly true on Israel, where she emphasized Israeli security strongly over humanitarian issues when asked about Gaza. She did then talk about the need for a two-state solution, but given how disastrous the Biden administration’s policy on Gaza has been, I would have thought she’d try to do more to differentiate herself from him—and to court Arab voters in states like Michigan by appearing more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Honestly, I didn’t see much daylight between Trump’s and Harris’s positions on Israel. Did you?
MK: Did you catch the part where Trump said that Harris hates Israel?
EA: He certainly said that. But where’s the actual difference in policy?
MK: The policy differences didn’t really come out in the debate. But Trump has previously said that he wants Israel to “finish what they started” and “get it over with fast.” I think that means he would back Israel’s war against Hamas with fewer concerns about collateral damage.
Whereas Harris essentially restated the position she laid out in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. She said that she would help Israel defend itself, and also that she would pursue a cease-fire to end the suffering of the Palestinian people—but that would also risk leaving Hamas in power.
These are different visions and I think what Trump was getting at when he said Harris “hates” Israel.
EA: He also said that Israel wouldn’t exist in two years if Harris were president, which is hyperbolic and absurd.
Honestly, the entire theme of many of Trump’s remarks was the notion that he will be a better foreign-policy president because he’s seen as stronger by other leaders. That’s what he’s suggesting on Israel—that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will listen to him because he respects Trump—and it’s the same thing he’s arguing on a lot of other topics, too. On Ukraine, he made a similar case. Harris offered unqualified support for Ukraine, again mostly repeating the Biden administration line. Trump didn’t really give a policy or concrete response to questions about Ukraine, but he did say that all he would need to do to resolve the war was call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It’s personality masquerading as policy.
MK: Well, I see it somewhat differently. As I stated above, the way foreign policy might matter in this election is just the sense that there is global chaos. Harris provided her approach to specific issues and the moderators pressed Trump for his plans.
But Trump’s main message was that the chaos would not be happening if he were president. I think he is right about that. He instinctively understands deterrence. He repeatedly threatened America’s adversaries (remember “fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen”?), and they were afraid to challenge him. He contrasted the relative peace and stability of his first term with the weakening of global deterrence we have seen in recent years under Biden and Harris.
As I argued in a recent column for FP, results matter, and global conditions were mostly better when he was president. He was smart to keep turning the specific foreign-policy questions back to that broader point.
EA: It’s funny how memory works. It’s only been four years since the end of the Trump presidency, but already we remember it as a period of relative economic prosperity and foreign-policy tranquility, while apparently forgetting the pandemic, the trade wars, and all the other chaos that surrounded Trump. I think you’re right that Trump is perceived as having presided over a better and more peaceful time, but the reality was more questionable.
One area where he did actually give a clear response on his future policies was on Ukraine. When asked whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war, he said, “I think it’s in the U.S. best interest to get this war finished and just get it done. All right. Negotiate a deal. Because we have to stop all of these human lives from being destroyed.” It seems to confirm reports that a Trump administration would push Ukraine to negotiate an end to the conflict. I’m surprised you aren’t objecting to that.
MK: To your first point, there were no major wars in Europe and the Middle East during Trump’s first term, and that is a real difference.
On Ukraine, Trump repeated his long-standing position that his goal is peace. He has previously said that he will use the leverage of American aid to Ukraine to force both Zelensky and Putin to negotiate. During the debate, he added the tantalizing promise that he would somehow accomplish that after he is elected but before he even takes office.
Look, my preferred strategy 2.5 years ago was to give Ukraine everything it needed to win the war decisively and take back all of its territory. That is not where we are now.
The Western approach of giving Ukraine enough to fight but not enough to win is (like Trump’s peace plan) also likely going to result in a cease-fire roughly along the current lines—it will just take more time, blood, and treasure to get there. Given the realities, I have been arguing since earlier this year that the Western strategy should change; it should aim to create the conditions to “wind down the conflict.” Recent reports that the United States and Britain may now finally give Ukraine permission to strike Russia is, I am afraid, too little, too late.
EA: Support is declining across the West, whether it’s the election results in eastern Germany or growing practical constraints on weapons shipments. Of the two of them, I thought Trump’s response on Ukraine was better. We’ve reached the point of diminishing returns in Ukraine, and to be frank, we have actually achieved what we set out to do in this conflict. All the way back in 2022, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that U.S. goals were to “help Ukraine succeed as a democratic, independent, sovereign, and prosperous state, able to deter and defend itself against further aggression,” and “to avoid a direct conflict between nuclear superpowers.” We’ve done that! It’s time to start thinking about the endgame in this war.
Harris mostly emphasized everything the Biden administration has done to help Ukraine, but I didn’t hear her say anything about the future. Would a Harris administration continue to double down on the Biden administration’s policies in Ukraine? Or would it, too, be looking for a cease-fire in the first year? It wasn’t clear.
MK: Harris didn’t talk strategy. She talked in normative terms about why Russian aggression is bad and why supporting Ukraine is “righteous.” The current approach of enabling Ukraine to fight but not win is not strategic. It seems to be more about feeling good about oneself for doing the right thing. The moderators pressed Trump on whether he wants Ukraine to win, but they gave Harris a pass on that question. She never articulated a desired end state in Ukraine. The most important step of real strategy is defining clear goals. Trump did that. Harris did not.
We are almost out of time. Should we do a lightning round on other issues?
EA: Hold up, I want to talk about nuclear war first, because Trump also highlighted the nuclear risks of continuing or escalating the war in Ukraine. Harris brushed it off and talked about norms and values. Frankly, Harris sounded much more like you than Trump did! Are you sure you don’t want to switch parties?
MK: Trump said Putin has “nuclear weapons. They don’t ever talk about that.” If anything, I think Biden talks too much about his fear of Putin’s nuclear weapons. Washington should be reminding the world that it, too, is a nuclear power, and that it won’t be cowed by nuclear threats.
I fear that Trump is right, however, that “we’re going to end up in a third world war.” The first front was Russia’s war in Ukraine, backed by China, Iran, and North Korea. The second front has opened up with Iran and its proxies in the Middle East. And now China is engaging in repeated military coercion in the Indo-Pacific (the potential third front) with little U.S. response. If deterrence is not restored quickly, the United States and its allies could be facing a third world war in Eurasia against the new axis of authoritarians.
EA: OK, now the lightning round: lots of other topics to pick up on here. Tariffs, for example.
Really not a good look for the moderators that the only question on U.S.-China relations—probably the most important state-to-state relationship in the world—was on tariffs and trade policy. Both candidates clearly wanted to sound tough on China, but it was basically just a he said-she said exchange on whose economic policies are tougher. What about the Taiwan question: Should the U.S. defend Taiwan? There was nothing on the defense industrial base or the question of supply chain vulnerability.
But Harris somehow found time to list all the former Trump administration officials who now criticize him by name?
MK: Trump parried the criticism, saying they are just disgruntled because he fired them, and that the Biden and Harris administration is keeping too many poorly performing people in their jobs.
EA: It doesn’t say a lot good about Trump’s first term that so many of his advisors profoundly disagreed with him on foreign-policy issues, tried to undermine his preferences, and then ended up writing splashy tell-all books about it. But I’m still not sure I like Democrats openly embracing Dick Cheney and John Bolton—and parroting their foreign-policy views!—just because they think it reflects badly on Trump.
I’m also not sure that Democrats trying to embrace immigration as national security is going to help their cause, either. Is immigration even a foreign-policy issue?
MK: It is a national security issue. Tens of thousands of Chinese citizens, including military-age males, and other people on the terrorist watchlist entered the United States illegally last year. Imagine if Washington allowed tens of thousands of Soviet men to cross the southern border during the Cold War!
The polls also show that voters are concerned and they think Trump can handle the issue better. That is why he kept returning to this issue regardless of the topic, and why Harris and the Democrats are trying to demonstrate their competence on the issue.
EA: But Harris just kept deflecting last night. Every time she was asked about immigration, she started talking about Trump: his convictions, his rambling speeches at rallies, etc. You may well be right that voters increasingly see immigration as a foreign-policy issue; the polling shows that to be the case. But I didn’t see much from Harris to allay those concerns.
Last one: Both candidates basically tried to blame each other for the chaos of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, even as both agreed that withdrawal was the right political choice! That seems like a new political consensus to me.
But then Harris uttered one of the biggest falsehoods of the entire evening, arguing that there are no U.S. forces in combat zones any more. That might come as a surprise to U.S. forces under rocket fire in Iraq and Syria, U.S. naval forces fighting the Houthis in the Gulf, or the troops fighting a variety of counterterrorism missions in Africa. An absolutely ridiculous assertion, and one that suggests a very blasé view of the use of military force.
MK: I still think it would have been better to leave a residual force than allow the country to fall back to the Taliban, but we cannot rewind history.
Trump blamed Biden and Harris for the humiliating and chaotic retreat. Harris retorted that Trump negotiated the deal that led to the U.S. withdrawal, which I found disingenuous. Biden and Harris didn’t simply stick to Trump’s positions on any other issue, from climate to the Iran nuclear deal or anything else. They could have reversed course on Afghanistan if they wanted to. They should accept responsibility for the decision.
EA: Another case of two semi-incumbents trying to shift blame onto the other one. I don’t think they’re going to be particularly successful there. I still want to hear far more about future policies—not just past mistakes.
But like most people who watched the debate, I need to go get some caffeine, or perhaps a hair of the dog. Is it too early for bourbon? There are still two months to Election Day.
MK: Please, just don’t eat any pets in Ohio for breakfast.
The post Did Trump Win the Foreign-Policy Debate? appeared first on Foreign Policy.
