President Biden’s poor performance during Thursday night’s presidential debate and former President Donald J. Trump’s shrug caused anxiety among America’s allies.
Trump has frequently disparaged NATO and even threatened to withdraw the United States from the alliance, and during the debate he did nothing to assuage European concerns about his antipathy toward the alliance.
When Biden asked him whether he would withdraw from NATO, Trump did not answer and just shrugged.
“I was very worried before this debate and I’m even more worried now,” said Jana Puglierin, director of the German office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Trump may or may not want to formally withdraw from NATO, but he has all the tools to undermine NATO.”
At the heart of NATO is Article 5 of its charter, which obliges each member to defend all others. “Deterrence is all about credibility, and fundamentally Article 5 is always about what you do,” Ms. Puglien said. “So it’s up to the president of the United States to turn it into a credible threat.”
She said European countries that rely on the U.S. promise of protection fear Trump might try to forge bilateral ties with Europe “and make it transactional,” given his skepticism of alliances.
Camille Grand, a former NATO assistant secretary general, said people around Trump in a second term would “want to translate his instincts into policy rather than say, ‘Mr. President, this is a bad idea.'”
“But the worst thing is his unpredictability, and Europe is at war,” he added. In peacetime, he said, there would always be another opportunity for a summit or relationship building. “But in war, if he suddenly overnight proposes a peace solution or makes the American security guarantee meaningless, that would be much harder to deal with,” Mr. Grande said.
Trump boasted Thursday evening that he had forced European countries to increase military spending, despite Better development under BidenGrand said Europeans have recognized that they have to do more on defense and, in fact, have increased their annual defense spending by $130 billion since 2014.
But whoever is president, “we need to make sure we can defend Europe with less American force.”
NATO supporters are not the only international observers to be uneasy about the debate. Mr Trump roars and Mr. Biden That has analysts worried — and not just about who might win the November election.
Sergey Radchenko, historian at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington Written on X“This election has done more damage to American democracy than Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping could have hoped,” he said, referring to the leaders of Russia and China, America’s most powerful rivals.
“I worry about the image that China projects to the outside world,” he continued. “It’s not an image of leadership. It’s an image of decline.”
Whoever is elected president, the United States faces major global challenges – in Asia, there is a rising China and a nuclear-armed North Korea, recently backed by Putin; in Europe, there is Russia’s war on Ukraine; in the Middle East, there is Israel’s war with Hamas, which threatens to spread to southern Lebanon and even Iran.
There was little substantive foreign policy content in the heated debate, with Trump continuing to insist, without explanation, that he could have stopped Putin from invading Ukraine or Hamas from invading Israel, and that he could have ended both conflicts quickly.
Mr Biden mentioned his efforts to rally allies to help Ukraine against Russia. “I got 50 other countries around the world to support Ukraine, including Japan and South Korea,” he said.
François Heisbourg, a French analyst, said that for some, the debate made a Trump presidency more likely than it already was. “So on all issues, the debate confirmed European concerns, some of which were already baked into people’s thinking.”
“People heard Trump say he wanted to cut aid to Ukraine, so that will be a focus of the debate,” he said, while Trump also expressed his liking for Putin as a strong leader.
On Israel and Gaza, however, “I’m not sure it makes much of a difference,” Mr. Heisberg said. “You can’t move the embassy to Jerusalem twice.”
In addition to existing concerns about Trump’s unpredictability, which the debate only confirmed, there are new concerns about Biden’s ability to govern. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski offered one of the harshest assessments. He said in a social media post Comparing Biden to Marcus Aureliusthe Roman emperor “botched the succession by passing the baton to his irresponsible son Commodus, whose disastrous reign led to Rome’s decline.”
Mr Sikorski added: “It’s important to manage your life into the sunset.”
In Ukraine, the noise about the debate echoed on Friday.
Speaking of Mr. Biden, Bogdan Butkevich“His main task is to convince voters of his energy and willingness to govern,” the famous radio host wrote on social media. But he added: “He has failed to do this. Therefore, the possibility of another Democratic candidate replacing him has increased.”
Trump said he found it unacceptable for the Kremlin to retain occupied territory, giving some some comfort. Ukrainian news outlet Kyiv Independent ran a headline that read “Trump rejects Putin’s peace terms while Biden unsettles Democrats.”
Russian media portrayed the debate as a sign of American weakness and confusion. Russian lawmaker Dmitry Novikov said on a state television talk show on Friday that the outcome of the debate was “in our favor.” “Internal instability in the adversary is always a good thing,” he said.
In Asia, the debate has once again raised serious questions about how American politics affects stability. Trump’s presidency has deeply unsettled alliances in the region and countries that want to see the United States balance China’s influence and curtail its influence. North KoreaNorth Korea, which has strong nuclear ambitions, has spent the past four years trying to rebuild relations with Washington.
“This is clearly a victory for Trump and a fatal blow to Biden’s campaign,” said Lee Byung-chul, a professor at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul.
He added: “We must now prepare for a second Trump administration.”
Japan is the main U.S. ally in Asia, and Japanese officials have all but insisted they are happy to work with whichever country the U.S. chooses. But Trump’s comments during the debate that he does not want to spend money to protect allies are likely to reignite concerns that he views international relationships as transactional rather than enduring.
“I guess Japanese policymakers think, ‘Well, there’s a good chance Trump will be elected, so we have to solidify institutional ties as much as possible so he can’t undermine them,’ ” said Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo. “It’s like tying yourself to a mast that might sink soon, so it’s a false illusion of security.”
India has worked in recent years to overcome long-standing distrust and expand military and trade ties with Washington. While Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a good relationship with Trump during his presidency, the Indian establishment sees Biden as a steady hand who understands how alliances work and how to contain geopolitical risks.
Dr. Tara Kasa, a former senior official of India’s National Security Council, pointed out that Trump is unpredictable and may change his position – for example, if Beijing offers him better trade conditions, he may change his current tough stance on China. This uncertainty makes it difficult for India to weigh up because India borders China and has a long-term competition with Beijing.
“We are hedging against China right now,” she said. “Because you are not sure what is going to happen in the U.S.”
In China, the presidential debate was a trending topic on the social media platform Weibo. Chinese state media was largely blunt, reporting on the candidates’ remarks — and their lack of a handshake — without much comment.
Shen Dingli, an international relations scholar in Shanghai, said the debate only reinforced what the Chinese government has long believed: that no matter who is the next president, U.S. policy toward China will only become tougher.
It was clear after Thursday’s debate that few Asian analysts are optimistic about the outcome of the U.S. election.
“Where are the good people? Where are the brave people?” said Kasit Piromya, a former Thai foreign minister and ambassador to Washington, adding that Southeast Asian countries must have their own foreign policy vision.
“Why should I wait until Trump gets bad?” he said.
Reported by Damian Cave, Huang Ruili, Choi Sang-hoon, Vera Wang, Camille Elemia, Mujib Mashar, Ségolène Le Stradick, Mark Santora and Oleg Matznev.
