[ad_1]
HONG KONG — The first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump offered little reassurance to America’s uneasy allies.
The two candidates have clearly different ideas about how to tackle the challenges of a world plagued by wars, rising geopolitical tensions and doubts about America’s commitment to longtime partners.
The contrast was on display at times Thursday night, but it was Biden’s performance that stole the headlines.
The debate was watched around the world by allies worried about their future relations with the United States and by authoritarian regimes seeking to challenge the U.S.-led world order, but neither candidate seemed impressed.
“Personal attacks, hazy memories, mocking each other… this debate has been very entertaining for many Chinese,” Chinese nationalist commentator Hu Xijin said in a post on X.
“Objectively speaking, the poor performance of these two old men was a negative advertisement for Western democracy.”
But the spotlight has been largely on Biden, whose shaky performance has already prompted calls from within his party for him not to go ahead with the campaign.
The possibility of Trump returning to the White House is worrying many of America’s allies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, whose relations with the United States have often been strained during his presidency.
A former British government official who worked with Biden for many years said he was struck by the president’s “physical deterioration”, including his thinness, weak voice and “confused and slurred responses”.
“I was absolutely horrified by how badly he performed,” said a former senior British government official. “I expected he’d get names wrong, get dates wrong, use the wrong words, but it was just disastrous.”
Former officials said Biden’s debate performance had forced British diplomats to prepare more urgently for the possibility of facing Trump again in the White House.
“The clear prospect that he will still be the Democratic nominee, combined with how terrible his performance was yesterday, means that most people think the chances of Trump 2.0 becoming president have increased significantly in the last 24 hours. And that’s really scaring people,” the former senior British government official said of private conversations he had today with senior British government officials.
The official added: “People are already going to be very worried because President Obama said the U.S. could survive one term of Donald Trump, because they’re going to assume that if Biden becomes president, his chances of winning are going to be pretty slim.”
The verdict of the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz was that a “wandering Biden and a sick Trump” had led to a “sad night for America.”
And British tabloid The Sun ran just one word across the top of its website on Friday: “Joe Matos-ification.”
Robinder Sachdev, director of the Delhi-based think tank Imagineer Institute and founder of the nonprofit US-India Political Action Committee, told NBC News that Biden’s “low, raspy, growling voice” meant he “missed an opportunity to persuade not only American voters but also viewers in India.”
“This night will not be forgotten. The Democrats must now rethink their choice, and Germany must prepare full speed for an uncertain future. If we do not take responsibility for European security now, no one will,” Norbert Röttgen, a veteran German lawmaker and former chairman of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, said in a post on X.
Kim Darroch, who served as Britain’s ambassador to the US under Trump, said Biden “now looks unlikely to win” and should stand down after a “historically terrible performance”.
“Trump’s answers, if you listen closely, are a mixture of wild exaggeration and complete fantasy, and have absolutely no relation to policy,” Darroch told Sky News. “So his performance was pretty bad, but it wasn’t stammering, disconnected nonsense, it was fluent, confident nonsense.”
Policy clashes
Biden has sought to promote U.S. global leadership and strengthen ties with allies around the world, particularly in response to growing threats from China and Russia.
Trump, who has praised authoritarian leaders such as Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, wants a more subdued role while the United States focuses on domestic problems.
During Thursday’s debate, Biden criticized his rival’s approach to Putin, and as the foreign policy discussion focused on Ukraine and the Middle East war, Trump said the president’s Israel policy effectively means “very bad Palestinians.”
Trump argued that the world has become a more dangerous place since Biden took office.
Putin has said he would end the war with Ukraine only if Russia keeps all Ukrainian territory it has already gained and if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky drops his demand for Ukraine to join NATO, the U.S.-led military alliance.
Trump said he would not accept those terms, but “this is a war that should never have started.”
“I will resolve the war between President Putin and President-elect Zelensky before I take office on January 20th,” Trump said, without specifying how he would do so.
He also criticized the $175 billion in military aid the United States has provided to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion of the country in February 2022, including $60 billion in arms and other aid this spring that Zelenskiy has said is crucial to his victory over Putin.
Trump argued that European countries should provide more aid because of their physical proximity to the conflict zones.
Biden said Trump was being foolish in curbing aid to Ukraine because it could be just the beginning of Putin’s territorial ambitions.
“Do you think he’ll stop once we take Ukraine? What do you think will happen to Poland?”
Poland is a member of NATO, whose 32 member nations have pledged to defend each other if attacked, and President Trump has threatened to pull out of the 75-year-old alliance if member nations don’t increase their defense spending.
“We pay everybody’s bills,” he said.
The Kremlin said Putin did not wake up in the middle of the night to watch the debate, adding that it had no comment. “We would never interfere in an American election campaign,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, a view not shared by Western intelligence agencies.
Both candidates have voiced strong support for Israel, and as in the case of Ukraine, Trump has said that Israel “would not have been invaded” if he were president, a claim that can neither be proven nor disproved.
She also said Biden has not done enough to support Israel, saying, “He’s become like the Palestinians, and they hate him because he’s a very bad Palestinian.”
Biden has lost support from the left over the war’s devastating toll on civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Biden pushed back against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that the US was withholding weapons, saying the US had provided Israel “all the weapons it needed, when it needed them.”
The only exception, he said, was a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs.
He also said he coordinated the defense of Israel during an Iranian missile attack in April. “We saved Israel,” Biden said.
Both candidates said that if the other won the election it would lead to World War III.
“His military policies are insane,” Trump said of Biden, adding, “The wars will never end as long as we’re with him.”
World leaders such as Xi Jinping, Putin and Kim Jong Un “neither respect nor fear him,” he added.
“If you want war, let Putin take Kiev,” Biden replied.
Biden also defended America’s global image, saying the US was not a “nation in decline” as Trump had claimed, but rather “the envy of the world”.
For the rest of the world on Friday, it was highly controversial.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com.
[ad_2]
Source link
