Ahead of the November 5 U.S. presidential election, the first showdown between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump was closely watched in the US and worldwide.
The debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night featured some tense exchanges on foreign policy between the two presidential candidates as the issues stretched across countries and continents.
From Beijing to Budapest, and from Moscow to Kyiv up to the Middle East, the fierce debate touched on sensitive issues such as economy, diplomacy, war and migration.
Mention of Putin in debate angers Russia
Kamala Harris told Donald Trump that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “a dictator who would eat you for lunch.”
The expression “to eat someone for lunch” (or breakfast or any other meal) doesn’t exist in Russian. However, one thing you will find in Moscow is the appetite for a US election result that benefits Russia.
The Kremlin will have noted (with pleasure) that Trump sidestepped whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war in the debate.
“I want the war to stop,” replied Trump.
By contrast, Harris spoke of Ukraine’s “righteous defence” and accused Vladimir Putin of having “his eyes on the rest of Europe”.
Later, the Kremlin claimed to have been irked by all mentions of Putin in the debate.
“Putin’s name is used as one of the instruments for the internal battle in the US,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told me.
“We don’t like this and hope they will keep our president’s name out of this.”
Last week, Putin claimed he was backing Harris in the election and praised her “infectious laugh.”
Later, a Russian state TV anchor clarified that Putin had been “slightly ironic” in his comments.
The presenter dismissed Harris’ political skills and suggested she would be better off hosting a TV cooking show.
I wonder: would it feature “dictators” eating US presidential candidates “for lunch”…?
Trump’s Comments Disturb Ukraine
Donald Trump’s failure to say on the debate stage if he wanted Ukraine to win the war may not have surprised people, but it has added to their worry about what a second Trump term would bring.
Trump has long boasted he could end the conflict in 24 hours, a prospect many Ukrainians assume would mean a terrible deal with Kyiv forced to give up vast swathes of the land Russia has seized over the past two and a half years.
In contrast, Ukrainians will have been reassured by Kamala Harris’s responses, as there is no sign that she would deviate from the current position of staunch American support.
She took credit for her previous role, arguing that she shared critical intelligence with President Zelensky in the days before the full-scale invasion.
She then claimed Trump’s position would have been fatal for Ukraine had he still been in the White House. “If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now.”
Ukraine’s current ministers and senior military have remained deafeningly silent publicly about the debate. They need not weigh in on the figurative US electoral battle while they’re consumed by real fighting at home.
President Zelensky himself has gone the furthest in articulating, albeit somewhat euphemistically, what a Trump victory would mean for Ukrainians.
Speaking to the BBC in July, he said it would mean “hard work, but we are hard workers”.
Trump Taliban remarks spark reactions
America’s longest war ended in August 2021 when it scrambled to pull out the last of its troops and evacuate thousands of civilians as the Taliban swept into Kabul, the Afghan capital, with surprising speed.
That debacle made it into the debate, and, not surprisingly, the issues were dodged, dismissed, and distorted. Harris veered away from the question, “Do you bear any responsibility for the way that withdrawal played out?”
The vice president may not have been involved in decisions regarding Afghanistan in those final fateful weeks, but she made it clear she agreed with President Biden’s decision to leave.
Trump boasted that he talked tough with “Abdul”, the “head of the Taliban” who is “still the head of the Taliban.”
He seemed to be referring to Abdul Ghani Baradar, who signed the withdrawal deal with the US. But he never headed the Taliban and has been sidelined since the Taliban takeover.
The mention immediately prompted a wave of internet memes featuring “Abdul,” with people named Abdul weighing in and others asking, “Who is Abdul?”
Both contenders focused on the flawed deal with the Taliban. The truth is that the Trump team negotiated this exit plan; the Biden team hastily enacted it.
Trump said the deal was good because “we were getting out”. But There were no good ways to go as the departure turned into a disaster, and all sides were to blame.
China uncertain about Harris
Kamala Harris was an unknown quantity to leaders here, and she still is, even after the debate.
She has no track record in China, and on the debate stage, she simply repeated her line that the US, not China, would win the competition for the 21st Century. The vice-president represents something China does not like – uncertainty.
That is why President Xi recently used a visit by US officials to call for “stability” between the two superpowers, perhaps as a message to the current vice president.
The prevailing view among Chinese academics is that she will follow President Biden’s slow and steady diplomatic approach.
But on the debate stage, she went on the attack and accused Donald Trump of “selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernise their military”.
Donald Trump has clarified his plans to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese goods. China retaliated, and numerous studies suggest this caused economic pain for both sides.
This is the last thing China wants right now, as it is trying to manufacture and export goods to rescue its economy.
For Chinese leaders, this debate will have done little to assuage their beliefs that Trump represents something else they don’t like—unpredictability.
However, there is little hope that US policy on China will change significantly, no matter who sits in the White House.
The Middle East watches with keen interest.
The two candidates did not stray much from their previously stated positions last night, even if Trump did add, with characteristic hyperbole, that Israel wouldn’t exist in two years if his opponent becomes president.
In the Middle East, the race for the White House is being keenly watched. With the war in Gaza raging and a ceasefire deal still elusive, some of Benjamin Netanyahu’s critics suspect that Israel’s prime minister is deliberately stalling until after the election in the hope that Trump will be more sympathetic to Israel than Harris.
There’s a whiff of history perhaps being about to repeat itself. In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s campaign team was suspected of urging Iran not to release American hostages held in Tehran until after he had beaten President Jimmy Carter, saying Reagan would give Iran a better deal.
Could something similar be afoot now? Indeed, Netanyahu’s opponents believe he is now the chief obstacle to a ceasefire deal.
Harris has indicated that she might be more challenging on Israel than Joe Biden, something Trump has seized on, saying last night that the vice president “hates Israel”.
Palestinians, deeply sceptical about Donald Trump but dismayed by the Biden administration’s inability to stop the war in Gaza, are possibly inclined to see Harris as the lesser of two evils.
They’ve long since abandoned any notion of the US as an honest broker in the Middle East but will have noticed that Harris, unlike Trump, says she’s committed to Palestinian statehood.
Trump’s praise for Orban makes waves in Hungary
Donald Trump showered praise on the Hungarian prime minister.
“Viktor Orban, one of the most respected men, they call him a strong man. He’s a tough person. Smart…”
Hungarian pro-government media picked up on the compliment. “Huge recognition!” ran the headline in Magyar Nemzet.
But government-critical news portal 444 quoted Tim Walz, running mate of Harris.
“He [Trump] was asked to name one world leader with him, and he said Orban. Dear God. That’s all we need to know.’
Viktor Orban backed Trump for president in 2016 and strongly supported him again in November.
The two men met for the second time this year on 12 July at Trump’s home in Florida, after Orban visited Kyiv, Moscow, and Beijing quickly.
The Orban government is banking on Trump’s victory and his ability to swiftly end the war in Ukraine.
“Things are changing. If Trump comes back, there will be peace. He will establish it without the Europeans,” Balazs Orban, Viktor Orban’s political director, reportedly said in July.
