America’s elections often reverberate through the lives of millions of people overseas who, unlike US voters, have no capacity to influence the result.
So, the critical first debate between President Joe Biden and ex-President Donald Trump, on CNN on Thursday night, will be just as closely watched overseas as in the US.
The showdown comes at a perilous global moment. And Trump's first term was volatile enough. A possible second is already shaping up as even more disorientating for US allies abroad.
The global system that enshrined American power for 80 years is under extreme pressure from adversaries seeking to destroy it, including Russia and the new superpower China. The Kremlin is intensifying its onslaught on Ukraine and threat to wider Europe.
Israel’s war in Gaza, which incessantly threatens to boil over, is a painful vulnerability for a sitting president, as his rival warns World War III could be nigh. Trump’s main critique is that Biden is weak – a caricature that could resonate with some voters. But his own plans are as nebulous as his unlikely promise to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours and his unprovable claim that conflicts in Europe and the Middle East would “never have happened” if he’d been in office. Trump appears convinced that the strength of his personality alone would change the world and make America “more respected” — a trap that many presidents fall into. Foreign powers tend to act on their own national interests and don't just fall into line because a US president says they should.
Trump also seems more at home with authoritarians like Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who dream of crushing US power, than democratic allies America liberated in the last cataclysmic global conflict. Trump’s theory of international relations is that every country should act unilaterally to pursue its own goals. In such a way, big countries like the US, China and Russia will therefore naturally be in charge of sharing the spoils. This leaves no room for seeking multilateral solutions to problems that threaten all, like climate change. And small countries are out of luck.
Some of the ex-president’s former White House officials warn he might try to pull the United States out of NATO, the cornerstone of Western security, if he returns to the White House. Others suspect his hostility to the alliance is just a ruse to get them to pay more for their own defense and is rooted in his view of foreign alliances as a protection racket.
Foreign nations — and many of their leaders — will be watching the debate for clues about whether they can expect a reprieve for Biden’s traditional internationalism or a return of Trump’s "America First" unilateralism that turned the United States from a bulwark of the West’s stability into its most destabilizing force.
