Garvan Walshe is a former national and international security policy adviser to the Conservative Party.
As Harris, having drawn lots, bounded in from the right of the stage, a much larger, slower-moving man stiffly made his way to his podium on the left. They shook hands three quarters of the way across the stage, an arthritic New York brontosaurus confronted by an agile velociraptor from California.
Trump’s advisers had given him one clear instruction: keep calm and talk about immigration. He followed the second half of that advice to the letter.
Talking of an America besieged by Venezuelans and ripping into Harris’s record as border Czar (Harris’s campaign say her mission was limited to addressing the root causes of immigration, not border policing), Trump was able to start landing blows, while Harris appeared halting and nervous on the economy.
She recovered her composure on abortion, with Trump floundering by taking credit for appointing anti-abortion judges to the supreme court, while trying to avoid responsibility for their overruling the Roe v Wade judgment that protected abortion in the United States.
Then he lost his cool: claiming that babies would be “executed” after they were born if Harris had her way, that immigrants were eating pet cats and that she hates Israel.
For much of the debate, Harris laid into Trump personally, quoting generals who called him a disgrace, and foreign leaders who laughed at him. It made him furious, and he was unable to control himself, at one point portraying Ashley Babbit, shot by the Secret Service while storming the Capitol, as a martyr, and in an example of what psychologists call projection, accusing Biden of being the pay of Ukraine, China and even Russia.
When the moment came to show he had international support, Trump cited Viktor Orbán. That’s not much of a surprise, since Orbán has been positioning himself for some time as the only European leader who could talk to Trump.
More interesting was the reason Trump gave: He suggested the Hungarian had said that Trump made other countries afraid. This is Trump’s appeal to Americans in foreign policy: it’s a bad and dangerous world out there, but I’m scary enough to cope with it, and I’ll be on your side. It was no coincidence, Trump argued, that the major wars — in Ukraine, in Gaza, broke out on Biden’s watch.
There is something to be said for this argument: if the law of the jungle applies, a powerful United States can command respect, a weak one will be taken advantage of.
One can imagine George W Bush, John McCain or Nikki Haley making that kind of case. Other countries might grumble, but US economic and military dominance is such that their opposition will be limited.
Even at the height of tensions over Iraq, for example, France and Germany limited themselves to refusing to join America’s war. They didn’t coordinate a European international payments system, for example, to weaken the dollar’s influence; or pursue a genuinely independent European military.
But that was because the United States still guaranteed the security of Europe through NATO. Its presence in Europe prevented European countries from developing armed forces that would allow them to act independently of America. Trump instead sees NATO as a protection racket through which the US military is hired, rather than an alliance protecting American as well as European security.
Here Trump’s self-image as a new Teddy Roosevelt, a bully — but our bully — clashes with his narcissism.
He wants to be known as the guy who does deals to end wars.
He ended the war in Afghanistan, by bypassing the Afghan government, releasing 5000 Taliban terrorists, and handing the Biden administration the job of administering this defeat. He would “end” the war in Ukraine he says, but there’s little doubt that would come at Ukraine’s expense. Asked if he wanted Ukraine to win this war, he refused to answer. His interest is in the photo opportunity of peace, rather than lasting international order.
Pressed on Ukraine, he invoked the dangers of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Some might say it’s prudent to pay heed to Russian nuclear threats, but an American president cannot be seen to acknowledge them without undermining nuclear deterrence.
Harris meanwhile said little on foreign policy, except giving the impression that hers would be a conventional muscular internationalist administration. She repeated her promise to equip the United States with the “most lethal” fighting force it has ever had, and to uphold international norms (she almost said international law, but checked herself at the last minute).
This left her open to a critique of naivety.
The Biden-Harris administration implemented Trump’s deal with the Taliban — it could have chosen to keep a relatively small number of troops there, renegotiate it, and might have escaped an ignominious defeat.
The Biden White House didn’t think Ukraine could be defended, and advised Kyiv to prepare for guerrilla war against the Russians. Only Zelenskyy’s physical courage, and urgent weapons supplies by the UK and Poland shamed them into providing more support. When it comes to supplying weapons — first tanks, and then fighter jets — the White House joined Germany in a turtle tag-team to see who can be slowest. Even now it prevents Ukraine from using the missiles supplied to actually strike Russia — while Russia grinds down the Ukrainian army and devastates its electric and heating infrastructure.
With more American weapons, the war would already have been over. Had they been sent in 2021, after Russia had practiced sending troops to Ukraine’s border in April, but before the real deployment began in the winter, the war might not have started. Instead, Putin interpreted limited US support as a signal Biden wouldn’t back Ukraine to the hilt. Putin understood the US correctly — he only underestimated the courage and determination of Ukrainians.
Yet Trump’s own weakness, and obsession with the image of dealmaking, meant he couldn’t make this traditional Republican argument. Instead, Harris could say Putin would eat him for lunch. And she was right.
