It was called ‘“the worst debate in American history” by more than one pundit and cable news anchor.
The graphic descriptions of Tuesday night’s presidential debate between incumbent Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden began mounting on social media and spilling over into Wednesday’s headline stories. The most used: “train wreck” and “dumpster fire.” CNN’s Dana Bash figured it was the night to break protocol: “I’m just going to say it like it is. That was a shit show.”
The highly anticipated event devolved early into bickering and interruptions, with moderator, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, having to reprimand the president several times to wait his turn, reminding him at one point that his campaign had agreed to the terms for letting his opponent speak for two minutes, uninterrupted, during responses. The evening rolled over the broad domestic issues that only emphasized today’s domestic divide: Trump’s Supreme Court nomination, the coronavirus pandemic, economic recession, racial strife. Rather than leading to a substantive discussion on the candidates’ records or plans, each question immediately gave way to squabbling and sharp personal attacks. Biden called Trump a “racist” and a “clown.” Trump repeatedly and aggressively demanded Biden talk about his son Hunter’s business in Ukraine; at one point he sneered that Hunter was “kicked out of the military” for “cocaine use.”To say the least, foreign policy, especially in any manner that Quincy Institute staff had hoped would be explored Tuesday night, was not on the menu. Aside from a rapid volley about Trump blaming China for COVID and his early response during the pandemic, there was no talk about the trade war or increasing tensions with Beijing. The words Iran or North Korea never passed their lips. The only mention of Russia was Trump insisting one could not trust their COVID numbers. The issue of climate change and alternative energy actually invoked China, for a minute. (Trump blamed them for lagging in pollution control; QI’s Rachel Odell was able to provide a speedy riposte).But given the way issues like health care became an excuse for launching ad hominem attacks or cast each other’s leadership in apocalyptic terms, it might be best they didn’t talk about foreign policy last night.
"For once we might be the big winners if this debate concludes without ever mentioning our issue area!" declared Eli Clifton, QI's investigative reporter.
But there was a more serious takeaway by members of the Quincy Institute staff: it was clear from the embarrassing spectacle that the United States needs to be taking care of its house first, before telling other countries what to do. In other words, that “shining light on the hill” needs a massive light bulb change.“The only right thing is to put a pause on our democracy promotion programs until we've fixed things at home,” noted QI Executive Vice President Trita Parsi. Earlier he had tweeted, “Imagine the number of countries panicking that we might decide to export democracy to them.”The idea that the world was watching — in horror, or laughing, possibly both -— was not lost.“The debate said all it needed to say about foreign policy. Who could watch it and think the United States is the indispensable nation that must dominate the world by force?” quipped Stephen Wertheim, Deputy Director of Programs and Research for QI.QI President Andrew Bacevich, blaming Trump for the mortifying display, noted how the debate was just a symptom of America’s civil degradation. He invoked the first televised presidential debate in 1960. “From Kennedy vs. Nixon to Trump vs. Biden: one expression of American decline.”
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is Editorial Director of Responsible Statecraft and Senior Advisor at the Quincy Institute.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participate in their first 2020 presidential campaign, September 29, 2020. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
On NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken struck back at claims that U.S. officials let Israel dodge American laws regarding weapons transfers.
“We don’t have double standards,” Blinken said. “We treat Israel, one of our closest allies and partners, just as we would treat any other country, including in assessing something like international humanitarian law and its compliance with that law.”
Luckily for observers, Blinken has left a substantial public record against which one can test this claim. His own department’s statements and actions undercut this supposed impartiality. Indeed, all available evidence indicates that U.S. officials hold Israel to a lower standard than just about any other country.
Take the State Department’s long-awaited report on Israel’s compliance with international law in Gaza, which came out late last week. The administration found that Israel had likely used U.S. weapons to commit war crimes but said there wasn’t enough evidence to draw clear conclusions about specific incidents. The upshot is that, from the Biden administration’s perspective, there is no legal reason to cut off U.S. arms transfers to Israel at this time.
In Blinken’s telling, any more forceful conclusions would have been impossible given the “incredibly complex military environment” in Gaza. “It’s very, very difficult in the heat of war to make a definitive assessment about any individual incident,” he said Sunday.
But that “very, very difficult” operating environment didn’t stop the State Department from drawing strong conclusions about Hamas’ actions in the very same report. In a three-page defense of Israel’s campaign — a feature not present in similar reports on other states — U.S. officials found with great clarity that Hamas uses human shields, intentionally targets civilians, and “consistently violates” the laws of war.
Observers are left to conclude that the U.S. has somehow attained more definitive inside information about Hamas than Israel, one of America’s closest military partners. This is in part why an independent panel of legal experts and former officials said the report was “at best incomplete, and at worst intentionally misleading in defense of acts and behaviors that likely violate international humanitarian law.”
“Once again, the Biden Administration has stared the facts in the face — and then pulled the curtains shut,” the panel, which includes two former senior officials at the State Department, wrote in a statement.
Notably, Blinken’s ‘fog-of-war’ standard only appears to apply to Israel. “In other contexts, the U.S. does not find it difficult at all to assess violations of international law,” Sarah Yager, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch, told reporters Monday.
Yager pointed to the case of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, about which it took Blinken less than a month to announce that “war crimes had been committed by Putin’s forces.” “Based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine,” he said.
Indeed, Blinken has even accused Russia of ongoing war crimes in Ukraine, suggesting that he’s capable of making such determinations on the fly. “Russian forces and officials have committed – and continue to commit – war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine,” he said in early 2023.
The standard also doesn’t seem to apply to the warring factions in Sudan. Seven months after the start of a brutal civil war in that country, Blinken declared that both sides “have committed war crimes” in the latest conflict, a conclusion he based on the State Department’s “careful analysis of the law and available facts.”
In the cases of Sudan and Russia, the State Department leaned heavily on reports from NGOs and human rights advocates, who conducted key investigations of alleged crimes. As it happens, those very same organizations haverepeatedlyfound that Israel isviolating international law in its campaign in Gaza, but Blinken has apparently chosen to ignore their conclusions.
“What the [report] says is that it's very difficult in these circumstances where security partners are engaged in armed conflict for the United States to assess violations of international law,” Yager said. “We know it's difficult because we did that work, and we presented the evidence to the U.S. government.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a veiled threat to use nuclear weapons against Western states during a commemoration of Russia’s World War II victory in Moscow Thursday.
“Russia will do everything to prevent a global clash,” Putin said. “But at the same time, we will not allow anyone to threaten us.”
“Our strategic forces are always in a state of combat readiness,” the Russian leader added, referencing his country’s most powerful nuclear weapons. The comments came just days after Russia announced it would conduct military exercises to prepare for the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons, which are designed for attacks on soldiers rather than population centers.
The announcement set off alarm bells in Washington, which has sought to carefully avoid any escalation to a direct NATO-Russia war. The State Department called the move “reckless” but soothed some nerves by saying the U.S. did not anticipate any short-term use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Putin’s latest moves are nonetheless part of a notable increase in Russian belligerence toward the West this past week, which Moscow claims is a response to Western efforts to rush weapons to Ukraine.
The situation increasingly resembles an escalation spiral, an international relations term for when two sides inch closer to direct war through gradual moves aimed at deterring the other party. As the war has dragged on, hawkish elements in the West and Russia have each succeeded in pressing their leaders to take steps that were once viewed as likely to result in further escalation.
Fearing a potential Ukrainian defeat, western Europe and the U.S. have increasingly signaled that the proverbial gloves are off. Britain recently declared that it had no issue with Ukraine using British weapons to strike Russian territory. “Just as Russia is striking inside Ukraine, you can quite understand why Ukraine feels the need to make sure it's defending itself,” British Foreign Minister David Cameron said last week.
And Cameron is right in a narrow, moral sense. But the practical wisdom of that greenlight is unclear given Russia’s predictable response, which was to threaten retaliation against U.K. military targets if any British weapons did indeed strike Russian territory.
Even if Britain had no intention of being dragged into the war, Russia’s threat took British views out of the picture entirely. It is now up to Ukraine — a country facing long odds in a desperate, defensive war — to decide whether it can stomach the risk of further escalation.
The U.S. is more attuned to the risks inherent to Britain’s approach. While Washington did quietly give Kyiv long-range missiles, the Biden administration also made clear that the weapons could only be used against targets inside of Ukrainian territory, a restriction aimed at threading the needle between Russia’s red lines and Ukraine’s needs.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been less careful. Macron responded to Ukraine’s battlefield struggles by suggesting that France could send its own troops into the fight, raising the specter of direct war between two nuclear-armed states.
In this case, Russia shot back at Macron by promising to attack any French troops that show up at the frontline. “If the French appear in the conflict zone, they will inevitably become targets for the Russian armed forces,” said a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry Wednesday.
From Russia’s perspective, all of these recent moves are likely about restoring deterrence. But that doesn’t make them any less terrifying to us in the West. And Russia feels the same when we respond to that fear with our own efforts to restore deterrence.
This should all serve as a reminder that the potential of a broader Russia-NATO war never went away. We’ve simply gotten used to living in a time of great danger. In practice, the chance of a cataclysmic mistake is growing more and more likely by the day.
In other diplomatic news:
— Following a meeting with Macron Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an international truce during the Olympic Games this summer, according to Politico. Macron thanked Xi for signing onto his idea of an Olympic truce and hinted that the pause could provide an opening to push for peace talks in Ukraine. “Maybe this could be an opportunity to work toward a sustainable resolution [of conflicts] in the full respect of international law,” the French leader said. Xi will have a chance to pitch the idea to Putin directly later this month when the Russian leader is scheduled to visit China.
— The only way to end the Ukraine war is through a temporary truce followed by peace talks, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said Monday, according to Reuters. Crosetto brushed off the idea that Putin hasn’t actually shown a desire to negotiate, saying “that is a good reason for us to try harder.” “We mustn’t give up any possible path of diplomacy, however narrow,” he argued, adding that Western sanctions and weapons had failed to deliver a decisive battlefield victory.
— Britain moved to expel Russia’s defense attache in London over allegations that the officer was using his military post for spying, according to AP News. The announcement came alongside new restrictions on diplomatic visas for future Russian envoys. Russia promised to respond “in kind.”
— Russian authorities arrested an American soldier in Vladivostok on charges of theft in early May, according to the New York Times. While U.S. officials have not formally designated the soldier as wrongfully detained, the arrest led to speculation that Russia is seeking further bargaining chips for prisoner swaps with the United States.
U.S. State Department news:
In a Wednesday press conference, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller strongly discouraged Americans from traveling to Russia given the risk of wrongful arrest. “Russia has detained Americans for not legitimate law enforcement reasons but because it wants to hold them essentially as hostage,” Miller said. “Americans should not, for any reason, travel to Russia.
TikTok and its parent company ByteDance this week sued to block a new law banning the social media app, claiming it is unconstitutional because it infringes upon Americans’ right to free speech and prevents access to lawful information.
The law, passed in April, would ban TikTok in the U.S. if ByteDance does not liquidate its American assets within nine to 12 months — citing national security concerns about the app. National security has been at the forefront of U.S. bans on Chinese tech, such as the ban on selling telecom equipment and services from Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese providers.
Another concern about TikTok — data privacy and security — is not entirely unfounded, as about 150 million Americans use it. However, China does not need apps like TikTok to collect that data. U.S. consumer data can be bought on the open market from data brokers, including precise location and financial transaction data. Even the U.S. National Security Agency has leveraged data brokers to collect Americans’ data. Anonymized data is also not the fail-safe measure that it is touted to be, as it can be de-anonymized using data that is not considered personally identifiable, like sex, ZIP code, and birthdate. In some ways, TikTok even collects less private information than Meta. In short, TikTok is no more a unique threat to data privacy and security than are data brokers and other American social media sites.
Banning TikTok or any other Chinese business in the U.S. won’t protect U.S. citizens’ data from exploitation. The sheer profitability of U.S. citizens’ data for businesses — both buyers and sellers – is undergirded by the lack of protections for collecting data or compensating individuals for their data. Solving this problem eventually would require federal-level, comprehensive data privacy and protection regulations. Without such regulation, there is little incentive for social media companies — Chinese or not — to responsibly buy, sell, collect, or otherwise exploit user data. If the U.S. government’s goal is to protect private American citizens’ data to enhance national security, then it must legislate acceptable limits on the exploitation of Americans’ data, perhaps even following a framework like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
Some believe that banning TikTok and other Chinese apps in the United States could force China to provide more equitable access to the Chinese market and put pressure on China to change unfair business practices towards foreign firms, like intellectual property theft, opaque subsidization and preferential treatment, raids, and fines. These inequities have long been a major concern and subject of high-level conversations between U.S. and Chinese officials. However, the U.S. bans on Chinese businesses so far appear to have neither compelled Chinese businesses nor the Chinese government to change their behaviors, instead spurring them to reduce reliance on the U.S. market and focus on exploring alternative markets.
Bringing China and the U.S. to a common point of view or set of rules on business practices is a challenge that is rooted fundamentally in a lack of trust. American businesses have been able to thrive in non-sensitive industries in China and vice versa. But selling Coca-Cola and unbranded consumer goods are not particularly high-trust or strategic endeavors.
The U.S. understands what economic dominance in strategic sectors can do for power projection. U.S. power has often extended its grasp into strategic private businesses without those businesses having any mandate to do so. They achieved their unintended importance via the free market in pursuit of higher profits. Washington is likely concerned that Beijing will weaponize its burgeoning economic might in technology, much like the U.S. has in the past. For example, in the case of spy Xu Yanjun, the FBI was able to issue a warrant to collect information from his Gmail and iCloud accounts, which provided key information necessary to convict him. The SWIFT messaging system and dollar hegemony have also played major roles in enforcing U.S. sanctions, often used by the U.S. in pursuit of greater national security.
Washington’s penchant to pull these levers in the name of national security makes the U.S. harder to trust, as does the possibility of China pulling similar levers via apps and telecommunications equipment. Using “national security” as a sufficient reason to target Chinese businesses is unlikely to prompt China to see the U.S. as a responsible partner in high-trust industries like tech.
History demonstrates that the Chinese government won’t be pressured into changing its unfair business practices or initiating widespread pro-market economy reforms. However, economic reforms may be on the horizon in China, so the U.S. should try to maintain a base level of trust or understanding so that American businesses might benefit from those reforms.
The U.S. and China should still seek to expand collaboration in less sensitive sectors of their economies like entertainment (movies, television, gaming), education, and tourism. A joint-venture public television channel in both countries, for example, like the Franco-German Arte channel could be mutually beneficial for stimulating tourism, fostering understanding between both cultures, and familiarizing both sides with the business practices and needs of the other.
Ultimately, the willingness to use national security as a reason to ban Chinese apps like TikTok will neither improve American national security nor Chinese business practices. While data privacy and security are legitimate concerns, there are regulations the United States can enact that would avoid escalating tensions between the two countries. To foster trust and encourage more equitable economic relations, Washington should consider alternative approaches to build trust and pave the way for constructive dialogue and cooperation.