The scheduled June 27 debate between President Biden and former President Trump is a godsend for the country. Choosing the most capable leader for the nation and the free world is more urgent at this moment in history given the coordinated threats to the United States and its allies from Russia, China and Iran with North Korea poised to spring its next round of troublemaking.
Increasing the peril, the two major candidates are perhaps the least qualified men to serve as commander in chief in modern American history. Whether Trump or Biden is reelected, their records on foreign policy and national security will be welcomed by U.S. adversaries, though ever-paranoid communist China will be unhappy with some of the candidates’ shared policies on trade and Taiwan.
The candidates are to be commended for agreeing to the earliest presidential debate in the television era, since it will occur before early voting begins. It would be even more beneficial for voters — and for a healthy democracy — if all debates were completed prior to any balloting.
Significantly, the debate will also occur prior to the Republican and Democratic conventions, giving both parties a last chance to reconsider, and hopefully reverse, their ill-fated choices of nominees. Both party establishments manipulated their normal primary rules for 2024 to tilt the scales in favor of their preferred candidates, the two most unpopular politicians in the country, denying their respective voters a true choice.
Democratic leaders could have persuaded Biden to step aside gracefully rather than risk a third rejection by the voters, and to open the door to a younger, more capable generation. A poor debate performance revealing Biden’s policy faults and personal frailties serendipitously could accomplish that desired result.
The same applies to Trump. Though he will likely debate with feigned vigor and genuine verisimilitude, he cannot erase the perception of foreign policy ignorance and unreliability demonstrated by his perpetual disdain for America’s friends and allies in the new Cold War and his disturbing affinity for tyrants and dictators around the world.
The international situation is so fraught and the qualities of the next president so crucial that the entire first debate should be devoted to foreign policy and national security. While CNN has been highly critical of Trump, often for good reason, it has ignored much negative news that potentially would hurt Biden’s reelection chances, particularly on the massive flood of illegal immigrants over the southern border.
Hopefully, moderator Jake Tapper will play it straight with both candidates and avoid the kind of blatant bias that Candy Crowley displayed in the 2012 debate, when she openly sided with Barack Obama’s distorted version of the facts on Benghazi against Mitt Romney’s criticism. Romney was right, but Crowley’s intervention seemed to embarrass and deflate him for the rest of the debate.
Trump will not wilt if Tapper shows partiality, but is likely to reveal his own vulnerabilities. He will surely remind the television audience of Biden’s Afghanistan debacle in 2021 and the devastating effect it has had on America’s international credibility. Biden will counter that Trump’s 2020 agreement with the Taliban prepared the withdrawal from what both men condemned as a “forever war.” Trump will note that his agreement had built-in safeguards against Taliban cheating, which Biden discarded.
The bottom line, however, is that both knew or should have known that the Afghan military and government were structured to rely on a continuing U.S. role. Once that ended, especially in the haphazard manner Biden ordered despite the U.S. military’s unanimous recommendation, it was inevitable that tragic chaos would follow.
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping observed the Afghanistan betrayal and made their own aggressive calculations based on perceived American weakness under Biden. At their meeting in Beijing in February 2022, they declared their “no limits strategic partnership” against the U.S. and the West, and endorsed each other’s expansionist claims against Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively.
Three weeks later, Russia invaded Ukraine and for two years since, China has provided essential material, economic and diplomatic support for Putin’s campaign. Biden has declined to impose all available sanctions against China as an accomplice to Russia’s aggression, for fear of China’s retaliation. Putin’s debt to Xi will become due and payable when China moves against Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Biden, viscerally intimidated by Putin’s nuclear bluster, failed to deter Russia’s invasion or to provide the weapons Ukraine urgently needs to defeat Russia. Halting and constrained, he gave Kiev only enough weaponry to avoid total collapse.
He follows a similar middling approach on the Israel-Hamas war, enabling Israel to conduct a strong defense but withholding the weapons and strategic support it needs to disable Hamas militarily and politically.
As president, Biden has continued the same sorry record of poor judgment former Defense Secretary Gates described in his 2014 memoir. “He has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
With the new debate schedule, however, there’s one last opportunity to put a stronger candidate at the helm of our country — someone like former South Carolina Governor and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has demonstrated the experience and sound judgment to handle international dangers more effectively than either Biden or Trump. The GOP would earn the gratitude of most of the nation by nominating her at their convention.
Similarly, Democrats should graciously thank Biden for his service and turn to a centrist like Virginia Senator and former Governor Mark Warner, who consistently has taken responsible positions on national security and foreign policy.
If Haley and Warner were the participants in the second debate in September, voters would get the serious and intelligent discussion they deserve, with civility and a fair measure of bipartisan agreement. That positive change in the political dynamic would make America proud again.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute. Follow him on X @BoscoJosephA.