Biden did promise to “get China to play by international laws,” an area where Beijing has arguably benefited from Trump’s America First strategy and suspicion of multilateral organizations. However, he offered little insight into how he would actually go about doing that, especially as China is far stronger both internationally and domestically than it was the last time Biden was in office, beyond working with allies to try and rein Beijing in.
Unlike the vice presidential debate, no parts of Thursday’s live broadcast were censored in China, presumably because the candidates’ comments were not seen as harmful to Beijing.
A case in point was Biden’s attempt to discuss the South China Sea, where Beijing has been building up islands and expanding its military footprint. Rather than outline the dangers posed by Beijing’s expansionism, Biden skirted over the issue, merely saying that US planes would “fly through” Chinese identification zones, something that the US military has done at increased levels under Trump.
“He’s legitimized North Korea,” Biden said, referring to a country that has existed since 1948 and has a seat at the United Nations. “He has talked about his good buddy, who is a thug, a thug.”
While Trump took credit for a rapprochement with North Korea that many view as largely driven by South Korean President Moon Jae-in, he rightly pointed to the failure of previous administrations’ posturing to actually rein in Pyongyang’s weapons program.
“They left me a mess, North Korea was a mess,” Trump said. “There was a very dangerous period in my first three months, before we worked things out a little bit.”
Although North Korea is not the flashpoint that it appeared to be at the start of Trump’s term, actual flashpoints for foreign conflict were largely ignored — for all both candidates’ tough talk on China, neither mentioned Beijing’s posturing towards Taiwan, to which the Trump administration this week agreed to sell more weapons. Also unmentioned were ongoing human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the crackdown in Hong Kong, and growing calls to boycott the 2022 Olympics in China over such measures.
The impact of the pandemic is such that it would have made sense for the debate to pivot back to this — which it often did — but too often foreign policy matters, and foreign countries, were used as cudgels for ad hominem attacks and wild accusations.
In a discussion about climate change, Trump sidestepped substantive issues — and his woeful record on climate — and instead said he wanted American water and air to be perfectly clear, unlike other countries: “Look at China, how filthy it is, look at Russia, look at India, it’s filthy. The air is filthy!”
In a mostly substance-free foreign policy debate, that throwaway line could end up being the most diplomatically costly of the night.
