Washington
cnn
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The foreign policy positions of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have sometimes seemed like an afterthought in an election centered on domestic concerns.
But with two deadly wars, growing international instability and a right-wing tilt toward isolationism — in the U.S. and elsewhere — it will be difficult for Biden and Trump to stay away from the topic at Thursday evening’s debate in Atlanta.
Biden’s campaign is hoping to make domestic issues such as the financial system and reproductive rights the centerpiece of the president’s re-election argument. However, it is foreign policy that has consumed much of his life during his first term, including in the direct lead-up to Thursday’s debate, when Biden began back-to-back trips to Europe.
Even his own advisers have said clearly, particularly since October 7, that events abroad more than once – and more than his team expected – have diverted the president’s attention from pressing domestic issues.
Unlike previous presidential election cycles, there is no scheduled debate devoted solely to foreign policy, which provided the opportunity for intense contrasts on global affairs between Republican and Democratic candidates in that era.
In turn, Biden advisers are hoping these issues could come up as part of a broader discussion at the debate stage in Atlanta on Thursday. In this regard, according to a source, Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security assistant, has been one of the numbers supremacy advisers who joined Biden at Camp David this future to give supremacy to the crowd’s discussions on international policy. Are. Arrangement.
As much as the Biden team wants to pry about issues like space, it has long seen foreign policy as one of the most obvious ways to demonstrate a difference with Trump on presidential leadership.
If and when foreign policy issues come up Thursday night, the gap Biden will try to highlight couldn’t be more stark, a campaign chief told CNN.
“President Biden stands up against dictators and defends freedom – Trump is a loser who is too dangerous and reckless to ever get anywhere near the Oval Office,” Reverend said.
Trump has repeatedly accused Biden of presiding over a chaotic world which, according to him, was quite peaceful during his four years in office.
One potential issue for Biden and his advisers could be figuring out Trump’s positions on a number of international coverage topics. He has said little regarding the war in Gaza, although he has previously complained to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the war and pushed him to end the war.
On Ukraine, Trump has claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion would never have happened unless he was in office and promised he would resolve the war head-on — without saying how.
And before he took a tough stance on China, promising to impose strict price lists on all Chinese imports, his record as president was more amicable, which kept the industry from growing in Beijing.
The ambiguous stance Trump has taken on foreign policy mirrors his approach on the job, when he often cites personal feelings and gut feelings to explain actions such as meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Were.
However, that may still make it harder for Biden to blame the vague sequence of attacks on I’m sick. In turn, the President pursues ways in which he strengthens American leadership on the global stage, strengthens American alliances, and protects self-rule in the other country while keeping his campaign respectable.
And on Trump, Biden is expected to level broad allegations: Trump has singled out US allies, collaborated with dictators and sometimes under-covered the region.
“Donald Trump consistently praises authoritarian leaders and dictators, vows to sell out our allies, and undermines our democracy,” Reverend said.
As on other topics, Biden’s team has relied on Trump’s personal terms to determine the extent of its attacks. For example, Trump’s comment that he would “encourage” Russia to do “whatever they want” to NATO allies who no longer have to spend substantial amounts on security is a future. Which Biden has repeatedly seized upon while debating in opposition. To his predecessor’s management.
And Trump’s pledge to behave as a “dictator” in the first term of his presidency has given Biden the opportunity to warn about the global consequences of returning Trump to office.
Nonetheless, political threats abound for Biden in international affairs. The war in Gaza has sparked outrage among progressives, many of whom have accused Biden of fueling the humanitarian crisis by providing guns to Israel.
However, he has received modest credit from Republicans, who have accused the president of abandoning Israel after he intercepted a shipment of some heavy bombs.
Netanyahu has not made Biden’s situation any easier by accusing the management of delaying hand shipments and taking an ambiguous stance on a US-backed ceasefire proposal that Biden hopes will end the fighting.
On Ukraine, the president has effectively rallied the West in support of Kiev, although Trump has taken an isolationist position and resisted any backup support.
Biden says it would leave the country vulnerable to Russian advances, a position echoed by Trump within the Republican Party — which accuses the president of neglecting domestic affairs in addition to sending billions of dollars out of the country.
In the end, perhaps the best possibility for Biden is the illusion of being overly curious about international problems, which may harm issues that concern individual American citizens.
Speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the Seven Zenith task force in Italy the previous day, Biden said the conflict in Ukraine was “a test for the world”, examining the issues of Western solutions amid a stance in inflation and nationalism. Went.
“Will we stand with Ukraine? Will we stand against sovereignty, freedom and tyranny?” They said. “The United States, the G7, and countries around the world have consistently answered that question with, ‘Yes, we will.’ And we’ll say it again. Yes, again and again and again.”