Jon Sopel
We’re good to go. Good evening, and welcome to you all. Thank you very much indeed for coming to Chatham House for this evening’s discussion. Let me say from the outset, we are not on Chatham House Rule, so just relax. I’m delighted to be joined by Mark Landler, from The New York Times, who’s recently just back from Jerusalem, but has travelled all over the world for The New York Times. Susan Glasser joins us from Washington DC, where she is The New Yorker Correspondent, but a rich and fabulous journalist pedigree. And the in-house team, Leslie Vinjamuri, who heads the Americas Programme here at Chatham House. Welcome to you all, thank you very much for being with us.
I – when I was starting to think about this evening’s session, I was thinking, right, we must do China, we must do Russia-Ukraine, we must do Iran, Middle East, we must – and then I, kind of, started thinking of the relationships with, you know, the weapons are going from Iran to Russia to fight the War in Ukraine. It – are these all multiple different contrect – conflicts, or is there one huge, morphing strategic threat to the United States? Susan, let me start with you in Washington about how you see the foreign policy piece now as it’s affecting the Biden administration, and will continue to affect it in the coming year.
Susan Glasser
Well, thank you, first of all, very much for having me today. I’m sorry I can’t be there with you in person. You know, it is – I appreciate your question, if only because I’m often the voice of doom and gloom and pessimism, so I feel like you’ve staked out that territory for me, in the idea that, you know – and I have thought about this in recent months. You know, if we were already in the early days of World War III, would we know it? Is one of those questions that, unfortunately, has sprung to mind, and not just mine, I’m afraid, since 7 October and, you know, this prospect of, you know, conflict in the Middle East, conflict in Europe, obviously we’re looking at a minimum of bristling new competition between the United States and its allies and China and Asia.
You know, President Biden has often been derided by the, kind of, foreign policy fancy pants for his framing of this as a moment – “a global inflection point,” he calls it, a moment of confrontation between autocracies and democracies. Even some of his own advisers have not liked that notion of democracies confronting autocracies in the sense that they feel it might be exclusionary toward counties in the middle, that the United States and its partners want to bring into its alliance. But there is, of course, a worrisome echo of the past in how Biden and others have looked at this moment, and, you know, I – there are linkages, even if these conflicts are not linked, that’s what I would say.
And certainly in our foreign policy here in the United States, we’ll talk about that more later, but this a political moment of choosing, I would say, about different world views, and this question of what kind of superpower the US will be when it comes to foreign policy. I think it’s really not decided, either in the Democratic Party, or in the Republican Party. Both of them, for very different reasons, are extremely divided and fissured right now, over these questions.
Jon Sopel
Mark, I mean, Susan was taking ownership of doom and gloom and so was I. I mean, I wonder whether you feel similarly.
Mark Landler
Well, I think I do, in essence, because I think one of the other observations you have to make about this moment is that the United States doesn’t find itself in nearly the kind of commanding position that it did even a decade ago. And a lot of this geopolitical rivalry is a simple reflection of the fact that there are now some very powerful competitors out there who are not just economically challenging us, as they perhaps were ten years ago, but are forming their own geopolitical alliances. I thought it was a very interesting moment a few months ago when the Chinese brokered a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, showing that they were going to get involved in Middle East diplomacy. And that’s to say nothing of the, kind of, revanchist strategy of Russia with Ukraine.
So, I do think that the general landscape is more uncertain, more foreboding, less marked by the US’s ability to generally engineer outcomes, than it was. And I think, to that extent, we may not even have seen some of the most potentially destabilising effects, China and Taiwan being one that looms just over the horizon. So, I guess, on balance, I’d say I do think we’re entering a murkier, more unpredictable, period than we’ve been in for quite some time.
Jon Sopel
Okay, so having myself initially frame this in a rather gloomy way, I’m going to try and suggest, Leslie, that there are things about – I suspect if we had been sat here three weeks ago, and we were talking about the risk of escalation in the Middle East following 7 October, we’d have said they’re far higher. Biden has since sent, you know, two strike groups, two carrier groups, to the Eastern Mediterranean, and they, kind of, also let know that there was a Ohio-class submarine that had gone to the region, and normally they never talk about the deployment of submarines. And it seems to have had a deterrent effect in terms of Hezbollah and Iran. Now, that may be for the moment, but it does seem that America has, kind of, really flexed a muscle and it’s had an effect.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
It’s too soon to tell that – whether that will have a lasting effect, and there are lots of things to say about what’s happening in Israel and Gaza and America’s position, and the US is coming under pressure, not least from many of its own people, but certainly from people across the region. But I think, you know, to this broader question, I guess I would – I agree very much with much of what Mark said, and I would add on a couple of things. One is, you know, as power has – the distribution of power has clearly changed, America’s predominance has clearly changed, and that has created the space for shifting alliances.
But there – in addition to that, I think there’s also a couple of things. One is we, sort of, underestimate how much I think COVID had an impact on – we talk about COVID as an accelerant, but it also, kind of, put a lid on certain things, because people couldn’t leave their front door. And a lot of things that were maybe deferred have now come to the surface, first thing, right? People are coming out of their front door, the dissatisfaction, the discontentment, that has been fuelled partly by economic factors, but also by geopolitical factors, is now unleashed.
And the second thing is that not only – you know, US still has a preponderance of power across multiple dimensions, not least military, but it’s also very strong economically. But it’s – you know, we’ve had – we’re still in my view suffering the lasting impact and effects of four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, where the US did not lead. And I know that you point to certain things, right, in the Middle East, certain partnerships that were brokered, but by and large, there were four years of a failure of strategy, at a time of changing distributions of power. And that doesn’t just go away because we have a new President who thinks more strategically.
And then, I guess, a third thing I would point to is that America, like many countries, has been very domestically focused, for very important reasons, some of them are about COVID, some of them are about economic problems that have been a long time coming, some of them are about polarisation, there are a myriad of factors. But when you take your eye off the ball, when it comes to the question of leadership, whether the reasons are good or bad, at a time of changing shifts in the distribution of power, things go wrong, and we’re seeing a lot of that happening right now.
Jon Sopel
Now, let me just come back to you while we’re still, kind of, slightly on the Middle East, because I know you’ve just returned from Jerusalem and were reporting from there, and from the West Bank and up in Northern Israel, as well. Did you, kind of, come away with thinking there are people in Israel thinking about, okay, there is this war going on in Gaza now, but what next, and thinking seriously about what that – what next looks like?
Mark Landler
Well, when you speak to Israeli officials, they generally don’t engage on that, understandably, because they’re in the middle of the most serious military campaign they’ve undertaken in decades. However, when you talk to people in civil society, when you talk to Academics, when you talk to young people, they are thinking about the day after. And the conversation is interesting, because there is a line of thought that says, “When you look at the history of the Middle East, periods of intense conflict and violence have often led to periods of real revival of a genuine peace process.” And so, as hard as it is to contemplate in the middle of this harrowing scene in Gaza, there are people already thinking about that.
The problem with it is, it hinges on so many things that have to happen first. One is, what are the security arrangements for a post-war Gaza? Do the Israelis stay indefinitely? Are they an occupying force or not? Do you try to bring in a coalition of Arab countries to play a role? What role do the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority play in Gaza?
Secondly, can you pursue any serious political settlement with the Palestinians with the current Israeli Government? Overwhelmingly, the answer is – appears to be, no, you can’t. So, do you need a political change in Israel before you can start to think about this? Probably. Do you need a political change, or at least a reform of the Palestinians, before you can start to think about it? Probably also. So, I do think people are thinking of it. It’s just that there are so many things that need to happen first.
Jon Sopel
Yeah, and that’s – and Susan, I wonder whether you, in your conversations with people at the White House and at the State Department, whether they feel they – I’m struck by how, you know, closely Blinken and, you know, Biden have stood with Netanyahu, and in public, for public consumption, almost shoulder to shoulder. But yet, I’m sure, behind closed doors, there are some pretty tough messages being delivered by the White House to the Israelis.
Susan Glasser
Yeah, that’s right. So, first of all, the politics are, you know, not great for Biden here on this. You have increasing concerns inside the Democratic Party, of course, in recent years, especially because of the long tenure of the very divisive figure of Benjamin Netanyahu as the Prime Minister. In the United States he has become very identified with the Republican Party. And the result has been a real fracturing of – traditionally, it was the Democrats who were the most, sort of, hardcore allies of Israel, and with that scrambling of the domestic politics here, you know, Biden is a guy from a different generation. He’s from an earlier era, and, you know, he has this reflexive sympathy, empathy for Israel. He also has a deep belief in, kind of, what you might call “the power of personal diplomacy.”
And so, he adapted this bear hug strategy from the very beginning, after this horrific terrorist attack, really, you know, holding Israel close in order to be able, the theory goes, to be able to criticise from within. And I do think that was Biden’s theory of the case. It hasn’t necessarily worked out that way. I’ve been struck, after all these rounds of shuttle diplomacy you’ve seen by the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, the Biden administration has become increasingly public, I would say, in a way that suggests to me that their private messages are not being heeded by the Israelis. And I think it’s quite notable that in recent days, you have seen Blinken, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Adviser, and others talking about their view of a day after situation in Gaza, where, you know, they’re talking about some kind of revitalised Palestinian Authority. And you’ve seen both the Palestinians and the Israelis dump all over that, which, again, suggests that there are real limits to US power and influence behind the scenes, despite their frenetic diplomacy.
I would also point out that, frankly, we don’t talk that much about 240 hostages who are remaining in this – in the middle of this. And I’m very struck by the fact that diplomacy so far, it’s been a bust, it’s been an awful bust. And let’s be real, we’re talking about babies kidnapped, and old people and foreigners. And usually, in previous contexts that I’ve seen for an international incident like this, I think it would not have taken more than five weeks to get babies and, you know, grandparents out of this, or foreign nationals, who’ve been caught up in it. So, that’s notable to me.
Jon Sopel
Yeah, I just wonder, Susan, what you think is going on there. Because, you know, it’s, kind of, one of those funny situations, where Qatar has the biggest American base in the Middle East, it is also where the leader of Hamas is based, and you just think, you know, how does that work? But is there not the leverage there from Qatar that maybe the Americans think? Or is it because, you know, Israel has launched this ground invasion of Gaza, and that they’re just, kind of, “Well, if you’ve done that, well, then we’re not going to talk about hostage release”?
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, it could be all of the above. Obviously, it’s still quite opaque for some understandable reasons. In recent days, there have been, kind of, what I might call more favourable, you know, kind of, vibes or emanations around the prospect of some kind of hostage release coming out. There have been a few, you know, kind of, anonymously sourced reports, by the Columnist, David Ignatius in The Washington Post, for example, suggesting that some release might be imminent. I’ve also seen commentary from Blinken and others, quite favourable toward the positive role that they believe Qatar has been playing in these negotiations.
But again, I’m just saying pull back, at a 30,000 foot level, it’s still kind of astonishing and horrific that even what we might have seen in the past, basic, you know, release, so humanitarian release of babies and old people, hasn’t happened so far. And you’re right, the nature of Israel’s response has really become the story here in the US, I think that’s probably true where you are in London, as well. That is a focus, understandably, huge loss of life, it looks like, among civilians. And, you know, basically, the news cycle has been almost completely subsumed by these questions around the nature and proportionality of Israel’s response, and that is shaping the politics here.
Jon Sopel
Mark, is it worth talking about – I mean, in the midst of so much noise, there have been some dogs that haven’t barked in the Middle East. And I’m struck by the fact that, yes, there have been the ritualistic condemnation of Israel and what it’s doing, but the Gulf States have got a vested interest in seeing the Muslim Brotherhood being undermined, and Hamas is part of that.
Mark Landler
Hmmm hmm.
Jon Sopel
And therefore, quietly enjoying seeing – not enjoy, that’s the wrong word, but, you know, quietly satisfied that Hamas is being taken apart. Whether you’re in Egypt or the Gulf States, you’re not going to be too unhappy about that.
Mark Landler
Well, yeah, that’s right, and I think that, in a way, one could look at this so far and conclude that it, in fact, affirms something that people have long thought, which is that the Gulf Arabs really are ready to throw the Palestinians under the bus, because you don’t – you haven’t seen much of a response. The Saudis had a pre-existing negotiation with Israel for normalising relations, that they’ve obviously put on hold, but they haven’t come out publicly and said, “Forget it, it’s off, we’re finished.”
In Lebanon, Hezbollah, as you say, have made a lot of fiery noises, but there are reasons to believe that they don’t want to be a party to this fight, beyond a ritualistic exchange of rocket fire, which they’re engaged in, and nor, is there much evidence that their Iranian backers are that interested. Now, Iran has a series of domestic political issues and economic issues. I also think it’s fair to say of Joe Biden, that sending those two carrier groups to the Eastern Mediterranean made a difference. This is a case where deterrence I think actually has had an effect. I think in the case of the Jordanians and the Egyptians, they’re viewing this very much as wanting to avoid having 500,000 or a million Palestinian refugees cross into their borders.
So, the reasons and motives of these countries are different, but if the Hamas calculation was that the region would rise up as one, which, you know, historically happened in previous cases of war with Israel, it didn’t happen this time, it hasn’t happened so far, doesn’t mean it won’t, but I do think that it’s a noteworthy thing to point out, that regional escalation is really more theoretical at this point.
Jon Sopel
Go, Leslie.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Yeah, and just to add one thing on this, you know, really the US needs to be playing a game of dual deterrence, right? It’s trying to deter Israel from an excessive campaign that creates a political situation in which it’s harder to create some sort of stable two-state solution, which we understand is a very far way off. But it also – and it also needs to deter Iran. So, it – and you’re talking, rightly, about, you know, the deterrence of Iran and Hezbollah, but it’s not working, as we’ve heard, you know, the panellists say, when it comes to Israel. And that, I think is where the game gets much more difficult.
But the second thing I wanted to say, also, is, you know, we’re sitting here talking about the Middle East, and we all know this is the one thing that the Biden administration did not want to be talking about. And despite the chaotic, upsetting and not well-planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, it did have the effect of – we quickly moved in this room to a conversation very quickly afterwards of AUKUS, and then, I think the last time you chaired the conversation, devastatingly in the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Jon Sopel
Yes.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And here we are, right? So, the – you know, the – I guess, one of, you know, one of the take homes from that is, again, if you take your eye off the ball, it’s the strategy when things are quiet, the strategy of diplomacy, that hasn’t been working.
Jon Sopel
Yes, the last time I sat in this room was two weeks before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and the expert panel all agreed that it wouldn’t happen. So, you know, there we are.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
That’s not true, actually.
Jon Sopel
Oh, that’s not true? I…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
No, I thought it would happen. Because I’m America, I was listening to the – you know, the intelligence that was be sent – being sent out, but you’re right, and we were on the record…
Jon Sopel
Yeah.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
…I think.
Jon Sopel
I think.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
So, I won’t say who else said what, but you’re right that the rest of the panellists did not think that it would happen.
Mark Landler
And then adding a, sort of, slight analogy to that is this article that Jake Sullivan in Foreign Affairs, which was a grand summary of the Biden administration’s view of foreign policy. And in it he had a fairly abbreviated section that said, “We’ve been managing tensions in the Middle East,” and sadly, that piece went to press…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Yeah.
Mark Landler
…right before the 7 October attack.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
He rewrote it, as you…
Mark Landler
If you now go…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
…saw, yeah.
Mark Landler
…online, there is a fairly lengthy amendment that’s been put into the electronic version of it, that, sort of, acknowledges that that didn’t quite work out the way they…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Yeah.
Mark Landler
…thought it would.
Jon Sopel
Look, I want to come back to the way this is impacting US politics domestically and the way domestic politics is being impacted by this, as well. But I want to talk about Ukraine as well, because there you have clear objectives by the Biden administration, where unlike the Middle East, where there seems to be, you know, Republican and Democrat support, Republican support for Ukraine seems to be wavering and diminishing. And if you look at what’s happening in the House of Representatives, there seems to be much more of a, “Ah, we’re done with Ukraine, let’s move on.” I wonder whether you think that’s a fair representation, Susan?
Susan Glasser
Well, you know, two words for you here that we haven’t mentioned yet, but, you know, probably bear mentioning, and the – they are “Donald” and “Trump.” You know, this is…
Jon Sopel
I promise you, I was going to come to him.
Susan Glasser
Well, if you want to understand the changing dynamics around support for Ukraine in the Republican Party, I think Trump is really the factor that you have to look at. In the US Senate, which is largely more sceptical, even among Republicans, of, kind of, the Trump factor, a much more establishment group, the support remains strong. They have tried, the Senate Republicans, have tried to partner with the White House to continue this support, but what you’ve seen is, it’s not yet a majority in the House. There still are the votes to continue this enormous level of funding and military assistance that the United States has provided to Ukraine. There still are the votes in the House, but getting the vote to the floor, and the question of the leadership in this extremely dysfunctional, very narrow House Republican majority that we have, and that’s where I think the Trump factors really come into it.
And this has happened, I think that – this is where you could say the Biden White House miscalculated. They thought this would happen, but they didn’t think it would happen until next year, the presidential election year. It crept up on them more quickly than they anticipated, essentially the turning of what had been bipartisan support for Ukraine into a partisan political issue. Due to the fact that the overwhelming favourite and standard bearer of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, as we know, continues not only his public admiration for Vladimir Putin, but, you know, he’s had a deep and abiding scepticism about Ukraine ever since the early days of his presidency.
I will never forget, you know, when we were writing – my husband and I wrote a book on the Trump presidency called “The Divider,” and one memorable scene that I never thought got enough attention was early in Trump’s presidency, in the spring of 2017, he actually hosts the then President of Ukraine, Zelensky’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, in the Oval Office for a meeting. And he – Trump says to Poroshenko’s face, “Well, Ukraine is not a real country. Ukraine is not a real country, and besides, what do you want with Crimea? It’s not really yours anyway.” And, you know, can you imagine saying that to the elected leader of a country, who, by the way, is a partner of the United States? Poroshenko, interestingly, did try to argue with Trump on the point, but I think it’s very revealing, and so, yes, this is a moment of real crisis.
And just one side note to Leslie’s very important point about how Biden’s is the latest administration not to be able to pivot to Asia fully. We’re having this conversation on a day when actually President Biden has flown to San Francisco to have his first meeting with Xi Jinping in more than a year, at a time when there have been enormous tensions in the relationship, and which the expectations are so low that Biden said his goal for the conversation was “simply to restore the ability to actually talk to each other,” which is a pretty low bar for a superpower summit.
Jon Sopel
Mark, do you think that Biden, and you’ve covered the White House for many years, has done enough in terms of explaining to American people what the story is in Ukraine and why there was a need for the US to stand with the Ukrainian people? I was very struck when, you know, Clinton was President, and he was doing – it was Bosnia, and he was talking about rolling down the map and explaining to people about the complexities of the breakup of Yugoslavia, and, kind of, trying to take the American people with him through this. And I just wonder whether Biden has been communicating effectively enough on that?
Mark Landler
Well, I think to answer that question, you’d need to answer a broader question, which is whether Biden is, you know, sort of, capable of communicating with the kind of vigour that we would want him to, given his age and given all these other things, and that’s a discussion one can have. I do think that he’s made a very coherent case for the importance of Ukraine, and I think the proof of that is that you know, he put together a very durable coalition of support and transatlantic solidarity behind Ukraine.
And I will note, just by way of comparison to this Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, in the category of anecdotes about Ukraine, I remember a very vivid one from the Obama presidency, where Barack Obama invited a roomful of foreign policy leaders to come to dinner at the White House. It was a two-hour long dinner, the first hour was devoted to ISIS, if you remember them. The second hour was devoted to Ukraine, which, at that point, was under threat, I think of losing Crimea, of perhaps even earlier stage of Russian aggression. And Obama opened the second half of that dinner by saying, “Would anybody at the table care to tell me what America’s strategic interest is in Ukraine?” So, if you think about where we went from there to where Joe Biden got us to, I think he did a pretty good job.
But the fact of the matter is, events on the ground have not really helped Biden. This counteroffensive that the Ukrainians launched, by all accounts, has, sort of, stalled into a war of attrition, and Americans have fleeting attention spans anyway. So, it’s not as though Biden has had a great deal to work with to continue making this case to a war-weary American public. So, I’d say, I think he did a good job, certainly diplomatically did a very good job, in terms of public – of his public diplomacy, making the case to the American people. It’s not the easiest case to make. I think he did fine.
Jon Sopel
So, let us use the two words that Susan reminded us of as “Donald” and “Trump.” Do you think that there…?
Susan Glasser
I’m not responsible.
Jon Sopel
No, I’m – no-one’s being held responsible. I’m just – I – do you think that there is any chance of a bipartisan across the floor, across the aisle, approach to Ukraine going into the election, or do you think that it will remain a divisive issue for American foreign policy of the extent to which the US and NATO – where, you know, Trump, famously NATO sceptic – you know, in the run-up to 24?
Susan Glasser
Of course, it’s going to be divisive, it’s already divisive. We’ve seen what’s happening in Congress with just, you know, trying to pass packages that don’t include support for Ukraine to keep the Government open and all the rest of it. But first – I mean, many things to say about this. First is that Americans are not going to go to the polls on the basis of whether or not the candidate that they’re voting for is supportive of NATO or supportive of Ukraine. It’s not that they don’t have preferences, they clearly do, and they’re overwhelmingly still in a position that I think many people in this room would admire, but it is becoming more divisive.
It’s not only – I think I take issue with this. It’s becoming, kind of, commonplace to say, you know, “The problem is Joe Biden doesn’t communicate well.” It’s worth reminding ourselves that the information context, the media context, the social media context, the Trump effect, all of it, is making it very difficult for any leader that wants to communicate on the basis of the facts, strategy and the middle road, to be effective in this environment.
Mark’s point is exactly right. We know as we look at – and you’ve heard me say this on the podcast, we know as we look at US engagement in wars, in the post-war period, not just the post-Cold War period, the longer a war goes on, the harder it is to sustain public support for US engagement. And that’s exacerbated if you don’t see, you know, wins on the ground, and that speaks to the question of the counteroffensive. So, this is going to be divisive in the US foreign policy debate, quite frankly, regardless, at some point, of who is elected President. That’s not – I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but that will become a real thing.
And, you know, final point, the economy, as we know, is in a pretty good place in the US, the inflation numbers are in a pretty good place, but that effect takes a while. People don’t recognise that. There’s a delay between the data and how people experience it and understand it, and there’s still a sense of, you know, we’re not in a great time, we might be going into a recession. It looks like now we weren’t going into a recession in the US. But if people feel like the pot is shrinking and they’ve got to make choices, that also affects how they feel about foreign policy, ‘cause there’s never data behind the emotions when it comes to supporting foreign policy…
Jon Sopel
Yeah, Leslie, that’s such…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
…decisions.
Jon Sopel
…an interesting point about the domestic issues. Because the conventional wisdom always, or nearly always, is that elections are won and lost on domestic policy. Foreign policy raises its head, but by and large, it’s not a big issue. I just wonder, given what’s happening in the Middle East at the moment, given the divisions over Ukraine, given you’ve got a former President, Donald Trump, who’s fantastic at weaponizing the counter-factual, which is, “When I was President, I was doing deals with the Gulf States, I was doing deals with Morocco, to recognise Israel. When I was President, Vladimir Putin wasn’t invading, you know, Ukraine, he was sitting with me in Helsinki, and other places.” I just wonder whether there is going to be foreign policy playing a more important role in November 24.
Susan Glasser
Well, if the question is to me, I would say, probably not. You know, the bottom line is that Americans don’t tend to rank foreign policy very highly. What they do, I think, and what we’ve seen in recent years, is the use of, kind of, foreign policy or, kind of, world views as part of general assessment around the character and the kind of President we’ll see. And so, I think that’s the way in which it will show up.
For Democrats, it’s been a very effective tool to look at Donald Trump and to say, you know, “This is a guy who’s fundamentally extremist and un-American,” and one way in which that manifests itself is his extreme preference for the world’s autocrats and America’s adversaries at the expense of their allies. So, you’ll hear a lot from Democrats about, you know, “Donald Trump is the guy who has a love affair with Kim Jong Un, and he’s the, you know, the guy who admires Vladimir Putin and thinks that Hezbollah is very smart,” and the like. So, you know, it’s a, kind of, almost a values issue as it’s turned up in our politics in recent years.
Republicans have a very strong, kind of, way to undercut Joe Biden. They often will refer to what they call the “disastrous and botched pullout, American pullout, from Afghanistan,” as an example, of, you know, Biden says that his great experience and years of work on foreign policy, both as a Senator and Vice President, qualified him for the job. Well, if he was so qualified, then how did he screw up so badly? So, you know, it’s not that it’s absent from our politics, but it’s not an explicit voting issue in the way that, you know, economics, I think, remains paramount.
And then there’s the issue of abortion rights and reproductive freedom, which in the United States really has become a front burner issue, in the time since our Supreme Court got rid of five decades of abortion rights in the Roe versus Wade decision. So, the Second Gentleman, Doug Emhoff, the husband of our Vice President, recently was quoted at a private fundraiser as saying, “The issues that Democrats are going to use in 2024 can be summed up in the two Ds.” And that would be Dobbs, which is the name of the abortion decision, and democracy, and I think those are the most salient issues.
But just quickly to Leslie’s earlier point, which I think is a very important one, around foreign policy and, you know, the extent to which Biden has sought to have a world view at a time when it’s really America’s commitment to its role as a leader in the world that still is in question. Even though the US switched course again and elected Biden after four disruptive years of Trump, what I see is that it is a hindrance to Biden’s foreign policy because he cannot be confident that the US really will be there. And this Ukraine fight is, unfortunately, a strong example of that. Biden has said that, “The United States will be with Ukraine as long as it takes,” that’s the phrase he said over and over again. And yet, in reality, a Pentagon spokesperson was quoted the other day as saying, “The US is down to its last $1 billion of assistance and needs the new package.” So, “as long as it takes” might be only until next week, and in that environment, it’s very hard to play an ambitious role as a global leader.
Jon Sopel
And I want to open it up to you guys in a second. I just want to – Mark, if I could come to you and just say, foreign policy and what’s happening in the rest of the world affects domestic policy as well in the US, doesn’t it? And, you know, the – domestic policy starts being framed by some of these things that are happening in the world. I was last week interviewing the Mayor of Detroit. Michigan has a huge Muslim population, they are really worried that young Muslim people, who you need to vote in Michigan for the Democrats, who decisively did after the Trump years, they could go. So, this does have an effect, it has ripples.
Mark Landler
Yeah, it does, and – but not in the sense that a single issue can turn an election. I – the one thing I’d to that question about, are elections ever driven by foreign policy? I think in the rare cases they are. It’s when large numbers of American troops are committed to a foreign conflict, which we actually don’t have, despite the fact that we’re in such a treacherous environment internationally.
But to your point about there being, kind of, wedge issues, or domestic things that play out unexpectedly, Israel-Hamas has been, sort of, a really striking example of that. In some of these polls of Muslim or Arab Americans, Biden dropped by 17 percentage points just because he went to Israel and wrapped Israel in a tight embrace. And that’s, of course, hugely consequential in a state like Michigan, that he won by such a razor thin margin and which is heavily Arab and Muslim American. Likewise, you know, the Democratic Party has split on Israel, the progressive wing of the Party wants a ceasefire and they want it now. That’s put Biden in a somewhat awkward position. By the way, it’s also put the head of the Labour Party here in Britain in a very similar position, awkward position.
It – as I think Susan was alluding to earlier, the politics of Israel tend to play badly for Democrats, and they tend to play much more favourably for Republicans. Because the Party had already allied itself with the right in Israel, and there’s no particular conflict within the party about supporting Israel just as steadfastly as Biden is, or as – ironically, Trump is the one who’s taken a very odd position on Israel, driven not by a broader political view, but by his own personal pique that Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t come out and endorse the fact that the election was rigged when he lost. And then he followed that up with an even more mystifying comment, that “the guys of Hezbollah are very smart guys.” So, again, it’s an illustration that when you’re talking about Donald Trump none of the usual rules apply and a lot of his responses will surprise everybody.
Jon Sopel
Okay, so let me just – as a first question, from you guys, I’ll take the one that’s online, and then I’m going to come to the audience. This is from John Marr. “Do the Commentators believe that the reasonable prospect of another Trump presidency exacerbates our current foreign policy difficulties?” Leslie?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Yes. Yeah, I mean, I refuse…
Jon Sopel
Do you need time to think about that?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
No, I don’t, I don’t actually, because, you know, the Trum – I mean, you know, we laugh, and we have to laugh, because it’s so serious. It’s not a, you know, Trumpism, and Trump, and they’re all the same thing, they’re not the same thing. Donald Trump is a singularly dangerous person for democracy in America, for individual rights, for women rights, for racism, for discrimination, for foreign policy, for Britain, for Europe, for the world, and there isn’t anybody else like him. Will it upset our foreign policy? It absolutely will.
And, by the way, yes, people don’t like Biden, and yes, the progressives and the moderates are torn in the Democratic Party, but if Donald Trump actually becomes the candidate, and he’s actually the person on November 5th, and the days leading – ‘cause there will be early voting and all the rest of it, you will be shocked at how quickly people rally on the other side. So, don’t take the polls as evidence of what people do when push comes to shove, and it really isn’t a joke anymore. ‘Cause it will really, really truly be a very bad situation if Donald Trump is elected to be President of the United States of America.
Jon Sopel
And that feeds into what Susan was saying a moment ago, about, kind of, reproductive rights and Roe versus Wade and the overturning of that. You look at what happened in Ohio last week in the elections in Virginia and Kentucky, as well. They came after terrible New York Times polls for Biden, and yet, when there were real votes cast, they were nothing like as bad for Joe Biden. Right, questions. Sir, and if you could just say – with a microphone on its way to you right now, I want to get in as many questions a possible, so just say who you are and what the question is, please. Thank you.
Salman Shaikh
Sure. My name is Salman Shaikh, I’m the founder of The Shaikh Group. I previously worked for the UN Middle East Envoy in Gaza, and the UN Envoy in Lebanon, both through various conflicts. Hasn’t President Biden actually badly misjudged this? In 2006, in Lebanon, Condi Rice and President Bush put guardrails around what Israel could do. In this case, we have no circuit breakers, we have no off-ramps. The Netanyahu Government seems to me like a careering train. And here, I’ve just come back from Qatar, and we are very close to more hostage releases, but every time we get close, there are major escalations in the conflict, which I believe now are putting that further back.
So, isn’t President Biden’s and his team’s focus on managing the conflict, on containment, actually the wrong strategy? And isn’t strength in this case, in foreign policy, an important thing? Perhaps something that Donald Trump may have shown in this case.
Jon Sopel
Who wants to take that? Susan, why don’t you have first go at that?
Susan Glasser
You know, I – first of all, I’m interested – I would love to hear more about, you know, what you picked up on the trip to Qatar, and I appreciate that, you know, obviously we’re all hoping for hostage release. I don’t know what would influence Netanyahu more. In some ways, Mark alluded to this earlier, the extreme, you know, kind of, political crisis that Netanyahu finds himself in with the vast majority of Israeli voters having abandoned Netanyahu, fighting a war on behalf of their society and their state, but not really believing in their Commander in Chief. That is a political crisis of legitimacy, both for the conduct of the war and I think it really reduces the ability of anybody to influence him. You know, this is a man who’s so desperate he doesn’t seem to be listening to Biden or to anyone else. So, that is an enormous constraint, that wasn’t present in previous iterations of the conflict and with previous US administrations.
I do think that Biden had – you know, he has very old-fashioned instincts. You know, he is a product of a different political era in the United States and a different political era in the Middle East, and there is just no question – what I’m picking up is increasing frustration, the sounds of frustration from his advisers, in a way that suggests to me that they’re well aware that this might not be producing the results that they hoped that it would.
Jon Sopel
I’ll go to another question, unless you’re – anything you want to…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
The only thing I would say is I – your last sentence, “Maybe Donald Trump would have demonstrated strength.” I mean, there’s nothing in what Donald Trump did with respect to his support of Israel that leads me to believe that he would have put any pressure on Israel to exercise restraint during this conflict.
Jon Sopel
Right, let’s go to the back to the room. The young person there, I say, young, relatively, obviously, to me, but…
Sam Pirooz Zia
Thank you, my name’s Sam Zia and I’m CEO of Travel Smarter Consulting. But anyway, I have another question about Israel, actually, and I wanted to know what the, sort of, international implications, and the implications for the perception of the US among what might be loosely termed “the Global South”? Because we see – or I say, “we,” many people perhaps in this room see the US as standing with Israel, standing with democracy, standing against hostage taking, but countries, I dare say, like Brazil, South Africa, don’t see this conflict that way. They see a much more nuanced picture. And the US in recent years has been trying to sell itself as a guarantor of democracy, bring these, sort of, middling, sort of, countries, like, South Africa, Brazil, along with them in supporting Ukraine. To what extent do you think the US’s perhaps unreserved support for Israel damages its credibility among these Global South countries?
Mark Landler
Well, I mean, it’s a very good question, and I think the answer is it does. But I think, in a way, it goes back to what Susan said earlier about Biden and his initial instinctive reaction to what happened in Israel, which is a product of, you know, a 40-year career of watching and leading American foreign policy and having a position of support for Israel. And so, I think that, in a way, that first reaction was not a complex weighing of interests and how do we look to the Global South, and how do we look for the – all the other things we’re doing? I think it was a gut reaction, in defence of an ally.
And, you know, I think in this context, it is worth pointing out that we’ve seen a lot of crises involving Israel. We have never seen something that was as barbaric and just brutal, on a human level, as what happened on 7 October. And I think that explains the depth and intensity of Biden’s reaction. I think it was as much personal as it was strategic. And – but yes, to answer your question, the fact that that set the tone has been read in capitals all over the Global South as, sort of, confirmation that the US – a lot of what the US was saying, may not really be that genuine, or that at the end of the day, they’re always going to throw in behind Israel.
And I think that the challenge that the advisers to the President have had is, sort of, executing this pivot, where they go from that visceral, emotional support for Israel, to a much more strategic comple – you know, set of steps that try to lead to a better outcome. And we’re not there yet, we’re in the middle of trying to execute that pivot.
Jon Sopel
Leslie, as Head of the Americas Programme, I wonder whether you, kind of – whether you see that. I mean, ‘cause there was the enormous frustration in the US that there was – you know, there had been an invasion by Russia of Ukraine, a sovereign country, and yet, there were areas of the Global South where they were going, “Well, yeah,” you know, kind of, “I’m not going to get too exercised about that.” And I think that the US, kind of, felt, why aren’t you getting more exercised about that?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Well, I mean, I think that there’s certainly now a very keen awareness of why countries like – many countries across Africa, as well as India, has – there’s a different story there, South Africa. And we saw this play out at the UNGA, we’re now, rather than trying to, kind of, push the Global South to come on side the support of – you know, that US and others and NATO are providing individually to Ukraine. And recognising that the implications of the war have created a very difficult series of crises for developing countries, food, fuel, debt, all the rest of it, and that there needs to be a positive offer.
And that’s why we saw at the G20, you know, a push for that 25 billion that isn’t being delivered to be injected into the international financial institutions to help with the debt problem, why there’s still, you know, some notion of, we must work with China to relieve debt in the developing country. I mean, I think people understand that the rest of the world isn’t experiencing, a) this war is their war. They see it as Europe’s war, I’m talking about Ukraine, and b) and I guess b) is really a), they see American hypocrisy everywhere. American hypocrisy is baked into being a global power that tries to engage according to a set of universal principles, which, of course, can’t be universally applied. But America’s never had a good response to the hypocrisy question.
Jon Sopel
Another question, Sir? Microphone coming.
Member
[Inaudible – 49:38], member of Chatham House. The question straightaway, when will United State accept the jurisdiction of International Criminal Court?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Never, never.
Mark Landler
Never.
Susan Glasser
Third answer, never.
Mark Landler
No.
Jon Sopel
Yeah.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Never, and…
Jon Sopel
Well…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
…can I say one thing on that?
Jon Sopel
Yeah.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
As you know, the US led the way on the negotiations for the Rome Statute, which was the basis for the ICC, and pulled out because, you know, they empowered an Independent Prosecutor, which went beyond what the US Congress was ever going to pass. The US doesn’t pass many treaties that it actually supports, that the – the rules that are embedded in it. And at different points in time, the US has played a very strong behind the scenes role in supporting the ICC, at other times it’s tried to take it down. So, this is a partisan issue in…
Member
To the question to the…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
…US politics.
Member
…saying why, one – the lady said, “never.” Why?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Sovereignty.
Jon Sopel
Susan, sorry, did you hear that? The gentleman said, “Why is it that – why won’t America accept the International Criminal Court?”
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I think Leslie gave an excellent answer, I mean, you know, it’s become a partisan issue in the US and it’s seen as a, you know, sort of, extra territorial imposition on American power. And it’s – that’s a core view at this point among many on the American right, and it’s just one of those things that’s seen as untouchable in our politics.
Jon Sopel
Woman in the blue and white striped jersey.
Jess Winch
Thank you. My name is Jess Winch, I’m a Journalist at Tortoise Media. I wonder if I could pick up a bit more on the comments that were made on the US-China relationship. It was mentioned by Susan that obviously the leaders are meeting today in San Francisco and that that is a low bar in just trying to talk to each other again. So, where does the panel think that this relationship goes next? What are both sides hoping to achieve?
Mark Landler
Well, I mean, I would say that I – that the overall trajectory is not good, it’s negative. But what’s better than was the case a year ago is that we’re talking to the Chinese again, and not just at the level of Biden and Xi, we’re also talking at lower levels. In fact, there’s been a great deal of engagement, military to military engagement. Actually, to be precise, military to military contacts have not yet been resumed, but there have been a great deal of contacts at all kinds of levels. So, that’s a huge improvement over where we were a year ago, where we were, basically, not talking to them at all. But the broader trajectory is going to probably continue to be very scratchy because the Chinese are going to, you know, collide with us, geopolitically, more and more.
And the big, you know, question that’s looming out there is Taiwan, and I think that in the United States and foreign policy circles, a lot a people argue that what we do with respect to Ukraine, and the degree of resolve that we show with respect to defending Ukraine, may have something to do with the calculations of the Chinese on whether they can make a move on Taiwan and assume that it’ll either go challenged or unchallenged. But, you know – so, today, we’ll probably see there’s this announcement they’re going to do on precursor elements for fentanyl, that the Chinese I think will agree not to ship into our country. Probably that’s about the most we can expect from this Summit, so it’s not going to produce much of anything.
Biden has a relationship with Xi Jinping. They were both Vice Presidents and spent some time together. Biden famously remembers it as “lots and lots of hours,” it was of some amount of hours. But the two of them do know each other, and my hunch is, I don’t want to presume, but I think the pictures will probably be warmer than we’ve seen from a Chinese and an American leader in some time. And that’s all to the good, because the – you know, when you have a situation that is inherently tense and rivalrous the way this one is, you have to keep talking to one another, and the fact that both sides are committed to doing that is a good sign.
Jon Sopel
I think this might be our last question, and I want to bring all the panel in on this, but “With the conflict in Europe” – this is from Naryan Kumar. “With the conflict in Europe, Middle East and a potential flashpoint in Taiwan, does the US have the resources and capabilities to tackle these challenges, or will the US do a rebalancing act and pull back from any of these challenges?” Leslie, do you want to…?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
It can’t pull back from any of these challenges. You’re abs – the question is very smart one. There’s been a lot written on this, actually just in the last several weeks, for obvious reasons, and, you know, we know that Joe Biden famously said, on the 60 Minutes interview I think it was, “Of course, we can do all this, we’re the United States of America.” But we all recognise that even if there is a lot of material power and capability, that, you know, there’s one Secretary of State, and, you know, there’s a limited time to do diplomacy, and it takes a whole lot of time and effort and energy to put these meetings together. And when you’re, you know, meeting in one place, you can’t be meeting in the other place and all the rest of it.
So, there is a resource issue, and there’s a human resource and there’s a bandwidth issue. But I don’t think that there’s a good alternative, you know, dialling back and not – you know, there is – there’s clearly a national security strategy that makes it very clear that the number one priority for this administration is China. And that will continue to be the case, and that’s not just China that’s having a Indo-Pacific strategy that’s being implemented in a pretty serious and intelligent way with the obvious gaping hole of the economic strategy, which isn’t there for domestic, political reasons. But there are some very serious distractions, and that’s not going to go away.
Jon Sopel
And in terms of serious distractions, Mark, you’ve got a presidential election. Does Joe Biden want all of his energies focused on Taiwan, China, Middle East, Ukraine, and all the rest of it?
Mark Landler
Well, any one of those by themselves could use up a lot of time. If Joe Biden is serious about after this war in Gaza is finally finished, in pursuing a revival of a two-state solution, President Clinton, if you remember, devoted a lot of his last year in office to trying to get an Israeli-Palestinian deal done. Almost down to the last days he was in office, where he kept at it, unsuccessfully in the end. So, bandwidth is a big problem, particularly in the Middle East, which tends to suck so much energy, and clearly, as, you know, we’ve all said, that this isn’t where they wanted to find themselves. They wanted to park the Middle East in a sense, so that they could focus on the two big geopolitical rivalries.
But just a quick final point is, it, kind of, goes back to what you said at the very beginning. The reason you can’t ignore any one of these is because they’re all linked. If you ignore Ukraine, are you sending a signal to the Chinese that they may, in turn, use to be emboldened with respect to Taiwan? If you allow the Middle East to fester, do you leave a vacuum? The last time we did that in the Middle East, you remember Putin and Russia came into Syria, and the Chinese may well find a way into the Middle East as well. They showed an interest in it with that Iran-Saudi deal that they brokered.
So, I think the reason, one other reason, you can’t avoid any of them is that they’re all interlinked, and to let one fester and go unattended invites trouble in the other crises.
Jon Sopel
Susan.
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I think Mark’s point is a really important one. To bring it back to your original question, maybe it’s not World War III, maybe it’s not a new Axis, per se, but it’s not as simple as saying, “Well, we’re either going to focus on Asia, the Asia-Pacific, or we’re going to focus on the war in Europe, or we’re going to focus on the Middle East.” I – it seems to me that actually the Middle East is a domain of competition and of geopolitical rivalry, not just of regional rivalry, between Russia and China with – which both have extensive, both economic and political, interests in the region, security interests in the region.
Remember that it was Netanyahu spent years, years, sucking up to Vladimir Putin, meeting with him perhaps more than any other leader, given their both extremely long tenures in their positions. And in fact, Netanyahu did not offer the support to Ukraine that many people thought Israel would offer, militarily, to Ukraine, despite repeated pleas from Zelensky. Always citing the security issues of needing to maintain their relationship with Russia, because of Russia’s strong relationship with both Iran and Syria, the two destabilising actors that – state actors that Israel has most been concerned about.
And so, boom, what happened? You know, there was no – not even a phone call from Putin on the first day, after the 7 October terrorist attack on Israel. That entire effort is now up in smoke. But I think it also reveals the geopolitical context in which this conflict is occurring. And if the United States is looking to send a message to China, for example, you know, that is very much a contest that is a live contest between the states and the region and who they’re going to look to in the future for influence, for economic relationships, for security relationships. So, I think that, you know, I – it might be simpler to say, “Well, we’re either going to pivot to China or we’re not,” but, you know, the pivot is everywhere.
And just a final note, as far as hypocrisy goes, you know, we all know there’s no such thing as consistency in the world, but I’ll tell you, it was a gut punch to me this weekend watching the video of Syria’s leader, Bashar Assad, walking down the steps of his aeroplane to be greeted with warm handshakes and photo ops by his fellow Arab leaders, after slaughtering, at a minimum according to the United Nations, 300,000 Arab civilians. That’s something I hope people will think about in the context of this current really awful war that we’re seeing in the Middle East.
Jon Sopel
Okay, Susan Glasser, Mark Landler, Leslie Vinjamuri, all of you, thank you very much, and thank you all of you for attending [applause]. Thank you.
