With just eight weeks to go for the US presidential elections on November 5, former President Donald Trump and current Vice-President Kamala Harris, the two principal contestants for the world’s most important executive office, put forward their differing visions for the country in a television debate on September 10 in Philadelphia. This was a significant event in the election calendar, especially for Harris. This is because it was President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in his debate with Trump on June 27 that led to his decision on July 21 to pull out of the elections and endorse Harris. That left Harris very little time to project herself to the American people that she was better than Trump to be elected as President. While she has been vigorously campaigning ever since the Democratic Party rallied behind her it was this debate which was to provide her a platform, like none other, to project herself as being worthy of becoming President.
Most US commentators hold that Harris carried the day in the debate. She was forward looking while Trump was focused on defending his record as President or in criticizing the Biden-Harris team for US’s current problems stretching from the economy to the financial drain on account of US aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia. He was especially critical of the present administration’s record on illegal immigration which has led to record levels of illegal immigrants entering the country in the past three years. He also dwelt on the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 in which thirteen American soldiers died in a terrorist attack at the Kabul airport which had witnessed days of complete chaos. While these points made by Trump were valid, on the whole, he came through, once again as a political figure full of bluster and self-obsession. But perhaps that constitutes his great appeal to his vast base!
Trump’s comment that, for this writer, was diplomatically and strategically very significant was made in the context of the Ukraine-Russia war. He maintained, as he has done ever since the war began, that had he been in the Oval Office, Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have dared to attack Ukraine. While this is pure drivel what he said of the dangers of the war merits close attention. At one stage, talking of the Ukraine war, he commented “And now you have millions of people dead and it’s only getting worse and it could lead to World War 3. Don’t kid yourself, David [one of the interviewers]. We’re playing with World War 3. And we have a president that we don’t even know if he’s — where is our president? We don’t even know if he’s a president”.
This is not all that he said about the possibility of World War 3. At another point in the debate he said “But eventually, you know, he’s [meaning Putin] got a thing that other people don’t have. He’s got nuclear weapons. They don’t ever talk about that. He’s got nuclear weapons. Nobody ever thinks about that. And eventually uh may be he’ll use them. May be he hasn’t been that threatening. But he does have that. Something we don’t even like to talk about. Nobody likes to talk about it”.
Harris made the point that it was essential for the US to support Ukraine, for if Putin had reached Kyiv and consolidated his hold over Ukraine his “eyes would have been set on the rest of Europe”. Trump countered that Putin would have been in Moscow if he was President and then added the words on Russia’s possession of nuclear weapons and that “We’re playing with World War 3”. Never, in the past four decades has a sitting or former US President or for that matter any senior global statesman tossed up the idea of a World War 3 in the manner that Trump has done. His words have the most dangerous implications for international peace and security. They basically show that the world should let any state with nuclear weapons to break international law for the fear that it may use them. What Russia did by invading Ukraine was unacceptable. This was all the more so because as a permanent member of the UN Security Council it has to be committed to the maintenance of global order. And, the first principle of that order is respect for sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states.
It is true that in 2022 the Russian leadership did warn that if the country’s red lines were crossed there could be disastrous consequences. This was actually a warning to the West not to supply Ukraine with weapons of a nature that could be used to target Russian territory. The West has largely heeded that warning. Ukraine has moved into Russian territory in the Kursk region and has also attacked Russian assets through aerial means in other areas of Russia. However, the West has maintained a hold on its use of truly offensive weapons by Ukraine which could harm Russian installations and population like it has itself suffered on account of Russian actions.
The Biden administration and NATO has tried to pressure Russia by imposing economic sanctions but these have not worked. It remains committed to supporting Ukraine, a position that Harris reiterated. That is not Trump has been saying or made clear in the debate. Instead, he is making the ludicrous claim that such is the fear he invokes of US power, across the world, that a leader like Putin would have been deterred from launching an attack on Ukraine. This is, to reiterate again, errant nonsense.
