#19 Candidate Cage Match: Trump vs Biden’s Foreign Policy

With the US presidential election looming, the nerds tackle Trump and Biden’s foreign policy platforms. Follow along with a dynamic conversation that covers all angles, from flashpoint point issues like China, Iran, and North Korea, to the academic theories behind their policies.

HUNTER:

Hello and welcome back to Geopolitics Rundown with just a few days to go in the U.S. election. We wanted to tackle an important part of the presidential platform that’s fallen by the wayside this cycle. Foreign policy.

They talked about it in the debate a lot last night, but we wanted to dig in even further. Now, before we begin, a disclaimer – despite our personal views on the matter, this show is not an endorsement of either candidate, nor is it an endorsement of their policy platforms. Rather, the point of this episode is to analyze the context behind each candidate’s foreign policy on a number of issues, focusing on the academic schools of thought that underpin these views. This is not a discussion of who is better, but rather where they differ. With that said, let’s dive into it.

I want to start by talking about the roots of each candidate’s foreign policy, which schools of thought they come from and broadly what their individual styles look like. Let’s start with Trump. Ryan, how would you characterize Trump’s foreign policy?

RYAN:

Well, I’d say there’s two main facets to Trump’s foreign policy. There’s isolationism, which is a school of thought that basically thinks that removing yourself from the affairs of other countries is the best way to do things, and that that tends to go hand-in-hand with Trump’s other main facet to his foreign policy, which is nationalism, which is where you promote your state or country and its interests to the exclusion or detriment of other countries. So put them together, you have the America first policy.

HUNTER:

So if I tried to put that into a box in foreign policy, it kind of sounds like an attempt at realism, but it’s not quite there yet.

RYAN:

It’s kind of like this sophomore… sophomore year realism where Trump and his advisers, they’re mainly they’re being detractors of liberal internationalism, which is the basically the counter to realism in international politics and theory like that. And so he seems to mainly focus on these powerplays. And it turns out that that turns your policy into something that’s pretty much hyper transactional.

HUNTER:

Where do you think that comes from?

RYAN:

I would say mainly where that comes from is his experience with the Manhattan real estate industry. In real estate, you have this problem where if somebody develops a property on a plot of land that you wanted, they get the money for it and you don’t. You lose out completely. And so that’s what you’d call a zero sum game, where if somebody wins, you lose. Trump views the entire international community in this way. But that’s not really how the international community works. And so you have some problems there.

HUNTER:

It seems like he kind of contradicts these principles when it comes to his personal relationships.

RYAN:

Yeah, you could definitely see that with his relationships with Putin, where he’s, you know, instead of playing hardball like like with most other countries, he’s taken sanctions off of Russia. He with his relationship with Saudi Arabia, he’s given them lots and lots of weapons sales because he has favorable relationships with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, and with members of their real estate industry.

HUNTER:

You know, there’s another foreign policy style that some people have associated with Trump, and that’s Madman Theory. Do you think there’s anything to that?

RYAN:

Well, it’s interesting. So for people who don’t know, Madman Theory comes from the Nixon administration, where basically Nixon and his policy advisors, they thought that if foreign leaders thought that Nixon was a madman, irrational, crazy, you can’t really reason with him. They wouldn’t want to mess with them and the United States by extension. So people think that this is what Trump is doing. And I can’t really tell you for sure if that’s what he’s doing. But it really doesn’t look that way, because if it was true, Trump would have to be managing this a very carefully orchestrated facade. And that’s just doesn’t look to be the case.

RAMYA:

It’s kind of unlikely.

RYAN:

Yeah, I could see it being the case where Trump goes with these actual irrational kind of short sighted moves and then his policy makers retroactively go back and say that was an instance of Madman Theory. But it doesn’t seem like something coordinated. Not really. It would have to be. A master stroke. And it hasn’t really worked out that way anyway.

RAMYA:

It would be a bit revisionist if we were to say that all of Trump’s foreign policy is, you know, a part of this madman theory. I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense because, you know, we would see some gains by now. Right?

HUNTER:

Ramya, what about Biden’s foreign policy? Does he take a different fundamental approach?

RAMYA:

Oh, absolutely. He’s very different. Let me just start with a quote by Biden from July 2019. He said, “America’s security, prosperity and way of life require the strongest possible network of partners and allies working alongside us.”.

HUNTER:

That sounds like liberal internationalism.

RAMYA:

Yep. You hit the nail on the head. It’s liberal internationalism. According to Britannica, Liberal Internationalism believes that international progress, and progress meaning moving towards cooperation between different political communities or entities, that it can be achieved. But it’s in a way that cooperation is absolutely necessary. And basically, under liberal internationalism, liberal countries which are generally democratic, have a duty and an obligation to intervene in the world to protect liberal values. Think freedom of speech, free elections, basic human rights, etc.. And you know his memoirs. Talk about his pride in pushing Bill Clinton towards intervening in the massacres in Bosnia. And he has said, according to the CFR article that I’ve been using for my research, that the greatest foreign policy achievement of the United States is in the “investments in collective security and prosperity with allies.”

HUNTER:

You know, that’s something that people characterize the Obama administration as. Which is Liberal Internationalist in feel and in scope.

RAMYA:

Right.

HUNTER:

How does Biden differ from Obama?

RAMYA:

OK. This is actually a very good question. He is quite different from Obama. I would say one of the first things is that he’s a lot less of an academic than Obama. I mean, if you think about Obama and what. Tons of policy analysts have said. Obama took a very cerebral, intellectual approach towards foreign policy, whereas Biden has always been better at one on one politics because like he actually says, he understands people better. And he’s also an idealist, which I would say Obama was, too. But Obama was far more invested in analysis and research to form solutions. Biden, on the other hand, is all about one on one politics and building relations with other world leaders. So there’s a great quote by Ezra Klein in one of the articles that I pulled up. He says that Biden is somebody who talks about grand foreign policy ideas. But when you really listen to him, he will always say he knows the first name of every world leader. And they know his. And like Trump, he’s not a big reader or analyst. He’s he’s even admitted as much in his memoir Promises to Keep from 2007, where he said, “It’s important to read reports and listen to experts. More important is being able to read people in power.” He has over and over again said that diplomacy will be the number one tool in U.S. foreign policy. And he wants to revitalize the State Department.

HUNTER:

It’s interesting how both of you mentioned this reliance on personal relationships and face to face politics. What are some examples of where that’s worked for Trump?

RYAN:

I’d say where that’s worked for Trump the most has definitely been the Middle East, where his main focus has generally been to support Israel and Saudi Arabia and to a lesser, lesser extent, the rest of the Gulf states, while being hard on Iran, which is all of those countries that I just mentioned. It’s their number one enemy. So he’s found this approach that works for him. And so you can see that through. He moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Pretty incendiary, but it improves your relations with Israel for sure. You got UAE and Bahrain and most recently Sudan to normalize relations with Israel. That’s pretty big. It kind of completely destroyed the possibility of a two state solution, though, for Palestinians. But that’s been kind of a hallmark of Trump’s foreign policy where there are these tangible benefits, but also very tangible downsides.

HUNTER:

Can you give another example of where that’s worked?

RYAN:

I would say the next one would definitely be India, where his relationship with Modi is given the United States a better relationship with India than pretty much any other U.S. president has in the past. So that better relationship with India definitely helps with developments with the quadrilateral security dialog, which is the main framework to counter Chinese aggression in East Asia, in the Indo-Pacific.

RAMYA:

So to all our listeners, you’ve probably listened to our episodes on the Indo-Pacific. But if you want to know more about the Quadrilateral Dialogue, do give a listen to our Indo-Pacific series that talks about all four components of the Quadrilateral Dialogue, which is the U.S., India, Japan and Australia.

HUNTER:

Yeah, we’ve definitely talked about those countries a lot. And if you want to know more. Those are great resources to get a little bit more up to speed. But I want to talk about where Trump’s personal politics hasn’t worked. Can you give any examples, Ryan?

RYAN:

Well, there’s three that come to my mind immediately, the China, North Korea and Iran. So with China, the big problem is that regarding COVID-19, Trump believed Xi Jinping’s downplaying of the severity of the virus instead of listening to U.S. intelligence agencies. So he ignored that and basically doubled down on his mistake and then blamed China when things got bad in the U.S..

HUNTER:

What about North Korea? Because he holds that up as his biggest diplomatic win.

RYAN:

Yeah, and he said as much on, like the the debate last night. And basically, I uh… I can give him credit because he gave diplomacy a shot where other presidents wouldn’t have done it. But the problem is it blew up in his face totally. He’s now the president who gave North Korea some legitimacy and kind of got played by Kim Jong Un, which doesn’t look good on the national stage. It’s the reason why previous presidents declined to deal with North Korea except by sanctioning them.

So I want to address something that he said during the debate, which was that not going to war with North Korea means that our relations with them are good and then therefore it’s a good thing and a win for him. But I just think that’s patently untrue. That’s my opinion. But. Are U.S. Iran relations right now good because we’re not at war? I mean, the U.S. we assassinated Qassem Soleimani, who is one of the most important men in the country. We’re not at war with Iran, but we’re definitely not having good relations. And I would say the same thing about our relations with North Korea.

HUNTER:

Yeah, it’s interesting you bring that up because we talked about that a lot on our episode, Maximum Pressure that deals specifically with this strange relationship that we now have with Iran.

RAMYA:

And the assassination of Qassem Soleimani. To make sense of it.

HUNTER:

Yeah, it’s a great resource.

RYAN:

Exactly. And speaking of Iran, it’s where Trump has actually failed his strongman tactics. And one on one politics hasn’t really worked because he want – he pulled out of the JCPOA to get Iran to get a better deal with Iran for what he said, basically. And he wants to continue this maximum pressure strategy on Iran with these crippling sanctions. But all that’s doing is turning Iran more towards U.S. enemies like China and Russia, where now Iran is one of the biggest suppliers of Chinese oil. And that’s likely not going to change anytime soon now.

HUNTER:

So now that we’ve talked a little bit about each candidate’s styles, how do these differing styles play out when it comes to actual policymaking? Let’s take Trump, for example. How is this isolationist America first policy affected America’s traditional involvement in international institutions?

RYAN:

Well, he’s basically taken the opposite approach to America’s traditional involvement. He’s instead of trying to strengthen these multilateral institutions, these international treaties, he’s pulling out of them. We could see that with the Paris Accords on climate change. He’s had great disdain for the U.N. He’s pulled out of the WHO. He’s expressed his problems with the WTO and all other kinds of U.N. subsidiaries. And we talked a little bit already about the Iran deal he pulled out of the JCPOA, which is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to make sure that Iran doesn’t develop nuclear weapons. And now, because he pulled out that Iran is closer than ever to making a nuke.

HUNTER:

It’s interesting that you mentioned nuclear weapons because he’s also pulled out of a couple of the key arms control treaties that we put in place to limit nuclear proliferation. That would be the INF treaty and NEW START.

RYAN:

Exactly. He’s actually has a pretty lax like interpretation of how to deal with nuclear weapons compared to pretty much any other world leader in history. He pulled out of INF, which, to be completely honest, it’s not the worst move because Russia was already violating it by developing their own intermediate range ballistic missile. But the problem is, if the U.S. pulls out of INF, it increases uncertainty and it creates a lot more tension than than what’s necessary, especially because we’re talking about nuclear weapons. You don’t need uncertainty when it comes to nuclear weapons. You need communication. And about the other nuclear nonproliferation deal that the U.S. is a part of that is NEW START that’s with Russia and it needs to be extended. It it goes out of service in February of 2021. There’s a provision to extend it. But Trump won’t extend it because he wants to include China in on the deal. But the problem is new start limits U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads to a total of 1550. That’s all that the U.S. and Russia could have. But China doesn’t even have 400. So they don’t really even qualify to this deal. So Trump trying to play these strongman politics is potentially going to erase one of the only nuclear nonproliferation deals existing nowadays.

HUNTER:

That’s obviously a huge problem. But I want to look at the Biden approach to international treaties and multilateral institutions. What do you think he would change from Trump’s policy specifically?

RAMYA:

Well, I think the easiest answer to that would be that he would go back to anything that’s pre-Trump. That being said, he would make sure that he re-ingratiates the United States back into these institutions where, for example, the WHO, the United States ended up ceding a lot of power to China, which is also why the WHO actually ended up spreading misinformation in a way where it downplayed the vi– the coronavirus because China was actually at the helm of it while the United States had stepped back under Donald Trump. So I would say that the first thing that Biden would do is to rejoin the WHO. For example, in the most recent debate, Biden said that every country needs to play by the rules. This is a quote. Based on his style in foreign policy that we’ve just established as Liberal Internationalism, the only way to enforce these rules is through international organizations like, say, the United Nations.

HUNTER:

Or NATO.

RAMYA:

Or NATO! Right. NATO is a good one because NATO is a military alliance. And Biden has said that it is the “single most important military alliance in the world.” And Trump has been very vocal about NATO just not being useful for the United States, whereas NATO has been– NATO was created as a deterrent to Russia back in the day. And U.S.’s NATO allies are so crucial in pretty much any foreign policy dispute in the world. So I would say that also Biden would try to get Americans or even American allies such as our NATO allies, for example, at the head of many of these institutions.

HUNTER:

Ramya. It’s so interesting that you mentioned NATO because that actually came up in the debate last night, a hallmark of Trump’s foreign policy platform is this idea that NATO isn’t paying its fair share.

RAMYA:

Right.

HUNTER:

What are the consequences of Trump’s transactional approach to alliances?

RYAN:

Well, here’s the thing about what he said about NATO, he’s not entirely wrong because other members weren’t meeting their two percent of their GDP quota that they needed to meet. They weren’t. But publicly shaming them for it is just about the worst way to go about it. And now no one is going to pitch in. And basically the effect of that is he’s pushing these very close U.S. allies closer to China and Russia than the United States. Take, for example, Germany. He told Angela Merkel personally that she owed him a trillion dollars and then he withdrew 12000 U.S. troops from Germany. Now, Germany has very close economic relations with China and none of the same security concerns about China that the U.S. does. And they’re also dependent on Russian oil. So now who is Germany going to turn to if they need help? Maybe not the United States. The U.K. is another example where they had to deal with Huawei the Chinese telecom company to make 5-G. They had to get rid of that due to concerns, due to security concerns. But still, that deal almost made it through.

HUNTER:

And it seems like it’s indicative of this transactional world view that we talked about earlier.

RYAN:

Exactly what what Trump isn’t seeing is that he’s prioritizing these short term monetary gains at the expense of American power and American credibility with its allies. And NATO is basically the perfect example. Trump favoring his relationship with Russia over his relationship with NATO states completely shakes the foundations of NATO and NATO members’ trust in the United States. By removing sanctions on Putin’s friends like Oleg Deripaska, Trump basically says that he cares more about Russia’s opinion than NATO members opinions.

HUNTER:

Ramya. How do you think Biden would approach this process of rebuilding alliances like NATO? Will his administration have enough credibility after Trump to turn things around?

RAMYA:

Well, since it’s a presidential campaign, the details are very unclear. However, I can say from all of my research that Biden will definitely recommend U.S. interests towards NATO and other allies. And here’s the thing. NATO isn’t the the most important thing as of right now. Like we’ve talked about, China is a huge threat. And the only way that the U.S. can really counter China in a way is through building its alliances with countries in the Indo-Pacific like Australia, South Korea, Japan. And even though Democrats and, you know, Democrat governments have not necessarily had great relations with India. But I think if there’s any Democratic president in office in the United States that would have good relations with India, it’s Joe Biden. His biggest problem, I think, after all of this would be to rebuild the United States’s credibility that it has lost under Trump with his hyper transactional deals and just with the way that he’s been conducting U.S. interests.

HUNTER:

A hallmark of Trump’s foreign policy thinking is a reliance on sanctions and tariffs over free trade. Why don’t we talk a little bit about the most notable trade war of Trump’s first term, the U.S. China trade war.

RYAN:

Yeah, let’s talk about those tariffs for a second, because they started over the Chinese steel industry out competing. The U.S. steel industry and Trump placed sanctions on Chinese steel. And then basically it continued in slowly, more and more goods got added to the list. And now basically $360 billion worth of Chinese imports are being tariffed at a 25% rate. That means that they’re 25% more expensive for U.S. consumers to buy. Now, this is costing U.S. consumers about $57 billion per year.

HUNTER:

What about the trade deal?

RYAN:

Well, yeah. He just created this trade deal with China and that’s basically fending off some of the trade war problems. But not really, because here’s the thing. The U.S., what the U.S. gets back in this trade deal is that China has promised to buy around 200 billion dollars worth of U.S. agricultural and energy products. But as of right now, it doesn’t look like China is actually keeping up their end of the bargain. They’ve purchased less than 15 billion worth of U.S. agricultural and energy products so far. They need to buy another 150 billion or something in the next two months before the year end.

RAMYA:

Wait. So you’re saying they’ve only bought about 15 billion out of 200 billion dollars worth of.

RYAN:

Yeah, they’re actually nowhere close to hitting the target of the trade deal. And the other thing is the tariffs aren’t actually gone. Trump is still we’re still tariffing a lot of Chinese imports, so consumers are still paying more for Chinese goods. And as we all know, practically everything is a Chinese good.

HUNTER:

Now, Ramya, given Biden’s belief in free trade and multilateral institutions. Do you think he’d approach trade policy differently if he wins in November?

RAMYA:

Yeah, actually, he would. I mean, he’s been clear about a few things. One is that there will be retaliation against countries with unfair trade practices, and this is definitely directed towards China. He has said that the U.S. should use its economic leverage to make these other countries cooperate, i.e. China. That being said, he’s also against the current trade war with China because and simply because, like Ryan said, the tariffs are only really affecting the American consumer. Now, let’s think about this. These tariffs mean that Chinese exporters have to pay more money to the United States for their goods to enter the U.S. market. And what this ends up doing is increasing the cost of these goods. And like Ryan said, we all know just how many Chinese goods are in the U.S. market. So because of this, Joe Biden doesn’t want the American consumers to pay for this trade war.

HUNTER:

So how does this relate to maybe a trade deal?

RAMYA:

Well, he has said that he won’t sign any trade deals unless they include massive investments in jobs and infrastructure for Americans, along with having labor and environmental advocates for it. Essentially, he will not sign another trade deal unless they match up to this criteria. And to get better deals, he suggests that the U.S. should use its sizable economic leverage.

HUNTER:

What kind of trade deals do you think Biden would be in favor of?

RAMYA:

That’s actually a good question. I mean, we can start with the TPP or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Biden was Vice President when it was signed into action. Essentially, he says that the U.S. pulling out of the TPP gave China unchecked economic power in the region. And we’ve talked about this in a number of other episodes that China uses this kind of economic leverage to increase its influence in the region. So, of course, he’s going to reapproach the CPTPP and he’s most likely going to push towards the United States being party to it. Now, another free trade agreement that we hear about constantly, constantly is NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is essentially Mexico, the United States and Canada. Right? And he voted for NAFTA when he was senator in 1993. But Trump has always been against NAFTA. And recently he renegotiated NAFTA into something called the USMCA. And Biden actually supports this because it has more labor rights provisions. So I would say that Biden will most likely rejoin the TPP or now the CPTPP. And when it comes to NAFTA, he will most likely support the changes that were made but will actually invest more.

HUNTER:

Let’s refocus for a second on the Biden camp. One of the biggest underpinnings of this liberal internationalist theory is support for human rights and swift action against countries that violate them, even if that means breaking alliances or foreign intervention. Ramya, do you think Biden would stick to this policy as much as his predecessors did? Where some of the areas this might come up?

RAMYA:

Well, see, Hunter, this is one of the problems with liberal internationalism. Where do you draw the line between what can be considered a domestic problem or something that requires an international intervention? And here’s the thing. Under liberal internationalism, most of the time, these kinds of issues end up with sanctions because really no one can agree on whether or not to intervene. I mean, even Biden has been reticent. He was reticent during Obama’s era and, you know, intervening in Libya and more intervention in Afghanistan.

HUNTER:

I think there’s a couple of big areas where this has come up. One would be the protests in Hong Kong.

RAMYA:

Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, the Hong Kong protests, these… Basically China was infringing on Hong Kong’s democratic processes, institutions and really Hong Kong’s autonomy with this national security law. And essentially, when people protested en masse, they were met with violence and were tear gassed, beaten, etc.. You can learn all about this in our episode called Twilight in Hong Kong. But the thing with Hong Kong is Biden’s stance is that Trump’s response to the crisis was weak. Biden says that he would have instituted stronger sanctions against the individuals responsible for the crisis.

HUNTER:

There’s also the Uyghurs detention camps, also a Chinese human rights violation.

RAMYA:

True. Yeah, yeah. It’s about a million Uyghurs being held in detention camps. Yeah. Biden has called it unconscionable, and he has said that if he were to win this presidency, he would have a much harder stance against it. He suggests that he will support hard hitting sanctions against the individuals and companies that are taking part in this. And on a broader level, he has said that he will support a U.N. Security Council condemnation.

HUNTER:

Which fits with this whole reliance on institutions in internationalism.

RAMYA:

Exactly. In liberal internationalism, a lot of these situations hinge upon international institutions and the decisions that a collective will come to. But the problem is that other than these kinds of these kind of collective condemnations and collective kind of… Basically, if the U.N. Security Council just got together and said, OK, China, stop. That’s really the most that they can do other than sanctions, because other than that, Biden, especially in this situation, can’t do much because there isn’t a way to enforce anything. This is one of those things that realists use against liberal internationalism, where there if there isn’t an enforcer, what’s going to make these countries actually comply, right?

RYAN:

Nobody wants to go to war with China at this point in time.

RAMYA:

Nobody wants to go to war with China. So the thing is, it’s probably just going to end up in more and more sanctions.

HUNTER:

And a couple of strongly worded letters.

RAMYA:

A couple of strongly worded letters. Exactly.

HUNTER:

Now, Ryan, I wanted to take this question to you, because Trump has taken the opposite approach when it comes to human rights violations in China specifically.

RYAN:

Oh, my God. Yeah. He’s like… like Biden and Ramya have been saying he really didn’t do much about these Hong Kong protests and China’s crackdown on them. He issued a warning and some sanctions, but the warning was basically to say that he would remove Hong Kong’s special economic status, which is a big benefit for Hong Kong and China by extension. But he didn’t follow through with that. So he ended up doing nothing. And when it comes to the Uyghurs, he did sign into action the Uyghur human rights bill with the rest of Congress. But allegedly on this topic, he gave Xi Jinping his personal sign off in a meeting to continue creating the weaker detention camps.

HUNTER:

It should be mentioned that this comes from Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton’s book. So it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

RYAN:

Yeah. Bolton isn’t – I wouldn’t call him the most reputable source, but he was probably very close.

RAMYA:

He’s got an axe to grind.

RYAN:

Yeah, he’s definitely has an axe to grind. But he was probably very close to Trump. So there’s definitely a kernel of truth in there.

HUNTER:

Yeah.

RYAN:

And just on human rights in general. What more can you say except for the fact that under Trump, the U.S. withdrew from being a part of the U.N. Human Rights Council and he basically by doing that, he let serial human rights abusers like China, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia become the main actors in that group. So if you have serial human rights abusers leading the U.N. Human Rights Council, that’s a huge misstep.

HUNTER:

Let’s keep talking about Trump for a little bit. It’s no secret that Trump’s been heavily criticized for his handling of the covert 19 pandemic in the United States. How is that affected U.S. foreign policy?

RYAN:

Here’s the thing. COVID is the type of problem that the U.S. has spent decades positioning itself to be prepared for. The U.S. wants to be the global responder because nothing gives you more influence among other countries than helping vulnerable countries by, say, providing PPE or creating new methods of treatment or creating a cure or vaccine. But instead, the U.S. has lost out on that opportunity because Trump decided to believe the Chinese downplaying of its severity during January and February. And he basically did nothing and let the U.S. get swamped. So and that brings me to people talk about how he did close the border with China. So, you know, what else could he have done? Well, closing the border with China helped, but he that never really happened because since March, more than 200,000 people have flown from the U.S. to China or vice versa. So there hasn’t actually been a travel ban.

HUNTER:

Joe Biden has also been heavily critical of Trump on COVID. Ramya, what can Biden do differently than Trump to salvage this COVID situation?

RAMYA:

Okay, so let me just say, listeners, if you do want a detailed idea of what Biden wants to do in terms of dealing with COVID, it it is on his website. But I’m here to talk about the foreign policy of it. Right. Biden wants to return the United States to a place of authority on the crisis and to be in a position to help others. Biden has also pledged to rejoin WHO, and I mentioned this earlier, but this is very important because up until now, China has had the last word on what the WHO does. And also, Biden has had experience with other pandemics. I mean, he led the Obama administration’s response to H1N1 in 2009 and Ebola between 2014 and 2016.

HUNTER:

Besides COVID, there’s another pressing existential issue that came up in the debate last night, climate change. Ryan, can you go over what Trump thinks about climate change and how he’s directed U.S. foreign policy to reflect that?

RYAN:

Well, I can’t really circle around it. He basically believes it’s a hoax. He has called it as such. He gives no importance to the science behind it. And he’s crucially, he’s never actually made a statement where he admits that humanity is actually a cause of climate change. So we’re not even sure if he believes the human population has an effect on the world’s climate.

RAMYA:

Well, and if he doesn’t believe that humanity is a cause of climate change, then why would he assume that we should be doing something about it?

RYAN:

That’s pretty much exactly what his policy is. Because he left the Paris Accords because it would limit U.S. carbon emissions and he thought that would hamper U.S. oil industry. So he backed out. And I know it’s it’s something to admit that America hasn’t had the greatest track record when it comes to climate change. We’ve been basically the number one or number two carbon emitter in the world for basically the entire time that climate change has been an issue. But Trump has really taken it to a new level and it really hurts American influence, because if the leader is basically a climate change denier who doesn’t even approach the science behind it, it won’t approach the experts. It really, really hurts U.S. efforts.

HUNTER:

Ramya, I want to ask you the same question. What are Biden’s personal views on climate change and how will he bring those views into the U.S. foreign policy?

RAMYA:

Well, Biden’s views are a little, but really more a lot different than Trump’s. Biden believes that climate change is “the greatest threat to national security.” Biden released a climate plan in 2019 which actually said that the Green New Deal that we’ve been hearing about in the news a lot is a crucial framework. Biden has also promised to bring U.S. economy emissions to net zero by 2050. Now, how is he going to do that? Well, his plan is to put in $1.7 trillion into clean energy. And let me go back to the Paris Climate Accords. He does want to return to the Paris Accord standards and he wants to host a world summit to pursue even stronger regulations. And a summit is where a personal politics guy, a one on one politics guy like Biden, can thrive. And this strategy would fit into this broader idea of multilateralism, that the only way to deal with threats like global warming is international and institutional cooperation. He also wants to use trade as a climate tool by taxing high carbon products from other countries.

HUNTER:

Would it affect his policies towards foreign aid?

RAMYA:

Yes, absolutely. That’s actually one of his strategies, really. He has said that he would bar U.S. foreign aid and financing for coal fired power plants overseas. He’s also said that he would increase debt relief for countries that are implementing these green policies and that he would work on strengthening and increasing efforts by the G20 to reduce fossil fuel subsidies worldwide.

HUNTER:

So I think this is a good spot to wrap things up. Given what we know about Biden’s foreign policy style, what do you think his first term would look like if he wins in November?

RAMYA:

Well, like I said, Biden is clearly a liberal internationalist, but his politics will be hamstrung by the realities of great power competition and realism. If Biden wins, he will do everything he can to return America to the pre-Trump way of things, which essentially means stronger relations with allies like in Europe, like with Germany and France. And to the extent that he can turn his attention towards the Indo-Pacific, which is kind of becoming the new world order, and make up some of the ground lost to China.

HUNTER:

Ryan, same question about Trump. Given what we know from his first term, what would his second term look like?

RYAN:

Well, OK. Trump’s second term. Expect America to lose even more sway with this broad network of allies that is cultivated over the past decades. We’ll lose even more sway with them in for these economic problems with China. They’ll definitely continue because he’s not going to back down. Basically, the effect of his policies in a second term would help create this international system that’s based on this distrustful, cutthroat, great power competition. And who has the advantage in a system like that? Not the United States. It’s China. The U.S. loses out so much on all this power that it’s earned over the past decades due to cooperation and multilateralism.

HUNTER:

That’s it for our episode today. If you like the show please rate and subscribe on Itunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have questions or comments on the show follow us on facebook or visit our website www.geopoliticsrundown.com. As always thank you for listening, this has been geopolitics…rundown.