Hi Intriguer. As you open this newsletter, the first mail-in ballots are arriving in Alabama mailboxes. In other words, the election has officially begun for millions of Americans, which means Tuesday night’s debate was the last major political event before they make their choice.

67.1 million Americans tuned in to Tuesday’s debate. For context, 124 million watched the 2024 Super Bowl, 28.6 million watched the Olympics opening ceremony, and about 10 million folks tune in weekly to a show called Tracker, which I confess I have never heard of.

Put simply, a lot of people watched the debate in the US, and that’s before we consider how many have seen clips of it on social media, heard the talking heads’ hot takes, or seen the excellent memes. I guess my point is that, given how many people watched this debate it must affect the outcome; the problem is that no one really knows how.

Thankfully, our job is to analyze the candidates' answers during the debate to see if we can discern a coherent foreign policy from either of them. Spoiler alert—we can… if we squint.

But if you take only one thing from Tuesday night's debate, let it be the extraordinarily useful response to the impertinent prying of a boss or other authority figure: “No I do not yet have a plan, but I have the concepts of a plan.”

- John Fowler & Kristen Talman in Washington DC

Listen to this week’s podcast here, and if you’re not signed up for our flagship daily newsletter, International Intrigue, you can fix that here!

The Conversation

What Debate 2.0 told us about the future of US foreign policy

As the old saying goes, there are no votes in foreign policy. Well, someone forgot to tell Tuesday night’s debate moderators, Linsey Davis and David Muir, who asked at least three direct questions on foreign policy, and a number of follow-up questions as well.

While we were pleased, we didn’t get many direct answers from the candidates. That’s because Kamala Harris avoided answering many of the questions put to her (and was largely unpressed on this by the moderators), while Donald Trump regularly uncorked what he calls “The Weave”, but what we’d call the bewildering non-sequiturs of a man who didn’t adequately prepare for the job at hand.

Nevertheless, their answers did reveal certain things about each candidate's foreign policy, which was the subject of our conversation this week.

P.S. We’re in the final straight now, so we’ll be including Election Intrigue’s latest electoral college map each week. This is our best understanding of the state of the race based on polls, our sources and observations, and a sprinkling of unquantifiable ‘gut feeling’. Do with it what you will!

A summary of this week’s conversation:

1. What we thought about the debate in general: It will come as no surprise that we think it was a tough night for former President Trump. He missed multiple opportunities to deliver his campaign’s message and to tie Vice President Harris to unpopular elements of the Biden-Harris administration. He seemed angry and too often spoke about his personal grievances rather than those of the American people.
   
   At the same time, we thought Vice President Harris was at times evasive and spoke in generalisations when it came to foreign policy. Overall, we think she passed the basic test of presenting herself to the American voters as a plausible commander-in-chief.
   
   As always, the moderators’ performance was a Rorschach test for your political leanings. If you’re a Trump supporter, the moderators favored Harris by not pressing her for concrete answers, particularly on her changes in policy over the years. If you’re a Harris supporter, they correctly fact-checked former President Trump’s false claims, while allowing the debate flow. You can even make the argument that ‘biased’ moderators actually work to Trump’s advantage—if he has a great night, it’s despite the biased media; if he has a bad night, it’s because of the biased media.
   
   Notwithstanding the fact that moderating a debate in this political climate is the devil’s own job, we think, on balance, they did favor Harris slightly. But, as Republican strategist Scott Jennings said on CNN, “it’s a little hard to blame the refs when you’re not hitting your own jump shots”.
   

2. On China: Regular Election Intriguers know that we believe China is the single most important foreign policy issue facing the US. So you can imagine our delight when it was raised just a few minutes into the debate. Trump was asked about his promise to increase tariffs on China, a policy the Harris campaign has called a “national sales tax”. He responded by saying if Harris thought tariffs were so bad, why had the Biden administration kept in place almost all of Trump’s tariffs? Even though economists mostly agree that tariffs increase prices domestically, it was a strong moment for Trump. Harris responded by highlighting the Biden administration’s efforts to pass the CHIPS Act and initiate export controls on leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing technology to China.
   
   Overall, we think both candidates will maintain the US’ current posture towards China, perhaps tweaking tariff levels but otherwise trying to maintain the bipartisan status quo. Notably, Trump was not asked about abandoning a TikTok ban, and neither candidate was asked what they would do in the event China attacked Taiwan.
   

3. On Ukraine: The sharpest point of difference in foreign policy was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Donald Trump repeatedly said he would “end the war in a day” before he takes office. Trump’s unwillingness to answer the obvious follow-up question of “how” allowed Harris to speculate he would essentially give Eastern Ukraine to Russia. The candidates sparred over NATO’s role—Harris offered a full-throated defense of the "greatest military alliance in history” while Trump reiterated his popular position that Europe should pay more for its own security. Notably, Trump refused to be drawn on whether he thought Ukraine winning the war was in the US’ best interests (John has some views on why he was reluctant to answer in the podcast).

   
   Overall: Trump sounded angry during this portion of the debate. Trump was smart to raise the specter of nuclear weapons and World War III numerous times because it's a concern we’ve heard echoed multiple times during focus groups we’ve sat in on. Trump said that America under Biden “was going to hell”, something he’s said before but sounded even starker during this debate. If you had told us that in 2024, the Democrats would be the party of ‘Patriotism’ and the Republicans would be the party of self-hatred, we’d have told you to get your head examined.
   
   Harris made a powerful defense of America’s role in the world, arguing that defending free countries against invasions is what Americans do. We are left with little doubt that a Harris presidency would be fairly orthodox when it comes to supporting Ukraine, NATO, and European allies in general.

4. On the Middle East: If Donald Trump’s promise to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours is short on detail, then so is Harris’s neatly crafted line that “Israel has a right to defend itself, but how it does so matters”. We bet the comms adviser who came up with that line was pretty chuffed, but what does it actually mean? What ideas does she have to end the conflict that haven’t been tried by President Biden? For his part, Trump rolled out his well-practiced line that “Iran was broke under my presidency, so this would never have happened.” It’s also a clever piece of political messaging. not least because it can’t be fact-checked.
   
   Overall: Both candidates’ positions on Gaza are designed to win the election rather than give us insight into how they might solve the problem. That is to say, neither appears willing to put meat on the bones of a solution and risk upsetting one side or the other. We expect Harris would continue Biden’s policy of publicly pressuring Israel into a ceasefire while supporting them militarily. Netanyahu and Biden do not get along, so Harris may have more success simply because she is not Biden.
   
   Our best guess at Trump’s approach would be to extrapolate from his first term in office. This means he’d give a freer hand to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other regional players to resolve the issue while hammering Iran rhetorically and perhaps militarily.
   

5. So what’s next? About an hour after the debate, Harris’ campaign called for a second debate. Trump—clearly unhappy with his performance despite his campaign’s spin to the contrary—refused to commit to a rematch. This is Trump, the showman at work, trying to draw attention away from the first debate and onto the ‘will-he-won’t-he’ speculation about a second debate that is catnip for so many in the media (including us, we suppose!). Our gut tells us there’ll be a second debate because he needs a do-over and she’s clearly brimming with confidence. The biggest sticking point might be agreeing on the moderators.

Only 53 days to go.

Remember: This race remains a toss-up, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a very silly sausage!

You can listen to our full conversation by subscribing to our podcast feed below!

Where in the world is…

• President Joe Biden is in Washington, where he received his daily briefing. He has a 5:45 p.m. South Lawn speech on the calendar.

• Vice President Kamala Harris is holding campaign events in North Carolina, first in Charlotte and then in Greensboro.

• Democrat Vice President Nominee Tim Walz is campaigning in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

• Republican nominee Donald Trump is delivering remarks in Tucson, Arizona.

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski in the morning Warsaw time, concluding his travels to the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Poland this week.

World View

How the World Watched the Debate

You can bet your last dollar that capitals around the world tuned into the debate, jotting down notes on how the future American president views the world. Also because debates are like fodder for political nerds.

This is how papers across the globe reported on the debate:

🇫🇷 Harris, on offense, wins debate against Trump  - Le Monde, Paris, France

• Intrigue’s take: Le Monde got straight to the point, declaring Harris the winner right up top while noting that Trump looked “old” and that Harris passed her “credibility” test.

🇨🇳 Trump is doomed: Harris needed one gesture - RIA Novosti, Moscow, Russia

• Intrigue’s take:  Surely, considering Putin ‘endorsed’ Vice President Kamala Harris, this was welcomed as good news in Moscow? 4D chess again from the Kremlin. 😉 

🇮🇱 In Fiery Presidential Debate, Harris Says Gaza War Must End as Trump Accuses Her of Hating Israel - Haaretz, Tel Aviv, Israel

• Intrigue’s take: Stopping short of declaring a winner, Israeli media discussed Trump’s poor performance and both candidates’ comments on Israel.

🇭🇰 Kamala Harris, Donald Trump clash over China, tariffs in US presidential debate – as it happened  - South China Morning Post, Hong Kong

• Intrigue’s take: Mainland Chinese media continued its restrained coverage of the election, avoiding substantial commentary on the debate’s talk of hiking tariffs and being tough on Beijing. Hong Kong’s SCMP wrote that the candidates “clashed” over China but otherwise kept the editorializing to a minimum.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

A good rule of diplomatic thumb is not to wade into the domestic politics of any nation. That’s why ambassadors and foreign politicians give non-answers like that the US election is the “will of the American people” and that they will “work with whoever is elected.” Take it from a former diplomat, foreign ministries very much have a preferred outcome for just about every election in the world!

That’s why we raised an eyebrow when the German foreign ministry decided to tweet the quiet bit out loud early Wednesday morning. The response, or so it appears online, seems to be that Germany would be wise to avoid smugly commenting on the US election, even when they feel they need to correct the record.

The best diplomacy is very often about what is left conspicuously unsaid.

What we’re reading

• Top Chinese general to visit US as militaries step up engagement

• A Secretive Conference About The Middle East’s Future Featured No Palestinians

• Trump's new crypto business could create more conflicts if he's elected president

Poll