- Trump is fundamentally a nationalist, fundamentally a unilateralist, whereas Biden is very much a, sort of, globalist or internationalist, and that's our key difference.

The Biden administration has tried to frame world politics as democracies versus autocracies.

Trump doesn't care about that one way or the other.

[soft instrumental music] - Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today the decision US voters make in November won't just impact America, it could change the world.

We're exploring what American foreign policy in a second Biden or Trump term would look like, and how important conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine will be in the voting booth.

I'm joined by Harvard Kennedy School Professor of International Relations Steve Walt.

He says, "A second Trump term won't bring "a vastly different US approach to the world."

I kind of disagree.

It sounds like the makings of a good discussion.

Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

- Breaking news, Vladimir Putin has won his fifth term as Russian president.

- But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- [Narrator 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator 2] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com - [Narrator 1] And by... Cox Enterprises is proud to support "GZERO."

We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.

Learn more at Cox.career/news.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and... [bright music] [dramatic instrumental music] - What do voters care about?

"It's the economy, stupid."

Political strategist James Carville's famous mantra from 1992 is now so widely accepted that I'm embarrassed to say it again, but it wasn't always thus.

When pollsters started asking Americans back in 1948 what they viewed at that time as the, quote, "most important problem" facing the country, foreign policy and international security dominated, and did for decades.

By 1976, shortly after the war in Vietnam ended, economic concerns trumped foreign policy, then for the first time.

Despite a few exceptions, for example, reaction of President Jimmy Carter's handling of the Iran Hostage Crisis ahead of his 1980 defeat to Ronald Reagan, it has stayed that way.

The gap was as high as 18:1 by Bill Clinton's 1992 victory.

On the 2008 campaign trail, Barack Obama's message of ending the Iraq war resonated with voters.

- I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do.

I will get our troops home.

We will bring an end to this war.

You can take that to the bank.

- But by election day, it was the collapsing banks themselves that dominated the headlines, and the Great Recession drove the economy to the top of the worry list.

Now let's look ahead to the 2024 presidential election.

When Biden took office, COVID, of course, was still raging.

The economy was still reeling.

Today unemployment is at an all-time low.

The economy is growing by about 3% per quarter.

Wages are going up.

The stock market is at record levels.

By every economic indicator, pretty much, Biden should be surging.

And yet, by every political indicator, not so much.

According to a recent "CBS News" poll, 65% of Americans recall the economy during Trump's presidency favorably.

For President Biden, that number 38%.

Biden's fate in November may hinge on whether he can convince a skeptical electorate that the economy is doing as well as it is actually doing.

But, you know, as John Lennon once sang, "Foreign policy is what happens to you "when you're busy making other plans."

American's views on the Ukraine war have shifted, with the plurality now saying the US is doing too much to help Ukraine.

And half of US adults polled in February said that Israel has gone too far in its war with Hamas.

Could Biden's handling of these key foreign policy issues cost him the election in November?

Here to talk about the role foreign policy will play in both the 2024 election and in the second term of either a Trump or Biden presidency is Harvard Kennedy School Professor Steve Walt.

Let's get to it.

Steve Walt, good to see you, man.

- Nice to see you too, Ian.

- So we've had a couple of decades now where people say, "It's the economy, stupid," but given the nature of the global order right now, a couple of active wars going on, and we can't forget Afghanistan, which was, you know, a debacle for Biden's first year, how much of a role do you think foreign policy is going to play in the 2024 election, ultimately?

- More than it usually does, partly because the economy doesn't seem to be helping Biden as much as it should be, partly because it's hard to look at Biden's foreign policy and tout a lot of successes, a lot of big success stories.

They tend to be things that people like us know about, but the public only sees a war happening in Gaza, a war we're not winning in Ukraine.

And then, most importantly, I think the war in Gaza is gonna hurt Biden in a couple of states with Arab-American populations, but also with progressives who aren't gonna vote for Trump, but they may not turn out in as large of numbers and they may not help the campaign with the same enthusiasm, the same numbers that they did in 2020.

I think those things could actually hurt.

So indirectly, foreign policy may have a much more significant role than it usually does.

- If Trump wins, you say foreign policy is not gonna change.

- Not what I said.

It's not gonna change as much as people think it's gonna change.

No question it's gonna be different in a number of different ways, but on a bunch of big issues, the daylight between him and Biden just isn't that great.

- So the easy one to talk about is China, right?

Because, I mean, that's where Trump's foreign policy that, you know, everyone was, you know, sort of agitated about in the first administration, which was fairly hardball, Biden largely stuck to, and it's now the one area where Congress is all coming together, right?

- That's exactly right.

And in fact, you know, the Biden people refined the Trump approach in a number of ways, focused it very much on high-tech, but have, if anything, doubled down on the policies that Trump adopted starting in 2017.

So I don't see a big shift when Trump comes in.

The big difference is that Biden has done this multilaterally.

He's been able to get lots of international support for his policy, and he's worked very hard to build partnerships in Asia to try and contain China.

I worry that Trump is gonna take a much more unilateralist approach and it's not likely to be as effective.

- Now, that's a fair point.

The other one I wanted to push you on a little bit is Taiwan, right?

I mean, in part because if it's true that Trump is going to leave Ukraine in the dust, that clearly concerns a lot of people that, well, what would American commitments to Taiwan look like?

And they're just general issues with an America first approach that implies the United States shouldn't be sending, you know, sort of, men and women to defend a little island really far away.

- Right, no, and Trump has waffled on this.

He's been asked directly if he would defend Taiwan, and he didn't say he wouldn't, but he didn't say he would.

Whereas the Biden people have hinted in a variety of ways and Biden himself has said on a number of occasions that he would, in fact, defend Taiwan.

So I think that is at least a potential point.

But again, if you're really serious about containing China, and Trump appears to be, can you really afford to then let Taiwan go down the tubes, something that would then have shock waves, you know, for Japan, for South Korea, for Australia, for others?

And it seems to me if he starts to move in that direction, he'll get lots of pushback, including from some of the people he's likely to appoint in the next administration, again, if he's elected.

- But is he really serious about containing China, or is he just really serious about bringing the trade deficit down and reducing American trade with China?

And that seems to be the focus, not containment writ large.

- Yeah, that's probably gonna be Trump's focus, 'cause he's tended to concentrate on that throughout his career.

But again, he's gonna be bringing in a number of other people who have I think a much more confrontational approach towards China, people like Matt Pottinger likely to be in the second term, as he was in the first term.

And of course, that is an issue where there's a bipartisan consensus in Congress increasing support within the American business community, certain parts of it, and of course lots of support within the broad national security community.

So he may only care about the trade deficit, but everyone else around cares about more than that.

- Let's move on to Russia, where certainly if you were going to argue that there's a big difference between a Biden and a Trump administration, you would start there, right?

In part because Trump sees Zelenskyy as a personal thorn from having not been willing to open the investigations into Biden and Hunter when he demanded that Zelenskyy do.

And secondly, because he continues to say that, "I'm gonna end this war in a day," and the way he apparently seems to intend to end the war is by stopping all support for Ukraine.

Now, that has not been where Republicans and Democrats have been, but the Freedom Caucus in the House most aligned with Trump has been doing everything possible to stop that money from going to Ukraine.

- Yeah, I think this is the clearest place you'll see a difference, but the daylight may not be as great as people think.

And it's not because Trump isn't likely to be much less supportive of Ukraine.

He certainly won't spend any political capital trying to get big aid packages through the Freedom Caucus or anybody else.

But I believe that in a second term, a Biden administration would also be trying to end this war sooner rather than later.

They realize, even though they won't say it publicly, that Ukraine is not gonna be able to reconquer its lost territory.

It's not getting back Crimea.

It's probably not getting back any part of the Donbas.

So if the war continues in a second term for Biden, it's just a war in which Ukraine is getting hurt more and more and more and more.

So I think, although they can't say it during the campaign, once Biden's re-elected, you'll see a move towards some kind of ceasefire, some kind of settlement as well.

The difference is that Biden's gonna try to support Ukraine to help them get the best deal they can in a peace arrangement.

And Trump, you run the risk that he would, in fact, abandon Ukraine and force Ukraine to rely only on the support they can get from Europe, which, of course, is what Trump has wanted all along, to get the Europeans to do more of the heavy lifting when it comes to European security.

- Now, the other difference, though, goes back to your first point when we're talking about China, which is unilateralism versus multilateralism.

I mean, Biden would be trying to engage in this policy, construct this policy with European allies, where Trump is working with Viktor Orban, you know, his buddy who's most irritating to all of the Europeans, has been the most Euro-skeptic of the European leaders.

Isn't this a more existential threat to NATO, or you're not worried about that?

- Well, I don't think Russia constitutes an existential threat to NATO for a whole series of complicated reasons, but you're absolutely right on this point, that Trump is fundamentally a nationalist, fundamentally a unilateralist, whereas Biden is very much a, sort of, globalist or internationalist, and that's our key difference.

There's also the key difference in that the Biden administration has tried to frame world politics as democracies versus autocracies, the need for the former to stand together, demonstrate that they perform better than autocracies.

Trump doesn't care about that one way or the other.

That framing will be completely lost.

If anything, he seems more comfortable with people like Viktor Orban than with most European leaders.

So that I think will also shape his basic approach to Europe.

I don't think Trump was gonna leave NATO, but you're certainly gonna see a less supportive America under a Donald Trump second term.

So Trump may, in fact, move to a situation where the United States is no longer seen as the first responder in Europe, but rather, as sort of the ally of last resort that's there in the case of a genuine emergency, there in the case of a direct attack upon NATO.

And if he does that in a measured way, that might not be such a terrible development.

It certainly doesn't necessarily lead to the breakdown of NATO, although I'm sure it would cause a lot of hair tearing in Brussels.

- Let's turn now to the Middle East, where you don't see a lot of daylight between the administration and Trump.

- Yeah, in fact, the Biden and Trump administrations have been almost identical in terms of their Middle East policy.

Remember Biden said he was gonna go back to the nuclear deal with Iran?

That never happened.

He said he was gonna reopen the US consulate in Jerusalem.

That didn't happen.

Nothing was done on the Israeli-Palestinian front until October 7th occurred.

And, in fact, what Biden was doing was essentially continuing what Trump had done with the Abraham Accords, trying to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia as part of a, sort of, complicated diplomatic bank shot that would also involve security guarantees for the Saudis.

That, of course, all got put on hold when October 7th happened, but it's hard to see a big change between the Trump administration's approach to the Middle East and what the Biden administration was doing up until October 7th.

Since then, of course, there's been very little daylight, really, between the United States and Israel.

Lots of, you know, stories about how the Americans are frustrated, but support is continuing.

There's no sense that we're really actually gonna condition American aid, and we're just waiting to see when the fighting actually stops in Gaza.

So I don't see either a future Biden administration or a future Trump administration having a fundamentally different policy towards most of the Middle East, and probably not even on Iran.

- The last point's the most interesting, of course, because in a considerably less unstable environment at the end of the Trump administration, Trump decided to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, who was the head of the Iranian Defense Forces.

Now, here we have an environment where the Iranians are engaging actively in a proxy war against US interests across the region, and indeed with three American servicemen and women getting killed in Jordan in the past weeks.

Now, Biden's response was very careful, very cautious, back-channeling to the Iranians to try to make sure that there wasn't an expansion and escalation.

You think that Trump would act similarly in that environment?

- Yeah, I think, again, assassinating Soleimani was probably the boldest thing that Trump did.

There were other planned attacks on Iran that he actually vetoed at the last minute on a number of occasions.

And most of what the Biden administration has done has been to respond against Iranian proxies, most notably the Houthis in Yemen.

But, again, I don't think that either side, either the Iranians or the Americans want to get into a serious test of military strength there, particularly given what has happened already in the Middle East, the damage that that's done to America's image elsewhere in the world.

For the United States to get involved in yet another large Middle East war, it seems to me is contrary to our interests, but it's also contrary to most of Donald Trump's instincts.

He doesn't mind demonstrations of military strength, dropping bombs, sending cruise missiles in small numbers, things like that, but big wars are one of the things he ran against in 2016, and he's continued to oppose.

- So if there was a Steve Walt book on the 2024 foreign policy and election, would it be like, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Trump?"

- Not at all, because there are a number of issues where Trump is likely to be very different than Biden, certainly on the environment, right?

He'll abandon the Paris Climate Accord agreement again, probably will reverse or try to reverse the Inflation Reduction Act and the various things Biden has done to hasten a green transition.

So that clock will get turned back another three or four years as well.

What has he said, that day one, "We're gonna drill, drill, drill."

So that's clearly one.

To the extent that the United States still stands for human rights, that's gonna drop.

- You're making me push back on the Trump side now.

I mean, Biden administration, you're drill, drill, drill.

I mean, it's the highest level of energy production, fossil fuel energy production in the history of the planet is happening right now under Biden.

Is that the same policy for Trump?

- Well, now you're supporting my position that there won't be that much difference between the two of them.

[both laugh] No, but I think clearly Trump has basically been, if not a climate change denier, pretty close to them, and won't do anything, I think to encourage the United States to accelerate its weaning itself off of fossil fuels.

And that's one of Biden's signature accomplishments so far.

And the last thing to point to is just who he appoints and what the overall level of competence and chaos is.

The first term was not a smooth running machine.

Four secretaries of defense, four national security advisers, two secretaries of state, enormous amounts of turnover in the White House.

You could argue maybe they'll do better in a second term.

They've got a list of loyalists to put in.

But I think people have found that working for Donald Trump is not a whole lot of fun.

So I think the other thing to worry about is you're gonna get a highly chaotic, very unpredictable environment, nothing that we should actually be looking forward to.

- So before we close, a broader discussion for a moment on just how you think US foreign policy and influence around the world is going.

Do you see the United States in a reasonably stable position globally right now?

Are you seeing US foreign policy starting to decline?

- Well, the United States is, you know, an extraordinarily fortunate country, given how safe we are in the Western Hemisphere, given our economic diversity, overall economic resource, the fact that the US economy has outperformed all the other industrial powers over the last several years.

I think all of this suggests that events in other parts of the world do not affect us nearly as much as we often think.

So in that sense, things look pretty good.

And I do give the Biden administration credit for having smooth relations with our principal long-term allies.

That's been fine.

Unfortunately, they've mismanaged a number of other relationships, most notably in the Middle East, and I think mismanaging the conflict with Ukraine, which has, of course, put them in a position where suddenly American foreign policy doesn't look all that successful.

Ukraine has not gone as well as we all hoped.

The situation in the Middle East, of course, is a disaster.

And where this is really hurting us, as you well know, is in the global south where the United States now looks, I think remarkably hypocritical.

And all these ideas about a rules-based order that we were trying to get the rest of the world to subscribe to, you know, that all looks like a lot of hooey to most people in Brazil or South Africa, India, other parts of the world.

And I think that does undercut American influence substantially, and it's gonna make it harder to elicit cooperation from those countries going forward, regardless of who's president.

- How do you think Biden has mismanaged Ukraine specifically?

And I mean, it's a really challenging response to marshal.

There was much stronger coordination both inside the US and with NATO allies than there appears to be today.

And certainly the Ukrainians are not performing as well on the ground as they were, say, six, nine, 12 months ago.

What do you think the US should have done differently, and when?

- Well, I think we should have worked harder to prevent the war from happening in the first place.

I think the American position when the Russians sort of attempted to coerce some kind of negotiated settlement was to flatly reject it.

I understand why they did that.

I don't think they took sufficiently seriously the possibility of cutting a diplomatic deal before the war started.

Then the United States was not particularly supportive of the early discussions on a ceasefire involving Turkey, involving Israel, where there seemed to be some progress being made on maybe getting the war over sooner rather than later.

I think that ultimately would've been better for Ukraine, better for all of us.

Finally, I think they mismanaged the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

We should have been much firmer telling the Ukrainians not to attempt a counteroffensive that wasn't likely to work given the amount of training they had, given the preparations the Russians had made.

And that, of course, weakened Ukraine substantially, has put Russia in a much better position as well.

So you put all of those things together, I think now the Ukrainian position is much weaker than most of us had hoped it would be.

And I blame the United States in part for some of those mistakes.

- What should West, what should NATO do now, given that?

I mean, it's been my view that Ukraine is going to get partitioned one way or the other, but that, given that, there needs to be much harder security guarantees from the west of the remaining Ukrainian territory that they still actually occupy.

Do you think that that is viable?

Is that the best policy, or should we do something else?

- No, I think that's basically where we're gonna end up.

So I think we should be continuing to support the Ukrainians so that they don't lose any additional territory, and so that they're in a good bargaining position when it comes time for the partition you outlined, which I also agree is the likely outcome here.

And then the question of exactly what sort of security guarantees Ukraine is gonna get going forward, I think is actually quite an important one, and also a somewhat tricky one.

I disagree with those who think that the thing to do now is bring Ukraine into NATO immediately or promise it'll be in soon, because I believe that's part of the reasons the war broke out.

And if that's their position going in, Russia will just keep fighting to prevent that from happening.

- And that was Steve Walt.

Always great to have you on the show.

- Nice to talk to you as always, Ian.

[gentle instrumental music] - And now to "Puppet Regime," where Russian President Vladimir Putin somehow, some way managed to squeak out a victory and win reelection, shock.

- [Announcer] We interrupt this broadcast to bring you breaking news.

Vladimir Putin has won his fifth term as Russian president.

Nobody saw that one coming, certainly not the guy he was running against.

What was that guy's name?

Well, anyway, we now go live to Moscow for Mr. Putin's victory speech.

- Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Really, just, like, wow, can't believe it, right?

I mean, this is just, wow.

But look, I want to give first big shout out to my publicist.

I know you said, "Don't talk about publicist, blah, blah, blah," but you don't have publicist like I have publicist.

So Tucker, thank you so much, man.

You did great job, crushed it.

We started at the bottom and now we're here.

But how did we get here?

I would like to speak for 30 seconds on this issue.

I think it really started in 988, baptism of Russia when Prince Vladimir, great-grandson of Prince Rurik, baptized Russia and adopted Orthodoxy.

Yaroslav the Wise had a dream of... You're starting the music for me?

Geez, I mean, you stick around for 25 years, they try to cut you off after 30 seconds.

What kind of-- ♪ Puppet Regime ♪ - That's our show this week.

Come back next week if you like what you've seen, or even if you don't, but you say, "Hey, Ian can fight against his guests, "we want more of that," why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com?

[upbeat bouncy music] [upbeat bouncy music continues] [upbeat bouncy music continues] [upbeat tune] - [Narrator 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator 2] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Narrator 1] And by... Cox Enterprises is proud to support "GZERO."

We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.

Learn more at Cox.career/news.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and... [bright music] [cheerful tune]