During Thursday night’s debate, President Joe Biden told former President Donald Trump that the United States is the “envy of the world.”

After watching their performance, many of America’s friends might beg to differ.

In Europe and Asia, the back-and-forth between the blustering Trump and the faltering Biden set analysts fretting — and not just about who might win the election in November.

“That whole thing was an unmitigated disaster,” Simon Canning, a communications manager in Australia, wrote on social media. “A total shambles, from both the candidates and the moderators. America is in very, very deep trouble.”

Radchenko: This Election is Discrediting American Democracy

Sergey Radchenko, a historian at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, posted, “This election is doing more to discredit American democracy than Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping could ever hope to,” referring to the presidents of Russia and China, America’s most powerful rivals for global leadership.

“I am worried about the image projected to the outside world,” he continued. “It is not an image of leadership. It is an image of terminal decline.”

Whoever becomes president, the United States faces major global challenges — in Asia, from a rising China and a nuclear North Korea recently bolstered by Putin; in Europe from Russia’s war against Ukraine; and in the Middle East, where the Israel-Hamas war threatens to escalate to southern Lebanon and even Iran.

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There was little of substance on foreign policy in the noisy debate. Trump continued to insist without explanation that he could have prevented Putin from invading Ukraine, or Hamas from invading Israel, and that he could bring a quick end to both conflicts, again without explaining how or at what cost and to whom.

Biden cited his efforts to bring allies together to aid Ukraine and confront Russia. “I’ve got 50 other nations around the world to support Ukraine, including Japan and South Korea,” he said.

For some, the debate made a Trump presidency, already considered a strong possibility, seem like a probability, said François Heisbourg, a French analyst. “So on all the issues, the debate is a confirmation of European worries, and some of it has already been integrated into people’s thinking.”

Trump Wants to Cut Back Aid to Ukraine

On Ukraine, people hear Trump saying he wants to cut back aid to Ukraine, so this will move to the center of the debate,” he said, along with Trump’s stated fondness for Putin as a strong leader.

On Israel and the Gaza Strip, however, “I’m not sure it will make much of a difference,” Heisbourg said. “You can’t move the embassy to Jerusalem twice.”

In Ukraine, the clamor about the debate reverberated Friday.

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Referring to Biden, Bogdan Butkevych, a popular radio host, wrote on social media, “His main task was to convince the voters of his energy and readiness to rule.” But, he added, “He wasn’t able to do it. Accordingly, the chance of his replacement by another candidate from the Democrats increases.”

Some took a measure of solace in Trump’s saying that he did not find it acceptable for the Kremlin to keep occupied lands.

In that vein, The Kyiv Independent, a Ukrainian news outlet, ran a headline about the debate that read, “Trump rejects Putin’s peace terms while Biden unnerves Democrats.”

Debate Sparks Questions About U.S. Politics Affecting Asia Stability

Elsewhere, countries that have hoped the United States could balance a rising China and deter North Korea’s nuclear ambitions spent the past four years trying to rebuild ties with Washington after Trump’s first term deeply rattled alliances in the region. The debate Thursday night immediately resurfaced serious questions about how U.S. politics might affect stability across Asia.

Chan Heng Chee, who served as Singapore’s ambassador to the United States from 1996 to 2012, said the quality of the debates had deteriorated compared with previous ones. Biden’s disjointed performance and Trump’s repeated attacks and factual inaccuracies unsettled those who rely on the United States to act as a trusted global partner.

“Now everyone is watching for visuals,” Chan said. “Do the candidates look like they are able to do the job, or is age a problem? Facts do not matter now, and civility has totally gone out of the window.”

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In Japan and South Korea, analysts detected a shift in the political winds toward Trump, and it prompted renewed questions about Biden’s age and ability to project strength.

“It was clearly a Trump win and a nail in the coffin for the Biden campaign,” said Lee Byong-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul, South Korea.

“We must now brace ourselves for a second Trump administration,” he added.

Trump Made it Seem That International Relationships are Transactional

In Japan, a major U.S. ally in Asia, officials have almost always been assiduous about declaring that they are happy working with whomever the United States elects. But Trump’s comments during the debate about how he does not want to spend money on allies are likely to revive anxieties about how his approach to international relationships is transactional rather than enduring.

Tara Kartha, a former senior official in the National Security Council of India, said the state of America’s political leadership was worrying India. She pointed out that Trump is unpredictable and could easily shift positions — such as changing his current hard-line approach to China and patching things up if Beijing offers him better terms on a trade deal. That uncertainty makes calculations difficult for India, she added, which shares a border with China and a long rivalry with Beijing.

“We are now hedging with China, we are not going beyond a point precisely because of this,” she said. “Because you are not really sure what’s going to happen to the U.S.”

What was clear after Thursday’s debate was that few in the region felt optimistic about the electoral options in the United States.

Kasit Piromya, Thailand’s foreign minister from 2008-11 and a former ambassador to the United States, lamented the state of U.S. politics.

“Where are the good ones? Where are the brave ones?” Kasit said, adding that it was now incumbent on countries in Southeast Asia to have a foreign policy vision of their own.

“Why should I wait for Trump to be bad? I should be able to organize myself and maybe work with other friends,” he said.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Motoko Rich and Steven Erlanger/Kenny Holston
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