A deeper dive into the candidates’ few responses to serious questions of war and peace

Photo: AP Images

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first glance, the descent of the presidential debate into the twin realms of silliness and banalities doesn’t expose the harm it caused to American geopolitical interests and the candidates’ reputations.

We did hear back and forth about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s reported pre-debate endorsement of Kamala Harris, saying her “laugh is so expressive and infectious.” Harris’s onstage presence confirmed Putin’s observation, as ABC’s split-screen cameras often caught Harris mocking her opponent, looking like she had breathed a dose of laughing gas before the debate.

We heard Donald Trump, whose frequent scowls made it seem like he was vying with Harris in the facial expression competition, claim that Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán believes he is the world’s most feared and respected man.

Fortunately for the American people, neither “Russians for Harris” nor “Magyars for Trump” has enough electoral clout to influence the outcome, even as early voting begins this week in several states.

We were thankfully spared conversation about childless cat ladies, but we did hear some live fact-checking on Trump’s claim that illegal migrants are stealing and eating people’s pets, and on which candidate bores more people more of the time at campaign rallies.

Perhaps it was the dim lighting onstage that set the mood, or the somber tone of the two stony-faced ABC moderators who asked questions as if they were delivering eulogies, but a disturbing pattern emerges when we take a deeper dive into the candidates’ few responses to serious questions of war and peace.

We’ll start with Vice President Harris, who, in defending President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan, claimed that “as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.”

Even the left-of-center Politifact rated Harris’s claim as “mostly false.” The Department of Defense confirmed that while the US military might not be engaged in war, thousands of US servicemen and women are deployed in combat zones, such as Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, with some injured or killed by enemy fire.

As for her opponent, when asked point-blank if he wanted Ukraine to win its war with Russia, Trump — often accused of being too cozy with Putin — dodged a direct answer and lurched to his ongoing talking point about European nations who don’t pay their fair share of NATO’s defense burden. Trump noted twice in the debate that when he was president, aside from the fact that none of the wars plaguing the world were going on, he told NATO nations to “either pay up or we’re not going to protect you anymore.”

What Share Is a Fair Share?

Trump does have a point here. Article 3 of the NATO charter requires parties to the treaty to “maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.” NATO has administrative expenses that members contribute to, but there is no kitty for military spending that each nation must chip in for.

After Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014, when Barack Obama was president, NATO nations agreed to commit two percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) to “help ensure the alliance’s military readiness.”

As of 2023, only 11 of NATO’s 31 members were meeting their two percent commitment, although as many as 18 are projected to hit that target this year.

However, Article 5 of NATO’s charter clearly states that NATO must provide military assistance to a member nation that comes under attack. Trump’s threat, “pay up or we won’t defend you,” is a dangerous tack, and America’s enemies are keeping track.

“It’s hard to overstate how dangerous the world would be if we get to this place where the United States is abrogating its alliance commitments,” said Kathleen McInnis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who told National Public Radio that America’s status as a superpower is linked to the military might it projects. “We wouldn’t have the position of global leadership that we do if it weren’t for our NATO allies and our commitment to European security.”

No one wants to see America embroiled in foreign entanglements that it cannot win, like the failed 20-year war of terror centered in Afghanistan, or its soldiers exposed to harm in areas that lack strategic value to the US.

Still, European heads of state like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin got a shoutout at the debate, while rogue rulers such as Xi Jinping, Ayatollah Khamenei, Hassan Nasrallah, and Kim Jong Un, either watched the debate or received a briefing.

Protect Friends, Know Your Enemies

When Harris falsely claims that American troops are not facing combat anywhere in the world, she is not only showing her ignorance, she is proclaiming America’s lack of military involvement as a paradigm of a successful foreign policy.

Trump is right to demand that Europe pay a larger share of its defense, but it’s not like the US is spending wildly more than Europe on defense. The Department of Defense projects that military spending will fall to 2.7 percent of GDP in 2024. That 2.7 percent of America’s heftier GDP amounts to far more than two percent of even the largest NATO nation’s economy, but it’s not like the US spends all of its 2.7 percent protecting Europe. The US has plenty of military headaches and commitments in the Pacific and the Middle East, and they’re more likely to turn into migraines than disappear with some Tylenol and a cold compress.

Harris contended at the debate that Putin’s policy is Ukraine first, and Poland could be next. That enabled her to pander to Pennsylvania’s 800,000 voters of Polish descent, which she may need more than the estimated 200,000 Muslim voters in Michigan to win the presidency.

Harris has vowed to bring down inflation, without offering specifics, but China is becoming an increasing menace to Taiwan, an economic powerhouse that produces 90 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors. Imagine the impact on global inflation if China conquers Taiwan and corners the semiconductor market.

The Middle East got scarier first thing Sunday morning when the Houthis fired a surface-to-surface ballistic missile that landed in central Israel. We could hear the boom and feel the ground shake more than 30 miles away in Jerusalem. A bunch of men at my neitz minyan stopped and looked at each other with raised eyebrows. It may not have been a bunker buster, but it was a kavanah-breaker to be sure.

And the blame falls squarely on Iran, who is testing both the US and Israel, to see what it can get away with. It’s not surprising this happened three days after the US announced the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier group was headed home after spending a few weeks in the Middle East to deter Hezbollah and Iran, and one day before Biden administration envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in Israel. Whenever a foreign diplomat arrives in Israel, the unstated goal is to restrain Israel, and Israel’s enemies readily take advantage of that.

Which brings me back to my main takeaway from the debate.

The next American president will only encourage belligerence and military adventurism when he or she brags that an absence of military involvement is an ideal unto itself; links the defense of longstanding allies to arbitrary guidelines; or underestimates the will of America’s many enemies and rivals to seize on any signs of American lack of resolve to divide and conquer.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1029)