During Thursday night's debate, President Biden told former President Donald J. Trump that America is “the envy of the world.”
After seeing their performance, many of America's friends in Asia claim to disagree.
In Seoul, Singapore, Sydney and elsewhere, the exchanges between a forceful Trump and a stammering Biden have analysts worried — and not just about who will win.
“This has been a complete disaster,” Australia's public relations manager Simon Canning wrote to X. “Both the candidates and the presenter were huge failures. America has a very serious problem.”
Countries that had looked to the United States to balance a rising China and check North Korea's nuclear ambitions have spent the past four years trying to rebuild ties after Trump's first term in office severely undermined regional alliances. Thursday night's debate immediately resurfaced serious questions about how U.S. politics will 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 was worse than in previous years. Biden's incoherent performance and Trump's repeated attacks and factual errors unsettled those who depend on the United States to act as a reliable global partner.
“Everyone is focused on appearances now,” Chan says. “Does the candidate look good for the job, or is it age that matters? Facts don't matter now, and politeness is completely ignored.”
In Japan and South Korea, analysts saw the political winds shifting toward Trump, raising new questions about Biden's age and ability to step up to the plate.
“It was a clear victory for Trump, and a fatal blow to the Biden campaign,” said Lee Byung-cheol, a professor at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul. “Trump looked healthy compared to Biden, who came across as a deaf old man with a stutter. We now have to prepare for a second Trump administration.”
In Japan, America's largest ally in Asia, government officials have always been keen to proclaim their willingness to work with whomever the US chooses. But Trump's comments at the debate about not wanting to spend money on allies are likely to rekindle concerns that his approach to international relations is transactional rather than durable.
“I think Japanese policymakers are thinking, 'OK, there's a good chance that Trump will become president, so we have to make the institutional ties as strong as possible so that he can't destroy them,'” said Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University. “It's like tying yourself to a mast that may sink at any moment, and it's a false illusion of safety.”
But a Trump victory could ease stress for Japanese government officials over his demands for Tokyo to pay more for the country's defense and for U.S. military bases in Japan.
Over the past two years, Japan has pledged to increase its defense budget and pushed the boundaries of what it can do under its pacifist constitution, including buying more fighter jets and Tomahawk missiles — measures that Trump promoted during his visit to Japan as president.
The increased spending and military purchases “are in line with Trump's thinking,” Ichiro Fujisaki, a former U.S. ambassador to Washington, said of Trump. “If we were moving in the opposite direction to what he's saying, we would have to reconsider our position, but that's not the case,” Fujisaki said.
One of the most pressing concerns across the region is how President Trump will exacerbate rising tensions with China or undermine the region's fragile stability.
If Trump wins, the US is likely to pursue a strategy of countering China and increasing American influence in the Indo-Pacific region, but “in a way that prioritises US primacy and not necessarily the network of alliances and partnerships that the US has as a whole,” said Don McClain Gil, an international studies lecturer at Manila-based De La Salle University. “There are concerns that as a transactional leader, Trump would abandon key areas of US engagement, such as Taiwan.”
On Chinese social media, the presidential debate was the top trending topic on Weibo, and official Chinese media reported it almost verbatim, with little commentary on what the candidates said and the lack of a handshake.
But in online comment sections, some users likened Trump's red tie to the Communist Party's red scarf, and some social media commentators jokingly called him a “nation builder,” suggesting his leadership could accelerate China's global rise.
Shares in Chinese company WiseSoft, whose name means “Trump's Great Victory” in Chinese, rose 10% in Shenzhen on Friday, according to Bloomberg.
Social media furor aside, Shen Dingli, a Shanghai-based international relations scholar, said the debate only reinforced what Beijing has long believed: Whoever the next president is, US policy towards China will likely be tougher, if not the same as before.
Shen said the two candidates had sparred over who had done a better job managing trade with China, when in reality the Biden administration had continued the tariffs that were in place during the Trump administration.
“Even if Democrats were to pick new, younger candidates in a hurry, I think they would all stick to treating China as a long-term, strategic threat, even more so than Russia,” he said. “I believe that Chinese leaders are under no illusions.”
What was clear after Thursday's debate was that few in the region are optimistic about the U.S. electoral options.
Even in politically neutral India, analysts openly expressed alarm that two men vying for leadership of the free world would compare golf handicaps to prove their physical mettle.
“It's a great shame because in India we have a lot of respect for the United States. The United States is a powerful country and it decides the fate of the world,” said Tara Kaluta, a former senior official in India's National Security Council. “And in this country, both leaders are talking about golf in terms of their health and their abilities, which is very scary.”
India has been trying to overcome a history of mistrust towards the United States to counter a common threat from China, but the current uncertainty, especially if Trump returns to power, weighs heavily on a country with a bitter border dispute with its neighbour.
“We are hedging with China right now, and that is exactly why we are not going to go any further,” Dr. Carta said, “because we really don't know what's going to happen to the US.”
Kasit Piromya, Thailand's former foreign minister from 2008 to 2011 and former ambassador to the United States, lamented the state of American politics.
“Where are the good guys? Where are the brave guys?” Kasit said, adding that Southeast Asian countries now have a duty to develop their own foreign policy vision. “Why wait until Trump is the bad guy? We can organize ourselves and work with other friends.”
Giang Cheong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said Biden seemed very tired, while former President Trump had been more unpredictable in terms of what to expect from other friendly countries and how to deal with China.
“Trying to manage relations with the United States creates new problems,” he said. “Policymakers generally want a clear, enthusiastic and stable U.S. presence. A wavering, weak and unenthusiastic presence is just as problematic as a volatile and inconsistent one.”
“You're looking at both extremes,” Chung added. “It's hard to imagine at this point what a more moderate middle path for the U.S. would look like.”
The report Damien Cave, Swee Lee Wee, Choi Sang-hoon, Vivian Wang and Mujib Mashal.
