What happens to Ukraine if Biden loses in 2024?

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Over the next year or so, guests will be joining me on this podcast to analyze

the stakes of the 2024 presidential election in the United States.

We'll hear from supporters of the Democrats and Republicans who see it as imperative to

the future of democracy that their chosen candidate wins the White House.

But there are many observers outside the United States waiting just as intently

on next year's result in America.

No one more so than Volodymyr Zelensky and the people of Ukraine.

Please hear me.

UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, where he said that the US will continue to

stand with Ukraine as it defends its sovereignty following the Russian invasion.

Let me repeat that again.

We know our future is bound to yours.

all burning issues within several days, including the Ukrainian crisis.

We cannot help but feel happy about it.

What do you make of that?

Do you welcome that?

He said that because that means what I'm saying is right.

how to help, who to help and which allies they should team up with to try to bring an end to it.

This week, I speak to Susan Glasser of the New Yorker magazine

to talk through a question both Ukrainians and Europeans are wrestling with.

What if Joe Biden loses?

I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly America.

And of course, many people in Washington are very focused on it.

In many ways, it is unexpectedly become the defining

foreign policy challenge of the Biden administration, which.

Susan Glasser was The Washington Post's co-bureau chief in Moscow.

She's written several books on Russia,

including Kremlin Rising, Vladimir Putin's Russia and the end of revolution.

So many friends and colleagues risking their lives to cover the war.

And and the Washington front in the war, by the way,

as we'll talk about, is a very significant

theater of operations in some ways for the Ukrainians.

You've mentioned there how important Ukraine has been for the Biden administration,

almost the preeminence, as you say, foreign policy issue of the presidency.

Just to reverse the equation, how important has Joe Biden,

the role he has played, been to Volodymyr Zelensky and to Ukraine?

I think that it's underappreciated perhaps because it's been complicated, right?

It is not clearly been a dynamic in which the president and Zelensky sort of held hands and

Biden offered him everything he wanted.

Right.

And so there's been a sort of constant cycle, if you will, of kind of Ukrainians asking for this

and that and the other and questions about how quickly the Biden administration has or has not

gone for it.

That being said, if you step back one step more,

I think it's quite remarkable in many ways what Biden has done in committing himself

and his administration to the defense in Ukraine in fairly unequivocal terms.

Ukraine has the same rights that belong to every sovereign nation.

We will stand in solidarity with Ukraine.

We will stand in solidarity against Russia's aggression, period.

And I have to say, I wonder not only

would that support not be forthcoming had Donald Trump won the election in 2020,

but even another Democrat, it's not clear to me that they would have had the inclination,

the personal capital and the willingness to stake such a robust commitment on Ukraine's

behalf at a time when obviously we are enmeshed in our own domestic political crises.

the contrast with what Trump would have done if he'd been in the White House,

but maybe people wouldn't even have expected all this from Joe Biden himself,

given that he ran in 2020 in part saying that he was going to end some of the entanglements

of the last few years for the United States.

And I'm obviously thinking of Afghanistan.

So how surprising has it been in terms of Biden's own record

that he has enmeshed himself in this conflict?

I mean, it depends, as always, what vantage point you take.

Of course, Joe Biden, unlike both of his immediate predecessors, has a decades-long record

in foreign policy and foreign affairs and considers himself steeped in the subject.

And he's particularly a true transatlanticist, right?

He actually was so committed to NATO and NATO enlargement that when the Republicans held

the majority in the Senate during one of the rounds of NATO enlargement,

they actually let Joe Biden, then the minority-ranking member on the Senate

Foreign Relations Committee, manage the floor debate on their behalf.

Believe me, in this partisan age, that doesn't happen much.

are now.

That would definitely not happen today.

And to the broader point about Biden's kind of views of Russia,

that is where it's less of a surprise.

People may not realize this.

I'm writing a longer piece at the moment on this subject for The New Yorker.

And one thing that struck me going back in Biden's record on Russia is that he really

was something of an internal dissenter to Obama's reset policy with Russia.

It's simply unacceptable in the 21st century for countries to attempt to redraw

borders by force in Europe, or anywhere for that matter, or to intervene militarily

because they don't like a decision their neighbor has made.

Always very skeptical of Putin.

As were many of the advisors who worked with him who now occupy the most senior positions

in his administration.

Tony Blinken, now the Secretary of State.

Jake Sullivan, now the National Security Advisor.

Both of them agreed with Biden after, for example, Putin's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.

and on those responsible for what is happening in Ukraine.

the Javelin anti-tank missiles.

Biden did not win that fight, interestingly, in the Obama administration.

Obama was very opposed to it, even though most of his top aides were for it.

And I think that that was telling as well.

And here's the big but.

They really had this very strong view coming in in 2020 and spoke about this

repeatedly, that the long-term challenge for the United States was going to be

this emerging adversarial competition with China and Asia.

And that was their view about how to reorient American foreign policy toward meeting that

challenge.

And the words that they used for Russia were, quote, stable and predictable.

which is the extent to which they are correcting or altering the course that had been set

under President Obama, even when many of them were involved.

There were those disagreements, and they're now having their say, as it were.

But I just want to talk about the alliance that's formed since the invasion of Ukraine

by Russia in February 2022.

And that business, often Biden's people do give him the credit as if he was the person

who almost by hand forged this alliance of Europeans and others, bringing Germany, Britain

and other countries together in an alliance.

How much do you buy that?

I mean, or would it have happened anyway?

It's almost an impossible hypothetical, of course, because the European security is

completely entangled and dependent on U.S. security guarantees.

And, you know, there is not really possible to imagine, no matter how many speeches President

Macron gives, it's impossible at the moment to imagine a European security framework that

does not include the U.S. as playing a leading role in that and in NATO.

And, of course, that's been very much what we've seen here in terms of the dynamic of

support for Ukraine.

And Biden came in determined to kind of rebuild alliances, to focus on that.

And we've seen him make decisions, by the way, during the course of the war in Ukraine

that have reinforced that as a priority for him.

For example, he and his administration were very clearly opposed to sending Abrams tanks

to Ukraine.

Whether you agree with that decision or not, they definitely were opposed to it.

But he chose to do so when that in the end became the unnegotiable position of Germany

and its chancellor to send their own Leopard tanks.

And I think that's a clear-cut example where Biden is choosing kind of alliance management

and unity as a pillar of what he's going to do for Ukraine.

We need to discuss the other side of the aisle, the Republicans.

Now, anyone with memories of the Cold War would always associate the Republicans with

being hawkish on foreign policy generally, but particularly on then-Soviet Russia.

That was almost definitional in the era of, you know, Ronald Reagan.

Those Republicans define themselves by being unbending in their strength when it came to

Moscow.

That's not quite the picture now.

You've obviously touched on it with talking about Donald Trump.

But just give us a sense of where Trump stands on it and how typical he is of other Republicans,

whether those other Republicans be the people he's running against for president or Republicans

in Congress.

Where are they all on Russia?

civil war over foreign policy broadly.

And certainly Ukraine has become one of the major, if not the major, flashpoints in that

internal war amongst Republicans in terms of, I think, the big shift in core principles

that Trump represents.

Now, I know saying Trump and core principles in the same sentence is a little bit challenging

in the sense that he has proved, let's just say, ideologically flexible on most subjects.

However, the constant strand that does run through is a form of neo-isolationism, America

first-ism.

Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit

strongman nationalist tendency inside Russia.

I got along with him really well.

And that's a good thing, not a bad thing.

He's got 1,700 nuclear missiles and so do we.

But look, that's a good thing.

Getting along is OK.

But I got along through strength.

He has really adopted Kremlin talking points about Ukraine itself.

But you know, the people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than

where they were.

And you have to look at that also.

What's amazing is not that Trump in and of himself holds these views, but that he has

managed to persuade more and more of his Republican electorate to go along with them.

And right now, you see that most clearly, of course, in the House of Representatives,

which is far more kind of Trumpist wing of the Republican Party than the U.S. Senate,

where the bipartisan consensus and support for Ukraine remains quite strong, even among

Republicans.

Caucus?

Is it just those people who are pretty lukewarm in their support, or much worse for Zelensky?

Or is it a broader, almost consensus position among emerging numbers of Republicans in the

House?

different votes at the very beginning of the summer on amendments testing kind of support

for Ukraine.

And I think the high watermark was 70 Republicans voting against it.

All Democrats, by the way, voting for continued support for Ukraine.

So that's very interesting.

As you know, our House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, is really a very weak figure.

I don't think I have to commit anything.

Where's the accountability and the money we already split?

What is the plan for victory?

The speaker reversing course after telling a Russian reporter in May that he will continue

supporting Ukraine.

And so he's kind of held hostage to this faction.

And this faction has made Ukraine one of their defining issues.

So it's not so much that they have a majority.

It's that they are using the very powerful tools of their status to control, basically

to be the puppeteers of the US House.

the presidential level, because you've got Donald Trump making exactly the noises you've

just said.

But several of the other big figure candidates in that race for the Republican nomination

have made and echoed similar noises about Ukraine, which makes you think even if it's

not Trump, there are chances are strong that the next American president, if it's a Republican,

would be ready, in effect, to abandon Ukraine.

those candidates think the momentum is on the part of their party's electorate.

And so in that sense, it is very telling.

I think it's extremely unlikely that Vivek Ramaswamy or even Ron DeSantis is going to

become the next president of the United States or even get anywhere near close to being the

Republican nominee for president.

But it certainly caused many, many heads to snap when DeSantis, the governor of Florida,

came out and said that it was essentially just a territorial dispute between Russia

and Ukraine.

DeSantis now says backing Ukraine is not, not a vital U.S. interest.

Look at this.

While the United States has many vital national interests, becoming further entangled in a

territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.

And in the first Republican debate, you had both him and Ramaswamy making very clear that

they were not supportive of this current level of U.S. commitment to Ukraine.

And so I think it's about where the momentum is.

And with Trump kind of steamrolling toward the Republican nomination right now in 2024,

he talks about it a lot in his various interviews and campaign appearances.

And the more he talks about it, of course, the more he activates his base and his voters

around it.

So it's very likely that Ukraine becomes more of a partisan issue than it already is.

than they ever would out of Donald Trump's.

I mean, the NBC interview that took place just the other day in which Donald Trump appeared

sort of flattered by praise from Vladimir Putin, Putin's suggestion that Trump might

be able to play a role in helping end the war, flattering him.

It does conjure up the notion of a sort of an alliance that could happen if there were

a second Trump presidency.

You'd have Putin there.

His recent guest across the border, Kim Jong-un from North Korea also would be there.

Xi Jinping, perhaps.

Is there a fear in some foreign policy circles that there is an alternative alliance, as

it were, waiting to be born if Joe Biden loses and Donald Trump wins that will look

very different to the kind of European NATO alliance that has obtained for decades, but

also that is embodied in a way by Joe Biden?

just with the president talking favorably, but in alliance with North Korea and Russia

and why not throw in Iran, too?

I mean, look, obviously that's absurd.

That's not possible in its sort of full-throated fever dream imaginings, even of Donald Trump.

He knows that that's not possible.

It's still unthinkable that we could have a president of the United States who would

have open admiration for this collection of the world's tyrants and bad guys.

And yet he now has a real, if not overwhelming, chance to become president again.

That would shake our foreign policy and the world's expectations, I think, to the foundations.

No question about it.

Donald Trump actually came in in 2017 wanting to roll back sanctions that had been imposed

on Russia in the wake of its annexation of Crimea.

And he was stymied in his effort to do that by essentially the bipartisan alliance in

the Senate that has held up until now on Russia.

That might not exist forever, but it's still inconceivable that we would radically transform

in such a short amount of time our foreign policy.

I think the question is whether we would really continue to step up in our leadership role

in the institutions of European and world security that still exist.

possibility, as you said, it is at least a real possibility, of a second Trump presidency?

I'm thinking of the German foreign minister who recently said Europe would be better prepared

this time after the shock of 2016.

Do you pick up?

I'm guessing that probably in Washington at those diplomatic receptions, you know, an

ambassador or two sidles up to you and says, what do we have to do?

where the U.S. is headed in the 2024 election and an awareness that essentially no matter

how much you might try, it's essentially impossible to Trump-proof U.S. foreign policy or U.S.

support for Ukraine in this specific case.

Is Europe better prepared?

You're probably in a better position than I am to say that.

I would note that there's been a marked increase in military spending by virtually all the

NATO members.

There's been a marked increase in awareness, both in alliance solidarity and also in awareness

of the nature of the threat, that it's not just something that, you know, partisan hawks

in the U.S. are constantly complaining about with Europe, but something very real that

does threaten the stability of the continent.

So I do think in that sense, there's a, you know, kind of growing sense that this is real

and even existential for Europe in a way that hadn't been the case back in 2016 when Trump

was first elected.

However, some of the conversations, it seems to me in Europe, as well as here in Washington,

by the way, suggest we haven't learned very much about what to do about Donald Trump.

You know, in the media, we're still having the same questions about should we give him

a platform?

Should we interview him?

It's very circular, unfortunately.

And how to interview him.

Kristen Welker of NBC tried a new method the other day with sort of cutting back to the

studio to do fact checking of Donald Trump's remarks.

I mean, it is, as you say, still a dilemma.

Susan, you know, because you've been with us before that on the podcast, we do like

to ask our guests a what else question, something completely different.

This one actually is a yes or no answer.

Have you ever seen Beetlejuice, the musical?

Colorado, Republican, big figure on the hard right of her party.

She has now had to issue a second apology for a theater date which has become infamous.

It saw her getting kicked out of a performance of Beetlejuice, the musical.

Bobert's team denied that, said the haze was from fog machines in the show.

That claim goes up in smoke when you see the video.

The pregnant woman sitting behind Bobert told the Denver Post she asked her to stop vaping

and Bobert refused.

Her one woman show continued, taking flash photos, raising her hands and dancing, often

the only one clapping or standing up in the crowd.

very physical with each other.

And this was noticed by people in the auditorium.

And you can see it all in the video.

She's apologized.

She said that, yes, maybe she did become, and I love this, overtly animated.

anxiety of being in a new environment, I genuinely did not recall vaping that evening when I

discussed the night's events with my campaign team while confirming my enthusiasm for the

musical.

So she goes on to say, regardless of my belief, it's clear now that was not accurate.

It was not my or my campaign's intention to mislead, but we do understand the nature of

how this looks.

thing, saying that her date, who she'd been seeing for a few months and with whom she

was publicly affectionate, she has now discovered that her date was a Democrat.

The horror of it.

And what's more, the owner of a local bar that had hosted some LGBTQ and drag events,

the last thing being particularly significant because Lauren Bober had spoken out against

drag.

She's sort of tried to say that she didn't know any of this about her companion, and

she will be much more careful in future to check the political allegiances of those with

whom she gets romantically involved.

So, Susan, what does this all do, do you think, for Lauren Bober and for her standing on the

right?

We have a long and distinguished history here, as I know you do in Great Britain, of such

matter.

So it's not, you know, people are shocked, shocked to find misbehavior among members of

Congress.

But look, actually, Lauren Bober is perhaps the most endangered incumbent in the country

in terms of her re-election race next year in 2024.

She actually only held on to win her district in Colorado by something like 500 votes in

the 2022 midterm elections.

The same candidate is running against her.

This time, National Democrats didn't pay enough attention to the race, so they sort of screwed

up.

This time, they won't make that mistake.

And we'll see whether, you know, that helps him get the remaining 500 votes he needs to

get her out of Congress.

And if that is what won it for Lauren Bobert's opponent, who would have had that on their

predictions list for 2023 into 2024?

Susan Glasser, co-author of The Divider, Trump in the White House, 2017 to 2021, which is

out in a new paperback edition this very week in the United States.

Thanks so much for coming on and talking with me for Politics Weekly American.

Thank you so much.

Now, we will check in with what's happening in Ukraine often.

But for anyone who wants the most up-to-date news from there and from around Europe, this

week, The Guardian launched a new digital edition for Europe to serve its millions of

readers across the continent.

The point is to showcase the best of The Guardian's original journalism about Europe, along with

the most relevant of our global news and views.

At the same time, we're stepping up our editorial focus on the continent, adding specialist

reporters in themes such as the environment, culture and sport, adding to our existing

network of correspondents, deepening and widening our news and investigative work.

We're also signing up columnists and writers to bring new perspectives and help clarify

the impact of global events and the biggest shared challenges.

I'm looking forward to reading what my new colleagues are reporting on.

So do make sure to search for Guardian Europe to find out all the latest.

But for now, it's goodbye.

The producer is Daniel Stevens, the executive producer this week, Max Sanderson.

I'm Jonathan Friedland.

Thanks as always for listening.