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A global leadership void and ongoing wars
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody, Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take to kick off your week. I am here in Tokyo, Japan. Just got back from Beijing. Being in this part of the world has me thinking a little bit about the state of our world and leadership, or should I say, the lack thereof. Those of you following me know I talk about a G-zero world, not a G-7, not a G-20, a place where we lack global leadership, and that has been so clear, thinking about the wars that continue, between Israel and Palestine, and now Lebanon, and more broadly in the Middle East, and between Russia and Ukraine, and increasingly NATO in Europe.
I think about the fact that all over the world, everyone wants these wars to be over. They're causing enormous amounts of suffering, displacement of human beings, massive war crimes, but they persist. It's worth thinking about what that means in terms of leadership because when we talk about the Middle East, and Israel-Palestine in particular, the United States is the most powerful ally of Israel, overwhelmingly in terms of its political and diplomatic support, its economic support, technological support, its military aid and training and intelligence. And yet, over the last year, the United States has had virtually no influence in the ability to contain, constrain, or end this war, irrespective of all the suffering.
You can complain about the United States on that with good reason, but then you look at Russia-Ukraine, and you see that over the last three years, China's been, by far, the most powerful friend and supporter of Russia, massive amounts of trade only expanding and dual-use technologies and diplomatic support. Yet, despite that, China has been unwilling to use any influence on Russia to try to bring the war to the end.
Now, to be clear, both the United States and China say all the right things. In Beijing, I was hearing from the leaders that they're friends with the Ukrainians and they maintain stable relations, and of course they want the war over, and they respect Ukrainian territorial integrity. And of course, the Americans support a two-state solution for the Palestinians and want to ensure that they get humanitarian aid and want to see a ceasefire happen, but I mean, the revealed preferences of both of these countries is their willingness to do anything about it is virtually zero. The Chinese don't care about the Ukrainians ultimately. That's what we're learning over the last few years. The Americans don't care about the Palestinians ultimately. That's what we've learned over the last year.
Absent leadership from the two most powerful countries in the world, where do you think we're going to get geopolitically? The answer is, to a much more dangerous place. That's the concern. I don't see that changing, particularly whether we have a Harris or a Trump presidency. I don't see that changing whether we have a Xi or a Xi presidency in China. It's not like they're making any real choices going forward. But look, maybe I'll be surprised. And certainly, it would be nice if no matter who wins, this was a topic of conversation between the Americans and the Chinese. That, "Hey, China. If you'd be willing to do a little bit more with Russia, we'd be willing to do a little bit more with Israel." I mean, frankly, at the end of the day, that's the kind of horse-trading I think we could really use diplomatically. Right now, that's a conversation that hasn't happened yet, but maybe it will.
That's it for me, and I'll talk to y'all real soon.
Israel's next move
And secondly, the US Treasury Department has announced additional sanctions against tankers that have shut off their transponders and are helping the Iranians to illegally export significant amounts of sanction-breaking oil. Prices can go up on the back of that. An unusual thing for the Americans to do a few weeks before the election, but shows just how concerned they are about potential escalation in the region. So let me give you some context here. First point. On the one hand, the Americans have sent THAAD systems to Israel before. So it's not like there aren't any American soldiers on the ground operating in Israel. This is not such a game-changer. In fact, such a decision was made not only years ago, but also after October 7th. But it is notable that it comes a year later on the back of potential significant escalation, both in the Northern front that we're already seeing and with Iran that we might be.
Second point is that the oil prices continue to be a little bit under 80 bucks. OPEC has a lot of spare capacity they could put on the market. China continues to have pretty poor numbers in terms of demand. So this isn't likely to have the American move to hit more Iranian oil, isn't likely to have a lot of impact in terms of oil prices. But if the Americans could have stopped what is right now 1.5 million barrels of Iranian export if they could have taken that down and the Iranians are using that money to pay for the Axis of Resistance that's targeting not only Israel but targeting ships in the Middle East, targeting American and UK military assets, why did Biden wait? Why is it only being announced now? And why is it only being announced now in a way that seems to be a gimme for the Israeli Prime Minister and his government in return for not engaging in significant retaliatory escalation against the Iranians?
This is a US policy that continues to look very weak, that continues to be out of step with most of its allies at this point. You see even French President Macron saying that he doesn't want to provide any more military support for Israel. Of course, it's easy for him to say that. He doesn't provide much to begin with. If it was a significant export, I'm sure Macron wouldn't be saying that. But nonetheless, the Americans are on really one very isolated side at this point compared to the rest of the international community, whether you like the United States or you don't. And their ability to influence the Israeli government appears to be virtually zero. And that has been shown with the recent attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces against UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. And we've seen that on the back of those attacks that the United States, France, Spain, Italy, which is a strong right-wing government, but also has a thousand peacekeepers on the ground in Lebanon, all strongly condemning the Israelis for making these attacks.
But not prepared to actually do anything in response and certainly not making the Israelis feel like they need to stop. Now the Israeli perspective is these peacekeepers have not been capable of upholding Security Council resolution that required that Hezbollah pull back from the border area, a buffer zone, that they've been launching military strikes against Israel. And that also Hezbollah fighters are essentially using the presence of the peacekeepers as shields. And that they're operating not on the peacekeeper's bases but in proximity, which makes it harder for the Israelis to go after them. That certainly doesn't justify firing directly on the peacekeepers base, which has happened, and which now the IDF says a mistake. In return, the Israeli Prime Minister has called on the UN Secretary-General to withdraw the peacekeepers. I find it implausible that the Israeli Prime Minister doesn't realize that the Secretary-General has actually no authority over the peacekeepers.
They're sent there on the basis of the Security Council. So in other words, if the Israeli Prime Minister wants to make a demand, he's making it of the permanent members of the Security Council like the United States and China and France, the UK and Russia. He apparently doesn't want to make that statement. But again, the point here is the comparative impunity, and the major headlines, of course, are in the last 24 hours, around four Israeli soldiers that have been targeted and killed, as well as a large number of injuries on Israeli military bases by Hezbollah drones. Hezbollah is much more capable than Hamas has been, and there will be more significant Israeli casualties as this war continues. But most of the casualties, of course, even though it's not most of the headlines, will be among the Lebanese, among the Hezbollah fighters, and among the Lebanon civilian population, of which we've seen about 2,000 killed so far.
And that is because the military dominance in the region, again, both offense and defense and intelligence and surveillance, is overwhelmingly in the hands of Israel. So if there's going to be significant escalation in the war going forward, that escalation will be decided overwhelmingly by the Israeli government. And so that's what is particularly interesting to watch over the coming weeks. I am not expecting very much against Iran, frankly. The fact that the Israelis have already waited for a couple of weeks takes a lot of the urgency out of that. The fact that the Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said, "It will be the time of our choosing and what we do, they'll know that it was us, but they won't know how we did it," implies something that is a much more targeted attack than lots and lots of bombs raining down against, you know, sort of a nuclear facility or against oil production.
It would not surprise me if it was a high-level assassination, for example, against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the IRGC. Especially because we already saw that when the Trump administration assassinated Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian response was virtually nothing. So there's precedent for that, and the Iranians have very little at this point that they can do that wouldn't hurt them a hell of a lot more than they can hurt Israel or Israel's allies. So that's where we are right now. A war that continues to escalate with a lot of suffering on the back of it. An incredibly ineffective US policy in the region, and everybody else pretty much sitting on the sidelines.How October 7th changed Israel and the Middle East
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. It is October 7th, and that means one year since Hamas perpetrated the worst terrorist attacks since 9/11. Almost 1,200 Israelis dead, mostly civilians, and still a hundred plus held hostage from that day a year ago. Not much progress on that latter front or on a ceasefire. Not much progress in the region since then. What it did do, of course, on October 7th, is it outraged and unified what had been a very divided Israeli population, divided with massive internal demonstrations on domestic political issues. And suddenly the only issue that mattered was responding to, redressing those attacks, whether you're on the left or the right in Israel and being able to defend the Israeli homeland and get the hostages back.
On the former, they've certainly been effective, hitting back as hard as possible. We've seen that Hamas today is a shell of what it was on October 7th a year ago. The leadership mostly dead. The weapons caches mostly destroyed. The tunnels mostly sealed. Hezbollah, the most powerful non-state military actor in the world, has been damaged critically, and they started rocket attacks against Israel a day after the October 7th terrorist attacks. Israel has now opened up a second front, really the primary front now in the war, and after a couple of weeks of that war, Hezbollah's leadership is dead. Their communication capacity was critically destroyed. The war is ongoing but is certainly not going well for Hezbollah. On the one hand, you've seen a major escalation from the rockets and the bombing happening in Gaza to a ground war across the entirety of that territory now to Lebanon and with significant shots fired missiles and the rest military operations with Iran's other proxies, the Houthis and Yemen, Shia militants in Syria and Iraq, and of course involving Iran itself.
On the other hand, the capacity of these proxy organizations to escalate in return is now far, far less capable, far less serious. Hamas cannot threaten Israel the way they could on October 7th. Hezbollah certainly far, far diminished in their ability to escalate even if they want to. Two big questions are remaining. First, Iran. They are a country that still has all sorts of capabilities to escalate if they wish, possibly not effectively against Israel itself, but against the West, against the world. If they wanted to, they could completely disrupt oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and as a consequence, ensure that much of the oil that comes out of the Middle East, not just Iran's one and a half million barrels a day of export but from the Gulf states is stuck in place. And that would mean oil prices towards $150, even in a depressed demand environment as we see now, and a global recession.
So Iran's capacity, if they want to escalate, is far, far greater than that of Hezbollah or Hamas or anyone else in the region. And they have shown themselves to be quite risk-averse in response to Israeli strikes against Iranian leaders across the region, military leaders, and also against Hamas leadership in Tehran. And that was true back in April, and that was true back a week ago. But still, we are awaiting what is almost certainly going to be an Israeli response, a military response, against Iran for the 180 ballistic missiles that they launched against Israel with no fatalities in Israel. One in the West Bank of a Palestinian, but nonetheless, certainly could have caused a lot of people to be killed. And we will see if that the Israeli response leads to further Iranian escalation. I am at this point hopeful, and I would even say optimistic, that it does not, but optimism feels like exactly the wrong word to describe any of this in the region.
Then the second big question remaining is about the devastation on the ground. In Gaza, for the last year, a million and a half Palestinians are now living on the back of humanitarian aid of on average 125-ish trucks coming in a day. That's compared to 800 to 1000 on average before October 7th. As well as all of those tunnels which have now been sealed, they brought a lot of arms and illicit goods in. They also brought things like food, luxury food stuffs, and other things that you could buy on the gray market in Gaza. Those are closed, and there's no Gaza economy. There's no local Gaza agriculture right now. So the 1.5 million Palestinians are living in an absolutely unimaginable condition on single-digit percentage calories, many of them, in terms of consumption from what they would have been living on before October 7th.
Then you have the West Bank, which has been indirectly involved in the fighting. There's been a lot of skirmishing, a lot of shooting, a lot of people getting killed. And then also Israeli settlers and the IDF taking and securing more land from the Palestinians there. Then of course, in Lebanon in the last two weeks, you have over a million Lebanese who have been displaced from that fighting. Far more will be displaced in all likelihood in the coming weeks. All of this from a humanitarian perspective unacceptable by any yardstick. The United States seen by most of the world as complicit in watching it and not providing the either restraint on Israel or the humanitarian support effectively to help ensure that the suffering is reduced. And of course, this is going to cause hatred and radicalization for generations. And antisemitism was already way too high and on an upswing before October 7th, certainly only greater in this environment a year later.
And of course, with all of this, we don't know what's going to happen with upcoming elections. Kamala Harris came out on "60 Minutes" and described the United States as the best friend of the Israeli people around the world, refused to say whether or not the US was an ally of Prime Minister Netanyahu himself. A very strained relationship between the United States and the Israeli Prime Minister today. While former President Trump came out publicly in the last few days and said that the Israeli government, the Israeli military, should actively take out Iran's nuclear capabilities. So frankly, I would say between Harris and Trump, their policies, their orientation specifically on the Middle East and the Israeli wars in Gaza, in Lebanon, and the fighting we're seeing with Iran, probably the biggest difference on foreign policy between those two candidates would be on this issue. And we will find out in a month plus who is going to lead the United States, but utterly critical as we think about the future of this conflict in the region.
So that is where we are a year after the October 7th terrorist attacks, and now very deep in expanding war that is affecting much of the region. And I will continue to talk about it and follow it for you. So I hope everyone's going well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Israel strikes: Why Hezbollah remains silent
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A quick take to kick off your week. We are talking about the Middle East and the significant escalation in Lebanon primarily that has so far culminated with the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and most of Hezbollah's senior leadership, with virtually no response by Hezbollah against Israel. Lots of things to think about here.
First is the fact that Israel's asymmetric military and intelligence capabilities really matter. For a long time, people have talked about the potential of existential threats against Israel. It certainly does not appear that way today, and in fact, it shows just how asleep at the switch the Israeli defense forces and more important leadership were back on October 7th in terms of border security, in terms of ignoring intelligence, in terms of most of the IDF being redeployed to the West Bank as opposed to Gaza, that allowed Hamas to pull off this spectacular and horrific terrorist attack against the Israeli citizens, killing over 1,000.
In today's environment, the ability of the Israel military to strike their enemies with virtual impunity, and with virtually no capacity for them to strike back effectively against Israel, is what's really dramatic here, and that's led to a few things in the region. First, it's led to the ability of Prime Minister Netanyahu to gain a lot of popularity. He was blamed for the October 7th attacks, for them happening on his watch, for him not being capable of defending Israel back then. Today, it's a very different story. It's being able to destroy Hamas, irrespective of the civilian consequences for the Palestinians there, it's his ability to take on and decapitate Hezbollah and Israel post-October 7th has taken virtually no hits as a consequence. That's led Netanyahu's former adversary, political opponent, Gideon Sa'ar, former Minister of Defense, to join Netanyahu's government, join his cabinet and their New Hope Party.
It means that if there were new elections today, a good chance... There's always a of coalition formation because it's a very fragmented political party system, but much easier to imagine that Israel's Prime Minister would be able to win a new election today, as opposed to the absolute thumping he would've taken over the course of the last year. It's a very different environment, and the fact is that the Israeli population supports these wars, and I say that really across almost the entire political spectrum. They support the war in Gaza, they support the attacks against Hezbollah, they support getting their citizens back into their homes in the north, there's some 60,000 that have been evacuated, and they do not support a two-state solution for the Palestinians, virtually none of them.
That is, of course, very, very different from pretty much everyone else in the world who does support territorial integrity and self-determination for the Palestinians, but they don't have the ability or the willingness to make that happen, and certainly none of Israel's friends are prepared to truly cut off Israel. We've seen the Brits stop with a few of the weapons systems, we've seen some targeted sanctions, tiny, from the Europeans and the Americans against Israel. But the military aid, the weapons sales, the trade, that all continues as it has. And by the way, that's also true in terms of the Abraham Accords, the Gulf states that have been working with the Israelis and others in the Arab world, they're very unhappy about what's happening on the ground in the Middle East, but they're also not prepared to change their relationship with Israel.
So where else does this go? Does this mean all-out war with Hezbollah? I don't think so, and I say I don't think so because I don't think Hezbollah has that capability. They do have men that are far better trained than Hamas; they have about 10 times the numbers of missiles and delivery systems than Hamas ever had, though a lot of them have been destroyed clearly, and certainly their leadership is gone. But even if they were to launch everything they had against Israel, it's hard to see them doing much damage. They could kill some Israelis, no question, but probably not that many, and they certainly couldn't do any real damage to the Israeli defense forces or the Israeli government. Meanwhile, Hezbollah would be utterly destroyed and the Lebanese economy would be in shambles. So it's hard to imagine any Hezbollah leadership, even a more hardline, hard as that is to imagine, leader of Hezbollah than Nasrallah taking those steps against Israel.
That then leads the bigger question, which is, okay, so the Axis of Resistance has been engaging in attacks, Red Sea, we'll see more of that from the Houthis, potshots at Americans, British military in the region, not very effective, some missiles against Israel, not very effective. What about Iran, might the Iranians do anything. Answer here, no. I spent an hour last week with the Iranian Vice President, Javad Zarif, and he made it very clear that his country, his government, is not going to fall into the, as he called it, Israeli trap, that they want nothing more than Iran to engage in what would be ineffective strikes against Israel that would bring the Americans into the war against Iran, that they are not going to take that bait.
And you'll remember, lest you think this is just propaganda, that back in the Trump administration when Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian defense forces, was assassinated, so not so different than Israel taking out Hassan Nasrallah, the Iranian response was virtually nothing. Rhetoric, but no efforts to go after the Americans because they just didn't have the capabilities, and that's what we're seeing with the Iranians vis-a-vis Israel today. Now, the bigger question is whether Bibi Netanyahu, on a roll in the region, decides that he's going to go after Iran directly, and there, I think it's a question of their capabilities. The bunker that Nasrallah was in was comparatively easy to hit when you had intelligence that he was there. Yes, bunker-buster bombs, but limited and available to the Israelis.
The incredibly deep underground nuclear program, for example, at Fordow of Iran, under meters and meters of granite reinforced, the Americans are the only ones with the clear capabilities to destroy that. Israel could clearly set back Iran's program, but those kind of strikes would likely only redouble the efforts of the Iranians to build a full nuclear weapons capability, and a glancing blow by Israel, that would antagonize the United States and others and potentially lead to blow-back that Israel hasn't had to face so far, but might, that they wouldn't like; that's a risk that I think is greater than Israel would want to take, especially for not destroying the Iranian nuclear program, but only a limited amount of damage.
So I think you'd still see espionage, you'll still see sabotage, you'll still see willingness for the Israelis to go after members of the IRGC that they find in Syria, Iraq, other places, absolutely. But direct strikes on Iran, specifically the nuclear program, which is the target that the Israelis are most interested in, that seems like a bigger stretch to me. Not impossible, more likely today than it was a week ago, but still, I think that the escalation that we have been seeing in the war in the Middle East may be close to having played itself out now, simply because Israeli military capabilities are so much greater than that of their adversaries, and their ability to now focus on defense and security makes it more challenging for them to do anything, their enemies to do anything against them.
So anyway, that's where we are right now. I hope everyone's doing well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Israel vs. Hezbollah
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take from New York City. The United Nations General Assembly, High-Level Week. You've got heads of state from all over the world converging on New York, which means you're walking everywhere or taking the subway. You certainly don't want to be stuck in traffic.
What I wanted to talk about today though is not that, it is the war going on in the Middle East, continuing to expand. It's now the Northern front. It's Israel versus Hezbollah. In Lebanon, you have tens of thousands of Lebanese over the last 24 hours that have been fleeing for parts north so that they don't get caught up in the bombing. Hundreds of Lebanese have been killed, thousands injured, and that's just in the last 24 hours of Israeli strikes.
This has been percolating for a long time, the likelihood of escalation beyond just Gaza. The reason, if you're Israel, is because there are some 60,000 Israelis that live in the North of Israel, or should I say lived because they've been evacuated for almost a year. That's a pretty significant piece of the Israeli population. It's the equivalent of like if Connecticut or Louisiana was evacuated for a year after 9/11. So, it's created a lot of pressure on Israel to do something about it. But they've been slow-walking this. And the reason they've slow-walked it is because there's been a war going on in Gaza.
Having said that, the war in Gaza is now almost wrapped up. Not because the ceasefire is likely, but because the tunnels that they've found, they've destroyed, they've sealed. The military leaders, they've killed a lot of them. The military fighters, they've killed a lot of them. So the Israelis have now moved most of the Israeli defense forces out of Gaza, and they're available to defend borders across the country, available for operations if they need them in the North.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Israelis announce an end to major military operations in Gaza over the coming weeks because there's honestly not all that much more for them to hit. But that doesn't mean they're done. And again, the focus here is on what happens in Lebanon. This certainly is not all-out war. It's not striking across the entire country. The strikes have been at the south of Lebanon to try to make sure that they ensure, establish a buffer zone that will let the Israelis move back.
The big question is what kind of a response does that elicit from Hezbollah or even from their supporter, Iran? And so far, there's been not all that much. Is that restraint because Hezbollah is scared of an all-out war that ends up destroying their fighters the way you've seen Hamas and Gaza? Or is it because they're concerned of being seen as a paper tiger where their military capabilities aren't enough to actually provide significant offensive capacity vis-a-vis a heavily defended and extremely technologically superior Israel?
When Iran launched some 300 missiles and drones against Israel back, I guess in April, it was targeted. But there was an intention to be able to go in and do some damage against military targets. Caused almost no damage because the Israelis, with the Americans helping them, were able to identify and knock them down. So perhaps possible the Israelis are getting away with this because of their massive military advantages, their superiority, that no one is really a threat to them as long as they have their eye on the ball. But the danger is that this war continues to escalate.
The danger is that even if Hezbollah can't do that much, proxies in the region are going to continue to fight, are going to continue to strike. And of course, the long-term danger is that the ability of Palestinians to live effectively has deteriorated wildly, both in Gaza where a million and a half no longer have the ability to live normal lives, and as well as in the West Bank where larger numbers of amounts of territory has been taken. If that extends to Lebanon, which is an economy that's doing relatively badly at the best of times, then long-term, more radicalization, more instability. Very far from a two-state solution, very far from peace. All the Middle East leaders that I've seen in New York over the last 24 hours have said that this is the worst that they've seen since 1967.
Ian Bremmer on Trump second assassination attempt
Now, it's not going to have much impact on the election, in part not just because so many unprecedented things get normalized these days in U.S. politics, but also because there's no video that suddenly... The last assassination attempt you had Trump literally escaping with his life less than a fraction of a second, and the blood on him and the rest. Here, the Secret Service did what they should have. They shot at the perpetrator well before Trump was in the sights of this would-be assassin. The U.S. did what it was supposed to, and he's in custody, so one assumes that we're going to learn a lot more about him as a consequence of the interrogations and the rest. Trump can and will fundraise on the back of it, but I'd be very surprised to see any movement in the polls as a consequence or any change in policy, so really not going to move the needle on the election itself.
And yet I think we have to ask ourselves, if Trump had actually been killed, can you imagine how much different the environment today would be? The political environment, the social environment, the violence, the reprisals. This is already considered to be an illegitimate election by a lot of Americans. Many, many Americans believe shouldn't be allowed to run because he's a convicted criminal. He was twice impeached, not convicted, but impeachment is broken as part of the political process. Many of Trump's supporters, a large majority, believe he should be president now, that he won the election in 2020, and that they're going to do everything possible–them, the deep state, the political opposition, the Democrats–to prevent him from becoming President again, to jail him, and even to call for violence against him. And that means that if we did have Trump assassinated, I think it would be much worse than January 6th in the U.S. It would be much worse, more saliently perhaps, than January 8th in Brazil, where you would have George Floyd-style riots, but larger and also much better armed.
A lot of people, including militias, but even Trump supporters in police forces in low-level positions in the military and National Guard that engage in protests that could easily become very violent, certainly in red states across the country. And I think that because it hasn't happened, even though it's been very close, we're not talking about it, we're not thinking about it. But the lack of resilience, the vulnerability, the frailty of U.S. political stability in this environment, I think is remarkable and deserves more focus, more attention because it would prioritize the steps that Americans need to take and political leaders need to take to rebuild that resilience, rebuild that trust, which is nowhere on the political agenda right now. I have to say, we have to give Trump and the GOP credit in the sense that they oppose all gun restrictions as a matter of policy, and that hasn't in any way changed even after both of these assassination attempts of Americans that are unhinged, that have access to these powerful weapons.
And that doesn't happen in other countries. That is a huge difference between the U.S. There's vastly more gun violence in America, not because there's so much more mental health issues, not because there's so much more economic inequality, but because there's so much less restrictions on assault-type weapons, on military-type weapons. The United States has more guns per capita than any country in the world except for Yemen, and Yemen is in the middle of a civil war. The United States is not, and yet there is no feasible capacity politically in the near term to do anything about that. No political will. Very relieved that this series of headlines does not include an actual assassination. Very relieved that former President Trump has survived this. Deeply concerned that it continues to happen. And of course, everything about U.S. politics promises you that you're going to see a lot more of it.
That's the state of play today and this election, and in the broader context that we talk about. So I hope everyone's well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Harris wins debate
And it's not that Trump didn't have points to make, but he largely didn't make them. The only significant time that I saw a misstep that Trump was able to hit against Kamala was when she was complaining about his tariffs against China and more broadly. And, of course, these were policies that Trump put in place, which Biden stuck with and claims he's succeeded in China, and they were Trump policies and said, well, if you want to change them, why didn't you? And through the debate, his message was, well, if there are all these great things you wanted to do, you've been vice president, why haven't you done them over the last 3.5 years? But on balance, what Trump did was lose message, lose discipline, and attack Kamala Harris in ways that seemed incoherent and all over the map from the opening question when he was asked about the economy and couldn't stay on target on the economy instead immediately started talking about immigration when he threw in this nonsensical and false claim that immigrants, Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating household pets. When he was asked about foreign policy and said I'm loved around the world and used Hungary's Viktor Orban as his respected character witness on and on, he seemed defensive and angry and not on message and not disciplined and was rattled by the fact that Kamala Harris was landing punches against him.
I don't think she was fantastic, but she was good. And good is a significant accomplishment given the fact that coming into this, she was not taking interviews, one exception over the last six weeks with the media. Certainly, nothing that was confrontational or hostile, that she's frequently spoken in abstractions and generalities, and not shown policy chops on a range of issues with depth and detail, that she frequently laughs a lot, you know, sort of out of timing and in ways that seems not to make sense, and out of defensiveness. None of that happened this evening. Today, Harris was responding coherently, not always with every fact at her fingertips, but certainly seemed to be a normal politician with a message to put across. Was particularly strong on issues like abortion, where she has that capacity, and on pieces of economic policy. Also, in being able to land blows against Trump and his unfitness, inconsistency, lack of support for democracy, other related issues.
Now, ABC is going to come into the crosshairs here because certainly the questions that they asked, and the follow-ups, were more hostile towards Trump than they were towards Harris. Would you say that they were biased against Trump? Well, I would say that they were more focused on fact-finding, and Trump, more frequently than Harris and more frequently than any politician at that level, is making up his own facts. And they were doing a fair amount of fact-checking in real time. I would say there was a little bit of bias in the sense that there were a couple of places they could have been fact-checking Kamala Harris, and they didn't. And I think they could have done a better job of that. I also think that they gave Trump much more time to follow up when he wanted to, and they typically cut off Harris at the end of her time. You could say that that's bias in favor of Trump, except it didn't help Trump. It actually hurt Trump because the longer he was speaking, the more rattled and unhinged he appeared to be.
So, I'd certainly say if you were looking at this debate, in terms of who you thought actually came across as a winner, and you had uncertainty as a potential voter, in the way that Biden/Trump would have been 95%, Trump, Harris/Trump would be 80% Harris. Now, if you're a partisan on the Harris or Trump side, it didn't matter what was going to happen, and you're going to say that your side won, no matter what. If you're trying to defend Trump tomorrow on air, you're going to say, “This was three-on-one. This was an ABC dogpile. They're the fake news. They should be shut down.” And I suspect Trump will be saying that, both directly and with his proxies tomorrow.
But the fact is, he did not perform, and he is a 78-year-old man. He has not been particularly on point or on message in lots of his rallies recently, if you've watched them, or at the Economics Club in New York last week, if you watch that speech, he has vulnerabilities. And Kamala Harris, who had not been tested at this level before, this is, you know, a presidential debate, she's the nominee., it's the biggest spot of her life, and she gave the best performance of her vice presidency, in my view. Was she, you know, Obama in terms of masterful and soaring rhetoric? No. was she Reagan? Same, no. But was she capable of sounding presidential, sounding like a leader, and thumping Trump pretty hard? Absolutely, yes. I think this is an incredibly tight race. It's essentially a coin flip. I think this will probably give Harris a little bit more momentum that had tapped out after the convention. But it's probably not going to move her 2 or 3 points. It might move her half a point or a point.
It's very, very tight. And I still think this election is very much open over the next couple months. But Harris did herself significant favors, Trump did himself none, over the last couple of hours, and that's the news going into tomorrow. That's my view. Best I can do. You can disagree with it, but you know, I at least try to tell you what I think is going on honestly, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Brazil's X ban becomes a rallying cry for Bolsonaro
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. Haven't spoken in a while about Brazil, and thought I might, given the demonstrations going on over the weekend and the big fight that is going on around democracy, around free speech, around the social media site that is known as Twitter/X. The issue here is that as in the United States, politics in Brazil exceptionally polarized and divided lots of issues questioning the future of the country's democracy, whether or not you can have a free and fair transition. January 8th in Brazil has the resonance for part of its population the way that January 6th does in the United States, participants seen as patriots by the other part of the population. You see where we're going here. One big difference between Brazil and the United States is in the United States, the Supreme Court, while it has at times a liberal and presently a conservative bent, is still an independent organization that is very separate from the executive.
In Brazil, it is much more politicized and corrupt. And specifically the effort to take down Twitter / X, in Brazil as well as freeze the accounts of Starlink for example, also owned by Elon Musk, has been overreach, politicized overreach by one specific Supreme Court member, Alexandre de Moraes, and has been approved by the Supreme Court as a whole. Now the issue here is a number of accounts that were disseminating disinformation, fake news, and claimed by the government needed to be taken down by Twitter / X. Twitter / X has refused to do so. And that angered those on the left in Brazil, especially because when other demands are made to remove individual accounts in other countries, like in Turkey or the UAE, which are made with similarly, I would say, tenuous justification, but if that's what the political leaders are saying in that country, that amounts to an order by a relevant authority.
Twitter / X has historically overwhelmingly complied and, indeed, taken down those accounts. We've seen that in a number of countries, not all the time but most of the time, and that hasn't been the case in Brazil. Is the reason why Elon Musk and Twitter refuse to remove these accounts because he's politically aligned or sympathetic with them? Certainly that would be the argument that is being made in Brazil. But there is an opportunity here from the conservatives, including from former President Bolsonaro to use this and the opposition to freedom of speech as a rallying call. And that was what we saw in these demonstrations over the weekend. They were significant. You might've seen the photos. About 50,000 total on Brazil's Independence Day, that's September 7th, in Sao Paulo attending the rally. They're small historically in context. I mean, Bolsonaro back in February got almost 200,000 protesters, so about four times as many to attend a rally also in Sao Paulo.
But it was significant because it does show that the defense of liberty and democracy is a rallying cry of the opposition in the next presidential election that's coming up in 2026, which is not so far away. And both Bolsonaro's speech as well as most of the conservative leaders that appeared with him, like the Sao Paulo governor for example, had heavy, heavy criticism of the Supreme Court ruling and specifically of Justice de Moraes, as we've seen from Elon. And they are accusing the Supreme Court of undermining freedom of speech. With the ongoing court investigations both about disseminating false information about the electoral system and about the January 8th attacks in Brasilia. And the fact that X has now been banned from Brazil after Elon has refused to comply. And by the way, I mean it's not the most important, it's a comparatively small social media site in Brazil.
There are others that are much more popular. But still this is getting a lot of attention because it is such a political grenade, and that is helping the conservative opposition in Brazil say that individual freedoms are being undermined. And the interesting point here is this is related to the United States. Both sides of the aisle in Brazil just like both sides of the aisle in the United States believe that the other side is a threat to democracy in ways that you don't see in Canada, or the UK, or France, or Germany, or Japan, or South Korea. I would say Brazil is the one major democracy that most feels like the United States in terms of this level of political dysfunction. But what's interesting is that it is the Bolsonaro-led opposition that is using the defense of democracy and liberty to mobilize its base before the 2026 elections. This has historically been much more of a calling card of the left. And in the United States democratic voters care more about the issue of defending democracy as a political issue than Republicans do, in Brazil conservative voters care more about defense of democracy than voters on the left. And this fight that was started by the Supreme Court is playing into that narrative. So interesting, worth talking about, getting a lot of attention. Thought I would throw my own two cents in, and I'll talk to you all real soon.