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The biggest threats to US national security, foreign and domestic
Less than a month ago, the Biden administration finally dropped its long-anticipated National Security Strategy. The No. 1 external enemy is not Russia but rather China. It also emphasizes the homegrown threat of Americans willing to engage in political violence if their candidate loses at the ballot box.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger about the key national security threats facing the United States right now.
Sanger believes the biggest threat to America's national security right now is an "insider threat" to the stability of the election system coming from Americans willing to engage in political violence. Taiwan's status as a semiconductor superpower may be staving off a Chinese invasion.
On Russia, Sanger believes that Ukraine and the world face the paradox that the better Ukraine gets at resisting Russia, the more likely Putin might launch a tactical nuke. And if he does, he might just get away with it.
This interview was featured in a GZERO World episode: US threat levels from foreign and domestic enemies
US House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) waves after speaking to supporters on midterms election night.
What We’re Watching: Domestic & foreign policy implications, lame-duck maneuvers, Trump 2.0?, a Lake of doubts
Probe payback incoming?
After being on the unhappy side of a raft of Democrat-led House investigations the last few years, incoming GOP House leaders are itching to launch a number of their own. Subjects may include the Biden administration’s clunky withdrawal from Afghanistan, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, the alleged politicization of the Justice Department, and of course, the GOP’s favorite target, Hunter Biden. What about impeachment? The Dems did it twice to Donald Trump. Could Republicans return the favor? Likely incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says the GOP would never pursue it for “political purposes.”
Will foreign policy change under a GOP House?
The biggest immediate issue will be Ukraine, where McCarthy will try to balance the views of establishment GOP Russia hawks against those of MAGA members who want to limit aid to Kyiv. McCarthy’s already pledged to scrap what he calls a “blank check” policy and to scrutinize more closely the content and aims of US aid to Kyiv. Also, expect an even harder line against China, focusing on Beijing’s trade and industrial policies, its role in the opioid crisis, and a sharper focus on the activities of Chinese students, companies, and investors in the US. In principle, whacking China is a rare bipartisan winner.
Can outgoing Dems beat the clock?
If Democrats lose their House majority, they still control the chamber for two months of a lame-duck session before the 118th Congress begins. Expect action on two Biden administration priorities. First, Dems might try to pass a big Ukraine spending package to lock in funds for Kyiv before the GOP takeover. Second, Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling so the government can borrow more to pay its bills and avoid default. If there's no agreement, House Republicans might use the debt limit as leverage to force Biden to accept painful entitlement cuts.
Trump teases 2024 announcement
We’re officially on Trump watch. On Monday, the former president told an Ohio crowd to expect a “very big announcement” from his Mar-a-Lago home next Tuesday, and there isn’t much mystery about what he means. The big looming question is whether other viable challengers for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination will emerge, how Trump will respond to them, and how they will respond to him. In 2016, Trump’s Republican opponents tried many tactics to take him down while protecting their opportunities to win over his supporters. Will Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis succeed where Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio failed?
Raising (doubts in) Arizona
The gubernatorial race in the Grand Canyon State is too close to call, but Republican hopeful and new MAGA icon Kari Lake is already crying fraud. Lake — who's losing by two percentage points as of 6 a.m. EST — said in a fiery speech that it felt "like Groundhog Day," a reference to the 2020 presidential election that she insists was stolen from Donald Trump. If elected, Lake, a former TV anchor and anti-immigration hawk, might opt to not certify a Democratic victory in the 2024 presidential election, especially if Trump picks her as VP ...
US votes as democracy is under attack
US midterm elections have traditionally been a referendum on the president. But in 2022 even Joe Biden wants the vote to be all about his predecessor, Donald Trump, who still dominates the GOP.
In this episode of GZERO World - and for the first time in front of a live studio audience — Ian Bremmer speaks to New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, who've just co-authored a new book about the Trump presidency.
Baker and Glasser explain how they had planned to become foreign correspondents in 2020 but after Trump's win decided to stay in DC, covering him like being foreign correspondents in their own town. What's more, even out of office, they say Trump still looms large over the GOP, and continues to influence US politics like an "active crime scene.
And, of course, there's always Trump's bromance with Vladimir Putin, who share more in common than might immediately meet the eye.
- The Graphic Truth — Biden's first midterms: How does he stack up ... ›
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- How Trump dominates the GOP & "impressed" these DC journalists ... ›
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- Democracy is resilient - but so is authoritarianism around the world - GZERO Media ›
DC journalists Susan Glasser & Peter Baker join Ian Bremmer on GZERO World
With just a few weeks remaining before the deeply consequential 2022 midterm elections in the United States, Ian Bremmer speaks to two of Washington’s top reporters in front of a live audience in New York City. This special episode from the fifth season of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer features DC power couple and co-authors Susan Glasser, Washington columnist for The New Yorker, and Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times. They discuss their bestselling new book, "The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021," the upcoming US midterm elections, and the state of American democracy in 2022.
Follow @gzeromedia and watch the interview on US public television starting Friday, October 21 (check local listings), or on gzeromedia.com.
Have Republicans ruined their chances of taking the Senate?
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.
Have Republicans ruined their chances of taking the Senate?
2022 started off looking like a very strong year for Republicans who are trying to retake the House and Senate. With inflation top of mind for voters and several Republican candidates in 2021 riding the backlash against COVID lockdowns and teachers' unions, Republicans had solid leads in congressional polling and the winds of history at their back. The president's party typically loses about 30 House seats in a normal midterm elections, and Democrats only had five to give away before they lost their majority. And in an evenly divided Senate, Republicans saw at least four easy pickup opportunities in swing states that Democrats barely won in previous cycles.
But the environment has shifted radically in the last several months. Inflation remains a top issue, but has abated slightly in recent months as energy prices have dropped. The Supreme Court's decision, overturning Roe vs. Wade seems to have increased registration and enthusiasm among Democratic voters, particularly women and President Donald Trump is back in the news because of the sensational raid on his Mar-a-Lago compound hurting Republicans.
In addition to these atmospherics, Republican Senate candidates are drastically underperforming in several key races. GOP candidates in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada are underperforming a generic Republican in those states. And this week, New Hampshire Republicans nominated an extremely controversial former general who polls far behind the Democratic incumbent, despite the favorable national environment. This has led several mainstream election forecasters to believe that Democrats are now favored to hold the Senate or potentially even increase the size of their majority based on competitive candidates for Republican seats running in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina. This probably won't happen, but this is not the campaign that Republican leaders thought they would be running in the spring.
What could change the dynamics back in Republicans' favor? Most likely it's the economy. The Federal Reserve is aggressively hiking interest rates to bring down inflation. And while that hasn't slowed down job creation just yet, it could start to have a bite in the real economy in the next several months. And of course, campaigns matter too. The Republican candidate in Pennsylvania has just started to spend money to define his Democratic opponent as too liberal for the state. The race in Georgia remains very close. And in Nevada, Republicans are running a Senator's son who has already won statewide. If you live in one of these states, watch out for a flood of ads in the next six weeks as both parties prepare to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to keep or take control of the policy agenda.
- Jon Lieber: What's different about the 2022 midterms is 2024 Trump ... ›
- Democrats hope to use Jan 6 Trump focus to gain edge in midterms ... ›
- The Graphic Truth — Biden's first midterms: How does he stack up ... ›
- The Graphic Truth: Upcoming 2022 elections - GZERO Media ›
- How Trump dominates the GOP & "impressed" these DC journalists - GZERO Media ›
Armenia and Azerbaijan flareup gets Russia involved
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Are Armenia and Azerbaijan on the brink of another war?
Yesterday, it did look that way. The Azeris engaging in drone and artillery strikes literally into the homeland of Armenia, not contested territory, clearly linked to the fact that the Russians have had serious problems over the last several days in Ukraine and they are the big supporter, big ally of Armenia. Fortunately, it looks like we have a cease fire now and the Russians are engaging quite quickly with both sides to try to reduce the temperature. Engage in deconfliction. How the Turks are playing in all of this, because clearly they would've known before these Azeris were going to make those strikes, that's an interesting question. Watch that pretty carefully over the coming hours.
What do both Xi and Putin hope to take away from their upcoming meeting?
Different things. I think if you are Russia, you are pretty desperate to have the Chinese show themselves as your strongest ally on the global stage. China, of course, not very interested in that and we saw that with the Chinese number three to Xi Jinping in Vladivostok last week, didn't even mention Ukraine and all that. The Russians, of course would've loved for them to say, "No, the Russians are fighting the good fight." China wants none of it. But in terms of buying lots of oil at a significant discount and even announcing going forward they're going to start building out more gas infrastructure so that they can take advantage of the fact that the Russians will no longer be producing and supplying to the Europeans, I think we're going to move in that direction. Both sides are interested in that.
Does US inflation dampen Biden's economic plan?
A little of course, but more importantly, it's negative for midterms. The fact that we saw energy prices over the last couple months every day going down was a big deal. Some of the Republicans running increasingly recognizing that inflation was not going to be the top priority in being able to defeat the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. A challenging CPI inflation number earlier today does make that narrative work more effectively for the Republicans, but it's going to be tight certainly in the Senate. At this point, it is close to a coin flip. The House, on the other hand, still hard to see it going any other way than a shift to the Republican Party.
Biden vs. MAGA Republicans
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And as you can see from the getup, I am back in New York City. Happy to be with you for a Quick Take of what I think is going on. I wanted to talk a little bit about Biden versus the MAGA Republicans, because of course, if you go back to the inaugural when President Biden had just taken over, he was the unifier. This was the man that was elected to try to reduce tempers and division inside what has become the most politically divided and dysfunctional of G7 economies. And wanted to bring to an end, what Biden referred to in that speech, as the uncivil war that pits red versus blue.
Now over the course of the last few days, President Biden has said something very different. He's referred to MAGA Republicans as semi-fascists a few months ago. Of course, he was talking about ultra MAGA. I guess those are now full-on fascist. And of course, they're also Americans and yes, it is absolutely true that some MAGA Republicans overtly support overturning a free and fair election and even using violence in so doing. And that is deeply problematic for the persistence and strength of a democracy. But it's also true that not all supporters of Donald Trump feel that way and taring 30% to 35% of the US population as beyond redemption tends to harden the political divides in the country.
So what is going on here? Because it's not like Trump has changed, right? Trump is the same person that he was when Biden gave the inaugural. So there's no surprise here. There's no Biden suddenly realizing, “Oh my God, look at who this guy really is.” That isn't different. And the MAGA movement and the people that support “Make America Great Again” as a slogan haven't changed, and those numbers are roughly what they were. Biden knows that too. So why would Biden's message be so dramatically different today than it was six months ago, a year ago, two years ago? The answer I think pretty clearly is that he and his administration sense a short-term domestic political opportunity.
Trump was of course sinking a little bit in the polls. Republicans still liked him, but they weren't talking as much about him. Other potential candidates were getting a lot more air time. Most notably at this point, Ron DeSantis, the Governor of Florida. Even with the January 6th hearings that got an enormous amount of play with people that opposed Trump, supporters of Trump weren't paying all that much attention. Fox of course barely covered it. Newsmax, you couldn't find it. So wasn't that big of a deal. And then Trump pops up and becomes pretty dominant in the news cycle, following the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, and that made it much harder for those Republicans trying to distance themselves from Trump or not talk about him to stay quiet. Suddenly there was an outpouring of animosity towards the DOJ, towards the FBI for taking Trump on. It made it hard for Republicans to hedge.
Biden, I think has a clear strategy. He wants to make it harder. He doesn't want Republicans hedging about Trump. He wants them forced to embrace Trump or take the Liz Cheney route, which virtually none will do. And this is all about electoral opportunity with the midterm elections nearing. The Dems of course do have some significant policy wins that they can now run on. In particular the completely misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, horrible. No one's reducing inflation with the bills that have just been passed. You're spending a lot more in terms of student debt and in terms of the CHIPS Act and semiconductors. But nonetheless, when you put these policies together, meaningful policies, that will matter to a lot of people that support Joe Biden and to a lot of independence that are wavering.
So they have policy to run on, but inflation still seems pretty high and it's probably going to be reduced somewhat by November, but not enough to make the average American feel really confident about where the economy is, especially with a still significant potential of a recession coming in the coming months. At the same time, a really close Senate, a set of Senate races that could go either way in part because you have a significant number of overtly Trump supporting candidates that are not likely to perform as well in the general election as more moderate, more centrist Republicans would.
I think it's important to remember that Trump won the Senate for Biden and the Democrats the first time around. The Republicans would've taken the Senate if it hadn't been for Trump opposing the so-called stolen election and telling people in Georgia not to turn out because of the failure that Trump had to carry the state to carry the election. And that meant that in two special elections back in January, a year plus ago, Trump and the Republicans lost both of them and that meant a 50-50 win for the Democrats. That's a really big deal.
So I think it's pretty clear here that Joe Biden believes, and therefore he's going to bang this drum against MAGA Republicans harder and harder up until the midterms, that if he takes that position there's a better shot that the Dems are able to hold the Senate and maybe even take one or two additional seats. That the Republican House, which is very likely to be brought about, will be a smaller red wave than the swing that you would otherwise expect. I think that's pretty clear.
It is probably true that Biden's strategy leads to more democratic seats come midterms. It is also true that that strategy probably leads to more election deniers in office. It gives Trump more hold over the Republican Party than he otherwise would have. It makes it more likely he ultimately secures the nomination. As we look ahead to 2024, yes, Trump versus Biden. Trump is more likely to lose than a lot of other Republicans that could get the nomination against Biden I get that, but any possibility that Trump could legitimately win, and certainly that is within the realm of plausible, is much more dangerous for us democracy.
Of course also, even if Trump loses the likelihood that he would lead an effort, more likely to be successful given governors and secretaries of state and others with electoral authority in individual states, that Trump would be able to break an election that he lost is all so much more likely. And my personal view is that anything that gives Trump more capacity to either win the election or to break the election and erode us institutions is a deeply problematic thing for the United States. So in this regard, I have a great deal of concern about where Biden is going with his strategy presently.
So, that's my view in a few moments for all of you. I hope you find it interesting worth chewing on. I'll be talking to you all again real soon. Be good.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com
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The abortion fight to come: why US Congressional control matters
New York Times columnist Emily Bazelon says the Justice Department is working to ensure states can't ban abortion pills, which are federally approved.
But then Congress (as a whole) will be a tough sell, she tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
The House could enshrine Roe v. Wade into law, but it'll surely die in the Senate, where Democrats remain "paralyzed" over getting rid of the filibuster. And then, of course, the next Congress could repeal the whole thing.
Still, even if Republicans win control of both houses in November, she doubts the GOP majority will move to outlaw abortion at the federal level.
Watch the GZERO World episode: US Supreme Court fights: why ending Roe is only the beginning