The entire world is watching this election – and with good reason

From Beijing to Brasilia, so much depends on what happens next. Andrew Buncombe considers the impact of Trump’s foreign policy and wonders what Biden has in store for the US and beyond

Biden and Trump during the final presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, on 22 October (AFP via Getty)

When you replay the speech now, it feels like an age ago. And yet what still rings through, as clear and stridently as it did then, was that Donald Trump’s foreign policy would be about promoting what he saw as the interests of his allies, and supporters, and his nation. It would be a foreign policy that very clearly put America first.

“I will return us to a timeless principle. Always put the interest of the American people and American security above all else,” Trump said at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC, where Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak was among the foreign diplomats listening.

“[I will] develop a new foreign policy direction for our country, one that replaces randomness with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace.”