Iulia Joja: Washington might force Ukraine to negotiate peace, no matter who is the new US president

Vladimir Mitev, Veronika Sušová-Saminen

The Middle East Institute’s Black Sea Director Iulia Joja was a guest on Cross-border Talks in the context of Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race and his endorsement of Kamala Harris. What does Biden’s withdrawal mean for the Democratic and Republican campaigns? What would be the difference between a Democratic candidate (most likely Kamala Harris) and Donald Trump in terms of transatlantic relations, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East?

Iulia Joja dissects the domestic and most likely foreign policy profile of Harris and Trump and shares a number of insights about what makes them different, but also about what could be very similar, whoever is the future American president.

Vladimir Mitev: Welcome to Cross-border Talks, this time focusing on the ongoing campaign for the American presidential election. Joe Biden recently announced his withdrawal from the race and endorsed Kamala Harris as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. However, it remains to be seen what will happen with the Democratic campaign and we also need to see how Biden’s withdrawal will affect the campaign of Donald Trump, the Republican opponent.

We’re going to talk today with Iulia Joja, who is a Black Sea region expert at the Middle East Institute. She’s also a professor of international relations and European security at Georgetown University. We’re going to focus not only on the purely American side of the story, but also on how the victory of one or the other can affect the situation in the eastern part of the European Union, that is, in Central and Southeastern Europe, and we’ll also have a question on American Middle East policy in the near future. The first questions will be asked by my colleague, Veronika Sušová-Saminen.

Veronika Sušová-Saminen: Hello everyone. So, thank you, Iulia, for your time, and I will start with the first question, which I think is really the most important at the moment, and if you see the media, they are really speculating a lot about it. And this question is what does Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the campaign for the Democratic Party and its presidential campaign actually mean, because I’m not a specialist in American politics, but as I understand it, it’s quite an unprecedented situation.

It’s not usual for the main candidate to drop out this late and for any party, Democratic or Republican, to have to quickly find a replacement. And then the second question related to that is what does this unprecedented situation mean for Donald Trump and his campaign, because he already started campaigning against Biden and he also seemed quite comfortable with Biden. So I would ask these two questions together, how do you assess what has happened and what do you expect will be the consequences for the Democratic Party in particular.

Iulia Joja: Thank you, first of all, for having me, Veronika and Vladimir. It’s great to be with you here on Cross-Border Talks. So there’s a lot to unpack with the first question or the first two questions, and it’s very much in motion.

Politics are very much in motion here in Washington, D.C., and there’s this famous saying: sometimes in decades there’s almost nothing happening, but other times in days there are decades happening. And that’s how it feels like here in the United States when it comes to politics at the moment. 

We’ve seen over the last 10 days, first the assassination attempt of Donald Trump. Then we’ve seen Donald Trump as the former president at the Republican convention nominating his running mate, J.D. Vance, and that too has implications for how they’re going to position or how the Republican Party is going to position itself in this race and vis-a-vis domestic as well as foreign policy issues. And then we saw the withdrawal from the candidacy of President Joe Biden just last Sunday. And in record time, in basically 24 hours, on July 23rd, on the day that we’re speaking, Kamala Harris, the vice president, has already insured a sufficient number of delegates to be able to win at the convention of the Democratic Party that will take place in about a month in Chicago here in the United States.

And within that, there’s a lot to process in terms of possible continuity of Kamala Harris in relation to Joe Biden and generally where she positions herself on domestic as well as maybe what is most interesting for us and for your audience, foreign affairs. The problem has been, to be straight, that until Joe Biden has been underperforming with the famous debate between him and Donald Trump a few weeks ago and the NATO summit that didn’t go so well and just overall signs that he is perceived as not being up for the job until then, it was actually perceived that Kamala Harris was his weakest link because in three and a half years here in the United States. She has been perceived as very weak on both domestic affairs and on foreign policy. 

Now, vice presidents do more on domestic than foreign policy, but nevertheless, she’s been perceived as absent. And so that means that for us in terms of substance, it’s very, very early days to discern how she’s going to position herself and her job will be in the next few weeks in the campaign and next few months to differentiate herself from Joe Biden. 

How is she different from Joe Biden, especially on what is interesting for us, foreign affairs? When it comes to domestic affairs, that too might be a weakness for her because she is considered progressive, much more left than he has been. And it very much will depend, of course, on what running mate she’s choosing as vice president in case she will be the nominee.

But it’s almost certain already at this point. And on domestic issues, again, she’s quite progressive, especially when it comes to abortion, LGBT rights, migration. Many of these things really matter for U.S. voters. And so this will be key. All of these issues will be key in the election. Basically, we now see the problem internally, which is not really changing with Kamala Harris, unfortunately, that we have this hyperpolarization here in the United States.

We’ve heard so much about it through Donald Trump that has been really channeling it over the past few years. But the problem has also been her moving or being perceived as pretty left too. 

Trump is pretty right-wing. And J.D. Vance as vice president or running mate is making him even more extreme, more far-right. But that means for the majority of voters that they might not have been happy with Joe Biden versus Trump as options, but that for those in the middle, it might be even or just as difficult. And then on foreign affairs, it’s very, very early days to see how she will position herself on the most important issues for the United States.

And that’s Ukraine and Russia on the one hand. It’s very interesting for us. That’s also the Middle East. There we already see some very early positioning. And maybe we’ll talk about that in a second. And of course, China. China is the most important issue for the United States internationally.

I would go a little bit deeper into what you already talked about. That is, if we look at some of the polls and we could see that the situation between Trump and Biden, at least in some polls, was that they were very, very close. But still, Trump was stronger, it seems, in the public opinion polls in terms of favorability or support for the presidency.

So how do you think things will turn out if Democrats still stick with Kamala Harris? I know politics can change and she’s not an official candidate of the Democratic Party and so on. And you said that she has certain policies behind her that may attract some voters but may also alienate some other voters. Most likely Trump will try to attract the undecided voters. And she and her running mate will try to decide or attract the undecided voters. 

So do you think that there can be some kind of big change or big dynamic in this because of this hyperpolarization and because Kamala Harris and her figure will basically open up even these, you know, these scissors more in American politics?

So it’s entirely possible. You’re sort of already alluding to that with your question. You know, a few hours, I want to say two to three hours after Joe Biden’s letter went out announcing his withdrawal from the campaign and from running Kamala Harris’s first political ad was already all across social media as well as mainstream media.

And in that ad that you can find online, she is positioning herself the way it is to be expected. She’s saying, I am the prosecutor and I prosecute bad guys. That is my background. And my counter-candidate, Donald Trump, is a felon. So this is quite extreme, if you’d like. Of course, it’s politics and it is to be expected. But it is quite an extreme way of running. Right. She is from the outset creating this opposition between her and Donald Trump.

And we will have to see how far that gets her, how far that gets her with voters. The problem, and I already sort of alluded to that or mentioned that in my previous answer, is indeed that for a big number of American voters, they are finding themselves in these circumstances if she is positioning herself. And it’s kind of her chance, quite progressive.

I wouldn’t say far left, but progressively left. That there is very little home for them. With Joe Biden versus Trump, it was also a matter of age perception.

But with Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump, it will even more maybe be a matter of ideology. And in this hyperpolarization that we’re seeing, she doesn’t seem to be trying to mitigate. Donald Trump has maybe made a pretty big mistake, and we’ll see if she makes a similar mistake in the next few days or weeks. His mistake was last week. That’s why I’m saying everything has been happening so quickly. But with such important events over the past week or so, his mistake has been to select a running mate that is perceived as even more extreme in discourse than he is.

J.D. Vance is rhetorically perceived as even more, more aggressive and more extreme instead of choosing a running mate that is more moderate than Donald Trump or perceived as more moderate. So that, like you were saying, so that the Republican Party can attract those many voters, undecided voters, unmotivated voters that are in the middle. And that represents the majority of Americans, frankly.

And now it will depend very much on Kamala Harris. If she’s the running mate, what kind of a vice president? If she’s the candidate, what kind of a vice president running mate she will select?

That means that she could select someone that is just as left as her or maybe even more left, or she could select someone moderate. I’ll tell you just to make things straight, her highest chance of winning against Donald Trump would have been to select a running mate that is not just moderate, but that would have been a bipartisan, a national unity ticket, a Republican, someone like Nikki Haley, someone like Mitt Romney or similar. That would have ensured her an easy win against Donald Trump exactly because it’s trying to capture the middle.

But it is very unlikely that she will do that, and it is very unlikely that the Democratic Party, which has also moved more and more to the left over the last few years, will accept as a running mate, someone who really bridges that gap in the middle. So if she picks someone who is as left as she is or even more left, her chances of defeating Donald Trump are slim.

That’s very interesting, because you would say that, you know, in a way, at least the voters have what they choose between different programs and not from the center. But it seems, as you describe it, that that center is still sort of the most accessible to voters in the United States. But OK, of course we have to say that we don’t know and it’s not 100% sure that Kamala Harris will get the nomination.

But it seems to me, unfortunately, that there is no one else who could step in at this point. And probably the vice president also has a specific position in American politics. So if she gets the ticket, which is likely, but still, of course, it’s politics.

As you said, things are changing fast. I would still ask you what to expect. At least I don’t want any deep details because you said that things are changing.

There is no clear profile for Kamala Harris in international politics. And as you said, her running mate is not clear either. So things can change depending on who her running mate is.

What can we expect in the most important areas of international relations for our region? That means, of course, relations with Central and Eastern Europe and, in particular, with Ukraine. In the case of Kamala Harris, will there most likely be total continuity with Biden or do you think there will be some kind of changes related to this issue?

Yeah, it’s a difficult question to answer because it’s just very, very early days. We only have very few indications of where she might position herself. And it’s entirely speculative because until she’s the candidate of the Democrats and then if she wins the election, both of them are still a question mark, one larger than the other.

We will have to see who she selects on her team. What we know so far is that she has a national security advisor, someone called Gordon Phillips, who is specialized and very interested in Western Europe, particularly France and French affairs. And he has been positioning himself in favor of support, particularly for Ukraine prior to the war.

But he’s not a foreign policy hawk. And I don’t see her being either. You know, she hasn’t left the best impression, to be frank, when she has visited our region.

She went to Warsaw and she went to Bucharest in the midst of the war. And she didn’t seem quite certain where she was. She mixed up the eastern flank with the southern flank.

And it was so bad that she actually had someone from her team fired. But that tells you that she’s not really invested in the region. She’s not one of these old school American politicians, particularly the Republicans that have been traditionally around the end of the Cold War and even after being very invested into the region and have been pushing investments and commitments of the United States to the region, including even in the first Trump or the first years, rather, of the Trump term.

And so that’s kind of what we know of her and her team. So if Gordon Phillips and others are staying close to her, if he will be, if she wins the election, a lot of ifs, and if he will be her national security advisor or state secretary, that’s good news for transatlantic relations in a similar manner in which Biden was, right? She will not be the last transatlanticist.

Biden has been to the core. But there’s some chance that she will still be invested into Europe overall and appreciating partnerships and alliances in a radically different manner. This has to be said from Trump.

We know, and that’s our biggest fear in Europe particularly, but not only in Asia, too, that Trump personally, as we’ve seen in his term, does not appreciate alliances and does not appreciate partnerships and in things that, he’s driving neo-isolationism and Kamala Harris should be very, very different. But because you asked me about Central and Eastern Europe, and of course, to us in this region, the war is central, right? Am I hopeful that Kamala Harris will radically change the game from Joe Biden and position herself even in the next few months, because that will be her job to explain to us how she is different from Joe Biden.

Will she be going out there and saying, I’m changing the name of the game in the war. I am here to help Ukraine win this war. We’re changing the weapons policy.

We’re changing the strategy. We are developing a strategy in the first place to win this war. We are explaining in the first place to the American people, something that Joe Biden has never done, why Ukraine and why Central and Eastern Europe are in the national interest of the United States.

I am doubtful.

Okay, a similar question could be asked about Donald Trump, if he wins. You already mentioned the transatlantic relationship as something very important to position with regard to. So what would a Trump victory mean for this transatlantic relationship, as well as his policy towards our region?

Well, so if I’m reluctant when it comes to Kamala Harris in transatlantic relations, and particularly our region, I am even more scared, like significantly more scared of Donald Trump returning. And I think there’s an important element here that is a bit difficult to understand when you’re looking from the outside into the United States. A lot of people in our region across the Eastern flank, if you’d like, particularly in societies that are a bit more conservative, a bit more traditional, if you’d like, Donald Trump was appreciated.

And even in foreign policy, elite circles in Bucharest and in Sofia, and in particularly in Budapest, but not only, Donald Trump’s first term or his only term so far has been appreciated in that indeed he has increased or under his presidency, aid and support for the region has increased. But what we need to understand is that that was not due to him. That was due to the people around him that were highly professional, highly educated, and highly invested.

Many of them, these old school Republicans that I was mentioning, are highly invested into the region. People like McMaster, people like John Bolton. I remember when nobody would travel to Moldova, John Bolton was traveling to Moldova, to Armenia, to Belarus.

So really, people invested into the region. That’s not going to be the same if Donald Trump is returning. All of these people have had their fallouts with Donald Trump.

And he will surround himself with people that are far more isolationist, that appreciate alliances and partnerships far less. He himself does not have positive feelings with regards to Europe overall, and the European Union. We all remember the trade wars that he insisted on.

He is not appreciative of NATO. We all remember, and now it’s being leaked, how he thought about quitting NATO. And he does not appreciate Ukraine. Ukraine, he himself has created an impeachment because of Ukraine, right? And because of what he has asked Zelensky to do. And so that’s all very, very bad news for the region.

And we should all be concerned and understand that if Donald Trump returns to the White House, we should be preparing for that possibility with some serious Trump-proofing that is already underway to the extent that it is possible within NATO and within the European Union. But I would argue a lot more is needed because it will be much more about a policy of each on their own, a lot more bilateralism, a lot less multilateralism, and again, a lot less investment of the United States in soft power in its most important alliances and partnerships.

Okay. What I take from what you’re saying is that maybe there will be a super-personalization of foreign policy, if I may say, because it’s important what Trump thinks or feels about our region or what the people around him are. But I also think that there is an institutional, traditional component of American foreign policy, and that is NATO.

There was a NATO summit in Washington this month, in July 2024, and there were a number of decisions and statements about the region, about Ukraine. How do you evaluate the conclusions of this NATO summit and what could change in the situation in which, let’s say, Donald Trump comes to the White House, given that he has already made some statements that caused speculation that he might not be dedicated to NATO?

Yeah, that’s elegantly put, not dedicated to NATO, Vladimir. It’s, yeah, it’s not looking very good if we’re looking at Trump and NATO. The summit in itself was according to expectations.

If you had the wrong expectations, then the risk was that you ended up disappointed. But the Biden administration has been very adamantly trying to, as Americans say, manage expectations because of how bad the PR was around the previous summit in Vilnius last year. And so the Biden administration has been preparing here in Washington the summit for months telling us, everyone, it’s in so many words, it’s not about putting things on the agenda, particularly not the difficult things, reads the Eastern flank and the countries in Central and Eastern Europe that are most under threat, and of course the war.

It is about celebrating 75 years. And so that’s what we did in Washington, DC. We all gathered for celebrations and it’s been very, very controlled.

In the public forum, for instance, no questions were allowed and no journalists were in the public forum either. So that tells you how controlled this so-called celebration has been. And so if we’re looking at the outcomes, the palpable, actionable outcomes of the summit, because nothing difficult has been put on the agenda, nothing palpable, not much palpable, could come out of it either.

Biden has announced five more air defense systems for Ukraine. Four of them were already announced beforehand. And either way, they’re completely insufficient compared to what Ukraine needs.

There has been some very bad news around the summit. Poland has offered to help Ukraine defend its Western airspace and essentially the Biden administration has said no. The UK has come out to say that Ukraine can use long range weapons wherever it likes in Russia to defend itself, because it makes sense for Ukraine to be able to attack the sources from which Russia attacks Ukraine and hence Ukraine has to use all this expensive air defense system.

And the Biden administration has not moved on that. Maybe it one day, but it seems that it’s the same policy within this summit as it has been over the past two and a half years now, very slow, very hesitant with no plan of winning or making a difference other than vaguely formulating that we’re not even that, that Ukraine is getting all the support to be able to hold against Russian attacks. But we can’t match that because of the policy that the Biden administration has adopted.

And so the summit has been exactly a confirmation of a continuity in the Biden administration’s policy vis-a-vis the war, with a big unknown of what is to come after the elections. And now everyone in Europe, though it shouldn’t be the case, is waiting for the elections in the United States. My fear is that indifferent of whether we’ll have a Republican administration or we’ll have a Democratic administration, the supplemental aid for Ukraine has been approved with such difficulty this year, and none of the candidates have made any efforts to increase political support for future help or to change the strategy that indifferent of who will be in the White House next year, we might see the administration forcing Ukraine to the negotiation table towards a negotiation that is unsustainable.

We know that that’s what Trump is promising and that it will be, that his promise is very vague. In a few hours he will solve the conflict. It’s unclear, including to Ukrainians, how that would be possible when Russia has not changed its negotiation demands or its position.

But that’s where we’re at. And so if we have a democratic administration, the tone will be much more polite and the nudging will be much more gentle than with a Republican administration. But the outcome, I fear, might be a similar one.

Okay. Finally, I want to take advantage of the fact that you are associated with the Middle East Institute, and we also have strange developments in the Middle East. On the one hand, Israel seems to be isolating itself because of the war in Gaza. On the other hand, Iran has just elected a reformist president who says he’s open to renewing the nuclear deal or overcoming Iran’s isolation. And we also see that China has been advancing in the region in recent years, including recently, last year, brokering an important reconciliation agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. So in this context, once again, with regard to the future American president, what policy on the Middle East should we expect from either a Democratic or a Republican candidate, a future president?

It’s a great question. And I think here too, the unknown is how Kamala Harris, if she is the candidate, will position herself. And of course, if she wins in the case of Trump, it’s very clear.

And so it may be becoming even more clear with the nomination of J.D. Vance as his running mate. Both Trump and J.D. Vance are very pro-Israel and very anti-Hamas and also very anti-Iran. Frankly, Donald Trump’s anti-Iran policy is the reason why also a significant part of the Arab community here in the United States is voting for the Republican Party.

And so we can expect and we know that Donald Trump has very good relations in Israel as well. And so we can expect with a potential presidency of Donald Trump, a second term, that there is going to be a very hard policy against Iran. Where that leaves China, I don’t know.

It doesn’t look to me as if China is in its strongest moment in the context of, by the way, here, this is a credit to the Biden administration. China looks weakened financially, economically, too. So that will also translate into the negotiation power and what kind of an actor China can be and can be perceived to be in the Middle East.

So in case Trump returns, we’ll see a return of Trump’s policy vis-a-vis the Middle East. I think that’s how we can sum it up. In the case of a Kamala Harris administration, the situation is a bit more complicated because Biden has been under a lot of fire from, again, particularly the progressive elements of the Democratic Party here for being too pro-Israel.

But he is bound, too, by party loyalty and by the fact that, frankly, we tend to forget that Israel is an ally of the United States and it is a democratic country. And I don’t think this relationship of an alliance can qualitatively change, even if we have an even more left positioned president in the White House through Kamala Harris. However, it’s very, very early to say, and we already see Kamala Harris trying in the first 24 hours of her candidacy, essentially.

We’re already seeing her position herself differently from Joe Biden. She has just announced that she will not be presiding over a meeting with the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu. And so that is quite a strong signal that she is even more reluctant than Joe Biden when it comes to Israel.

And at the same time, already the first 24 hours of her candidacy, she has come under fire for being too Israeli. So there’s going to be a lot of pressure from all sides. And it is very unclear how she will position herself, how she will balance her Israel-Palestine policy.

On Iran, the last point we’ve seen in the Biden administration, initial attempts to revive the JCPOA, to revive a deal with Iran that Iran, of course, is very keen on. But that all has been put on ice, frankly, through the Mahsa Amini protests and violence, the incredible crackdown of Iran against its own people. And so not that much time has passed.

And if the Democrats will stay in the White House and will try to foster a re-engagement with Iran, still it will be, there will be a lot of pressure from public opinion, including the Iranian diaspora here, to not have too much of an easy relationship with the regime that is executing violence such as that in the case of Mahsa Amini.

Okay. This was the last episode of Cross-Border Talks. We talked with IR specialist Iulia Joja about the latest developments in American politics and domestic and international issues.

And we can promise our viewers that we’re going to follow the developments in American politics because, as you know, the elections are going to be in November and it’s very important to observe and analyze these developments. For everyone, including our region. And I would also like to remind everyone to subscribe to our channel to get regular updates, to follow us on social media, and of course to visit our website, https://crossbordertalks.eu, where you can also find very up-to-date articles and commentaries on international affairs and on our region, Central and Eastern Europe. Thank you very much, Yulia, for your time. And I wish all of you who are watching or listening to us a good day, afternoon, evening, or whatever time you’re devoting to us. Thank you.

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