Former vice-president said at Democratic debate ‘they are going to damage’ the US and blasted Trump for abandoning Kurdish allies

This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

The former US vice-president Joe Biden warned during a Democratic debate on Tuesday night that Islamic State fighters would strike the US as a result of Donald Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of American forces in northern Syria.

“We have Isis that’s going to come here,” Biden said. “They are going to damage the United States of America. That’s why we got involved in the first place.”

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An invasion of north-eastern Syria by Turkey last week after Trump announced the withdrawal of US forces on Twitter has resulted in numerous reports of detained Isis fighters breaking out of – or simply walking away from – prisons where they had been held by Kurdish fighters formerly allied with the US who are now under attack from Turkish forces.

Biden also warned that he believed if Trump were re-elected in November 2020, “there will be no Nato”.

The architects of the so-called “war on terror”, and especially the Republican backers of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an expansive US presence in the Middle East, have long warned that the US must intervene abroad in order to prevent attacks at home.

Questioned on Friday about a potential risk posed by Isis fighters freed amid the Syrian turmoil, Trump said it was Europe’s problem.

“Well, they are going to be escaping to Europe, that’s where they want to go,” he said. “They want to go back to their homes.”

Multiple Democratic candidates at the primary debate in Ohio condemned what they called Trump’s betrayal of American allies in the region.

“I’d like to hear from him about how leaving the Kurds for slaughter, leaving our allies for slaughter, makes America great again,” the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar said.

But it was Biden, the longtime chairman of the foreign relations committee during his Senate days, who offered the most scathing assessment of Trump’s foreign policy – and presented the most alarming picture of its potential consequences.

Biden noted that he was the only candidate on stage to have dealt personally with both Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“Erdoğan understands that if he is out of Nato, he is in real trouble,” Biden said. “But we have an erratic crazy president who knows not a damn thing about foreign policy and operates only [to advance] his own re-election.

“If he gets re-elected,” Biden continued, “I promise you there will be no Nato, our security will be vastly underrated, we will be in real trouble.”

Biden blasted Trump for abandoning Kurdish allies in northern Syria. “It has been the most shameful thing that any president has done in modern history in terms of foreign policy,” he said. “This is shameful, shameful, what this man has done.”

In his closing statement, Biden returned once more to attacking Trump: “This president has ripped the soul out of this country.”

In another fiery exchange, the two veterans on the stage – Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and the Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard – clashed over Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria, which paved the way for a Turkish military assault on Syrian Kurds.

Gabbard, who has been sharply criticized over a meeting with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, accused Trump of having the “blood of the Kurds on his hands” but she continued: “So do many of the politicians in both parties who supported this regime change war.”

Buttigieg shot back that she was “dead wrong”.

“You can put an end to endless war without embracing Donald Trump’s policy, as you’re doing,” he said.

Lauren Gambino contributed reporting