MUNICH — Vice President Mike Pence and his immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, on Saturday offered competing visions of American leadership abroad, presaging major divides and campaign cudgels heading into the 2020 presidential race.

“When you hear President Trump ask our NATO allies to live up to the commitments they’ve made to our common defense, that’s what we call being leader of the free world,” Pence told the Munich Security Conference.

“Leadership in the absence of people who are with you is not leadership,” Biden said a few hours later.

Pence urged Europeans to act as a bulwark against Russia and China and warned of the espionage threat from Chinese telecom companies. Europe should scrap the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline and cease buying blacklisted Russian weapons, he said.

“We cannot ensure the defense of the West if our allies are dependent on the East,” Pence said.

Biden savaged the administration on its domestic policies. The separation migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border attested to a “struggle for America’s soul,” he said. And drawing a stark contrast abroad with the Trump administration, Biden praised NATO and the European Union.

Continue reading US Vice presidents’ war: Pence and Biden joust in Munich over foreign policy