Editors’ note: With the 2024 presidential debate scheduled this week between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, here’s a look back at Good Authority editor Elizabeth N. Saunders’ discussion of foreign policy in the 2020 election cycle. Elizabeth’s article was published in October 2020, shortly before the final debate that year between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
In October 2020, the Trump campaign complained that the second and final debate will not focus exclusively on foreign policy. The Commission on Presidential Debates made no such agreement, but it did announce that Kristen Welker, Thursday’s moderator, chose national security and climate change as two of the topics.
Leaving aside the short-term politicking, foreign policy has fallen further than usual off the 2020 campaign radar. But here’s how U.S. foreign policy will be on the ballot.
Foreign policy is usually an afterthought in presidential campaigns
In January 2016, I wrote here that it’s rare to see foreign policy become a major campaign issue. It takes a salient issue on which the nominees differ, and one candidate must take a popular position that the other candidate cannot easily match. Even in the 1968 election, candidates Richard M. Nixon and Hubert Humphrey took similar public positions on the Vietnam War, making it difficult for voters to use the war as a basis for choosing between them.
It’s normal for foreign policy to be on the back burner. Most voters don’t pay close attention to foreign policy, and that’s consistent with decades of research on how voters make sense of complex issues using shortcuts — like cues from elites — that interact with their predispositions.
2016 was an unusual election in terms of foreign policy
Foreign policy sometimes takes center stage, as in the 2006 midterms or the 2008 primary, when Sen. Barack Obama’s vote against the Iraq War distinguished him from Sen. Hillary Clinton.
2016 turned out to be a little different. Many of the issues Republican candidate Donald Trump emphasized related to foreign policy — notably, immigration, trade and alliances. Trump’s open embrace of Russia also generated considerable campaign heat, particularly in the final Clinton-Trump debate. As Thomas Wright wrote a year before Trump’s inauguration, these issues reflected Trump’s long-standing dislike of multilateral trade agreements and alliances, as well as his admiration for authoritarian regimes.
Trump wove these issues into a narrative about grievance and cost: Alliances cost the United States money and security; trade costs U.S. workers’ jobs; immigration is bad for the country. Of course, all politicians craft narratives, even around national security issues — think the Cold War and the war on terror — but it’s usually to boost support for specific policies. As Max Fisher and Amanda Taub wrote before the 2016 foreign policy debate, Trump focused primarily on activating sentiment among his supporters.
Trump made a lot of foreign policy news in four years
In 2020, it’s easy to forget just how much of Trump’s presidency has been marked by foreign policy events, most of his own making.
A partial list of foreign policy under the Trump administration would include the withdrawals from the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal; a trade war with China; the NAFTA-replacing USMCA trade agreement; several acrimonious NATO and Group of Seven summits; the Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin (with no note-taker); the travel ban and the multiple crises on the U.S.-Mexico border; the (originally tweet-issued) transgender military ban; the 2017 summer of “fire and fury,” followed by two summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un; two rounds of airstrikes against Syria; Congress’s rebuke of Trump’s handling of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia, and the war in Yemen; controversy over the president’s desire to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan, sometimes communicated by tweet; the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis; the establishment of the Space Force; the January 2020 crisis with Iran after the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani; the Abraham Accords between the United Arab Emirates and Israel; many episodes that strained civilian-military relations, most notably during protests last summer after the death of George Floyd; and, of course, Trump’s impeachment over his request that Ukraine’s president investigate Democratic challenger Joe Biden and his son.
Other actions generated fewer headlines but were no less important: the lack of State Department appointments; the politicizing of U.S. intelligence activities; and the growth of the defense budget and associated weapons development.
And these are from the pool of things we know about.
There’s plenty of contrast between Trump and Biden on foreign policy
If there’s any common theme to Trump’s actions, it’s Wright’s list: Trump has taken aim at multilateral trade deals, undermined alliances and embraced authoritarian leaders — while also undoing Obama’s foreign policy moves. He hasn’t suggested a change of course for a second term. Indeed, there are rumors he might try to withdraw from NATO.
Although Biden has foreign policy differences with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and has controversy in his foreign policy past — including his vote for the Iraq War — in the big picture, his foreign policy contrast with Trump is clear: He would try to rebuild alliances, he favors trade regimes, and he would treat adversaries as such. There are many questions about how much a President Biden could accomplish — even allies who welcome his election may be wary of U.S. commitments because of partisan polarization.
But a Biden presidency would surely look different from Trump’s, starting with appointments and the kind of “eat-your-spinach,” often-invisible foreign policy that Trump has disdained.
Domestic and foreign policy issues are even more blurry in 2020
Thursday’s debate is likely to be dominated by the two issues that have swamped most others in 2020: the coronavirus crisis and race.
But foreign policy is on the ballot. Presidents hold great power in foreign affairs, from the use of force to trade to diplomatic appointments — not to mention sole authority to launch nuclear weapons.
And 2020’s dominant issues are also foreign policy issues. We know that race matters in international relations. As Alexandra Guisinger wrote at TMC, Americans’ views of trade depend partly on race. And as Jason Lyall explains, diversity in the military is crucial to its performance.
And though we don’t yet know what effect, if any, coronavirus will have on international relations, the crisis may affect the economic underpinnings of U.S. power (while China’s economy is rebounding). The coronavirus pandemic is a stark reminder that no country can completely isolate from threats and events happening around the world — and that solutions are likely to require global cooperation.
As I concluded in 2016, “The election will matter for foreign policy long after the voting ends.”
