‘Al Jazeera’: Can foreign policy tip the US presidential election?

11:52 29.10.2024 •

Historically, domestic issues have played a greater role in US elections. But this year, foreign policy might be key, notes ‘Al Jazeera’.

Further-from-home issues like foreign policy, the wisdom goes, do not decide elections. As one adviser put it in the lead-up to Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid”. At the time, then-President George HW Bush had just ousted Iraqi forces from Kuwait, a foreign policy “win” that did not secure Bush victory at the polls. The notion has since become a staple of election cycles — but historians and analysts warn it is only partially true.

Foreign policy does matter in US presidential elections, they warn, especially those tight enough to be decided by extremely narrow margins, as the current one promises to do.

With a protracted war in Ukraine and a widening one in the Middle East, both of which the US has spent heavily on and is growing more embroiled in, as well as foreign policy-related concerns like immigration and climate change that are at the top of many voters’ priorities, it’s clear that the economy won’t be the lone factor determining how Americans vote next month.

While the economy still tops the list, a September poll of voters by the Pew Research Center found that 62 percent of voters listed foreign policy as an issue that’s very important to them. Foreign policy concerns were key for Trump voters in particular — 70 percent of them — but 54 percent of Harris voters also listed foreign policy as a key priority for them, just as many as those who listed Supreme Court appointments as one.

The notion that foreign policy matters little in US presidential elections has only gained ground over the last three decades. Until then, surveys polling Americans before elections found 30 to 60 percent of them listing a foreign policy issue as the most important one facing the country. As the Cold War ended, that number dropped to five percent.

“This is largely a post-Cold War idea”, Jeffrey A Friedman, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College focused on the politics of foreign policy decision-making, told Al Jazeera.

Even as post-9/11 the US launched years-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which cost Americans some $8 trillion, in addition to thousands of lives, foreign policy played a secondary role in elections, though it did help former President George W Bush win re-election in 2004. While the 2003 invasion of Iraq made him widely unpopular later, at the time Bush won in part because he was able to capitalise on his role as the leader in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

A candidate’s ability to portray themselves as strong and decisive before the rest of the world, more than any specifics about the foreign policy decisions they would make, has mattered in the past, Friedman noted.

“Voters are always sceptical of the use of force abroad, but they are also sceptical of leaders who appear as though they will back down in the face of foreign aggression,” he added. “Presidential candidates are trying to convince voters that they’re tough enough to be commander-in-chief. They don’t want to promise that they’ll involve the United States in armed conflicts, but they also need to avoid the perception that they will back down when challenged.”

That’s precisely what both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are trying to do as Israel has expanded its year-long war in Gaza to Lebanon, and as it promises to drive the whole region, and possibly the US, into further conflict.

“Harris and Trump are in a very common bind with that,” Friedman added. “And so what they attempt to do is project a vague sense that they will competently handle the conflict without making any promises that would be divisive.”

With polls an imprecise science, and razor-thin margins in many of the surveys, it’s difficult to predict how much some Americans’ dismay with US support for Israel may impact the vote, and whether pro-Palestine voters will turn to Trump, vote for third parties, stay home, or reluctantly vote for the continuation of President Joe Biden’s policies that Harris has promised.

But the possibility that a protest vote over Gaza might tip the election is not so implausible, some polls suggest.

“If Harris loses and she loses because Muslims didn’t vote for her in swing states, it will be directly because of Gaza,” Dalia Mogahed, a scholar at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), told Al Jazeera. “The most important issue that Muslims cite for how they will judge a candidate is their handling of the war on Gaza.”

While the ISPU study focused on Muslim American voters, polls of Arab American voters yield similar results, and again see a foreign policy issue — the war in Gaza — as a key factor in the election.

“The notion that certain demographic groups have strongly held foreign policy preferences is not particularly new,” Friedman said. “What I’m not sure we’ve seen before is a fairly explicit threat by a community to withhold votes for a candidate whom you’d ordinarily expect them to support.”

Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets local leaders of the Muslim community who endorsed him onstage during a campaign rally in Novi, Michigan, on October 26, 2024.
Photo: AFP

During Trump’s Saturday rally in Novi, Michigan, several Muslim leaders, including Imam Belal Alzuhairi, declared that they support Trump because they believe Trump is the man who can end the wars and bring peace to the Middle East and Ukraine.

Alzuhairi added that they were also supporting Trump because of his “commitment to promoting family values,” adding that they “agree” with Trump about having a strong border.

“We as Muslims stand with President Trump because he promises peace,” Alzuhairi told the rally crowd. “He promises peace, not war. We are supporting Donald Trump because he promised to end war in the Middle East and Ukraine. The bloodshed has to stop all over the world, and I think this man can make that happen.”

“I personally believe that God has saved his life twice for a reason,” Alzuhairi added.”I believe personally that God has saved his life for a reason, which is to save the lives of others. We support Donald J. Trump for his commitment to promoting family values and protected our children wellbeing, especially when it comes to curriculums and schools. We as Muslims support this man because we believe that he will be a president for all Americans, embracing every race, color, and religion. We are with President Trump because we want a strong border, and we agree with President Trump that anyone who wants to come to this country is welcome, but he has to do that through legal pathway.”

The Michigan Muslim leaders’ endorsement of Trump comes as the former president has increased his support among the Arab American and Muslim American communities, amid growing unhappiness with the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and the expanding war in Lebanon.

Trump has previously been endorsed by Hamtramck Mayor Ameer Ghalib, and he appeared at a press conference with him on October 18.

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, the city’s first Muslim and Arab American mayor, revealed in a recent interview that he would not be “endorsing any single candidate” in the presidential election, and encouraged people to vote their “moral conscience.”

A poll by the Arab American Institute found that among likely voters, Trump received 46 percent of support, while Vice President Kamala Harris received 42 percent.

 

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