PAROCHIAL POLITICS WILL DRIVE THE OUTCOMES in elections across the world this year—including in the United States.
Washington’s partners and allies are alarmed by the possibility that Donald Trump could return to the White House, and they are ill-prepared to confront the prospect of a world unmoored from U.S. power and leadership.
But if elections are driven primarily by problems at home, this raises the question of whether they really make a difference for foreign policy.
Some commentators argue that the choice between today’s leading candidates is insignificant when it comes to foreign policy. After all, so the argument goes, U.S. President Joe Biden has continued Trump’s policies of being tough on China, and his protectionist agenda has been described as an updated version of Trump’s “America First” worldview. According to this perspective, U.S. policy reflects a bipartisan consensus: that Washington needs to set clear priorities that reflect today’s geopolitical realities. There is also broad consensus on the need to adapt U.S. global economic engagement for a more competitive world and to accommodate those Americans who have been left behind. On these critical dimensions of U.S. policy, so the argument goes, Biden, Trump, or indeed any other candidate would do much of the same.
But there is reason to be wary of such claims. Those who claim that Biden’s policies toward China are simply a continuation of Trump’s are vastly oversimplifying. Trump’s style was and would continue to be bombastic, chaotic, and disruptive. Biden, by contrast, has pursued carefully choreographed and sequenced high-level diplomacy designed to manage tensions and prevent accidents or misunderstandings from inadvertently leading to conflict.
Trump’s strategy
