Foreign policy is not usually the priority for American voters on Election Day. But as the situation darkens from Topeka to Tel Aviv, Americans and their overseas friends are looking to Washington for reassurance. Both major candidates present themselves as a source of certainty, but they are asking the American people to take enormous gambles. And the stakes are growing higher every day.
Kamala Harris portrays herself as a steady hand at the wheel. In her first major address as a candidate, at the Democratic convention, she claimed, "after decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security." From her perch in the Naval Observatory, she had "confronted threats to our security, negotiated with foreign leaders, strengthened our alliances, and engaged with our brave troops overseas." She promised to "be steadfast in advancing our security and values abroad" and to "ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world."
Her record inspires less confidence. She was the "last person in the room" when Joe Biden initiated the Afghanistan debacle. And as China’s military gained strength and Russian troops prowled menacingly around Ukraine, she sprang into action, directing the intelligence community to … root out gender-biased language from their reports and give analysts remedial sensitivity training. Somehow, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin recovered from this audacious maneuver.
Like most of the coastal elites, she has not developed a new seriousness of purpose despite the major wars in Europe and the Middle East. She reportedly shares Biden’s hesitancy about helping Ukraine win and was one of the first senior Democrats to criticize Israel’s counteroffensive against Hamas. When a heckler recently accused Israel of committing genocide, she replied, "What he’s talking about, it’s real." It is not.
After running as the ultimate disruptor in 2016, Donald Trump is campaigning this time as the peace candidate. He frequently boasts at his rallies about the lack of major wars during his time in office and claims that his dealmaking prowess will restore international calm. He promised to stop the Ukraine war "in 24 hours" and told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to finish off the war in Gaza before Inauguration Day.
Trump has made a career from pulling rabbits out of hats, and he may yet keep his streak alive. His reputation for unpredictability seemed to make his adversaries more cautious throughout his time in office since they could not be sure about how he would react to their forays. Richard Nixon used a similar "madman" strategy, and he ran in 1968 on a "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. But wars are often harder to stop than to prevent, and Vietnam bogged Nixon down into his second term.
Some of Trump’s instincts could also increase the chance of war. His unwillingness to punish Iran for attacking major Saudi oil installations alarmed allies across the Middle East. He ultimately had to drone Qassem Soleimani to deter Iran from attacking American troops. Trump’s unpredictability has so far prodded American allies to increase defense spending, but if they think the United States is abandoning them, their backup plans could upset the balance of power with dangerous consequences. And if Trump yanks American forces from South Korea, which four years ago was a second-term goal, he could set off precisely the kind of conflagration in Asia he seeks to avoid.
Both candidates ask the electorate to take big leaps of faith. Harris argues that America will catch some breaks if it just stays the course. In this view, an administration that can manage the Beltway process and tame trigger-happy allies like Israel will muddle through just fine.
Trump’s pitch is that this is nonsense. The United States is in trouble precisely because the Washington blob is out of touch with reality. The only way to break a losing streak is to shake things up, and if that means horrifying some eggheads, so be it.
Neither one has fully convinced the country. Swing-state voters trust Trump’s instincts on Ukraine and Israel more than Harris’s by double-digit margins, but he does not have a majority on either issue. Xi’s 2027 deadline for the Chinese military to be ready to conquer Taiwan falls next presidential term, so the danger is growing.
America is rolling the dice in three days. Do you feel lucky?