How Is Foreign Policy Driving the U.S. Vote?

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep.

Robbie here, starting with some bittersweet news: After nearly eight years, I am leaving Foreign Policy at the end of the month to take on a new challenge with a new job. Thank you to all the loyal readers and natsec nerds who have helped make this job so incredibly rewarding and fulfilling. Foreign Policy and SitRep will always have a special place in my heart. (I don’t care how hokey that sounds—it’s true.)

Rest assured, SitRep will be in good hands. Going forward, Jack will be joined every week by our colleague Amy Mackinnon, who has guest-starred frequently in SitRep with her ace reporting and analysis. Stay tuned for a fuller introduction to Amy next week.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: How foreign policy is influencing the U.S. presidential race, an absent Biden Ukraine strategy rattles Capitol Hill, and the U.S. revamps its secret nuclear doctrine to deal with China.

Does Foreign Policy Matter at the Polls?

There are a few truisms about American voters.

First, the top issue they care about is almost always the economy, stupid—or immigration. Second, they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. And third, foreign policy doesn’t typically rank among their top concerns, but when it does, it’s often related to unease about the United States’ role on the international stage and interventions abroad.

Just a third of Americans are happy with the country’s position in the world, according to a Gallup poll published in March, while nearly two-thirds are unhappy with the United States’ global position.

Americans cite China as the nation’s top enemy over all other countries, likely driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and a concerted campaign on both sides of the aisle to elevate the threat from Beijing in the public imagination. (Russia comes in at a distant second, with Iran in third.)

The issues. When it comes to ranking perceived threats to U.S. national security, American voters appear to be less worried about a state-on-state war with China or Russia—the focal points of the last two U.S. national security strategies—and more concerned about rogue states, nuclear weapons, and computer hacking.

In fact, China’s military growth only ranks fifth in a recent Gallup poll of Americans’ national security concerns, behind cyberterrorism, the threat of North Korean and potential Iranian nuclear weapons, and terrorism. Illegal immigration, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas war also make the list.

The Gaza factor. Perhaps the most visible impact of foreign policy on the campaign trail so far has been the lines of pro-Palestine protesters outside of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago demanding an end to U.S. support for Israel—who weren’t given a speaking slot inside the convention hall.

U.S. President Joe Biden has faced a surge of backlash from progressives, young voters, and Arab Americans over his support for Israel amid the massive humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Gaza, and it appears that the anger hasn’t completely died down with a change at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket. The highest population of Arab Americans in any U.S. state also just so happens to live in Michigan, a key swing state in the tight race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

And so far—just 75 days from Election Day in November—Harris has offered little, if any, public comment on her foreign-policy positions. She has not granted a full-length interview to a major U.S. media outlet since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Uncommitted. In the Michigan Democratic primary (held before Biden bowed out), over 100,000 voters cast ballots for “uncommitted” as part of a grassroots-organized protest against Biden’s Israel policy and a warning to the Democrats ahead of the general election. Some Democratic voters in the state recently told Foreign Policy that they may vote uncommitted again or abstain from voting altogether in the general election, in a sign of the continued disaffection even with Harris now at the top of the ticket.

“[N]ationally, the candidates’ stances on foreign policy may matter in indirect but significant ways,” Ronald Linden, a scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote in an op-ed this week for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (Pennsylvania is another key swing state that Trump and Harris are competing over to clinch the election.) “Their stance on Gaza and Israel in particular will be seen as a measure of both character and competence by constituents who pay attention and turn out to vote.”

Let’s Get Personnel

Palantir Technologies announced that it has hired former Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin who ran the House Select Committee on Competition with the Chinese Communist Party, to run its defense business.

Norway’s ambassador to the United States, Anniken Krutnes, is set to leave the role soon, she announced in a LinkedIn post.

Richard Nephew, Biden’s former coordinator on global anti-corruption, is joining the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as an adjunct fellow.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey has died at 87, his family announced earlier this week. He was a member of the House Baltic Caucus and the U.S.-Japan Caucus as well as a staunch supporter of Ukraine, even earning the ire of some conservative groups for wearing the war-torn country’s flag on the House floor.

On the Button

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Missed deadline. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are fuming as the Biden administration is more than two months late on providing a written U.S. strategy for Ukraine that Congress demanded as part of the passage of the $61 billion military aid supplemental back in April, Jack and Amy report.

“Time and time again, weapons viewed by the administration as too provocative were later provided,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said in a statement provided to Foreign Policy. “Without a clear strategy for victory in Ukraine, the administration is likely to continue down the same path, prolonging [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s war of aggression and signaling U.S. weakness to our other adversaries, including communist China.”

Doomsday plans. Biden approved new highly classified nuclear plans back in March that revise the Pentagon’s deterrence strategy to focus on China’s growing arsenal, the New York Times reports.

The revisions to the “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” which is updated every four years, were not made public, but top administration officials hinted at them in public remarks. Pranay Vaddi, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, said in June that the new strategy emphasizes the need to deter Russia, China, and North Korea simultaneously. That’s a departure from past strategies that have focused solely on Russia. The White House said the new strategy was not focused on one country.

A Kursk dispatch. Washington Post reporters got rare access to the Russian town of Sudzha, which Ukrainian forces seized earlier this month in their surprise offensive into the Kursk region. Accompanied by a Ukrainian military escort, the reporters spoke with Russian civilians, many of whom were older or disabled adults. “Although they did not claim to be mistreated by Ukrainian troops, Russian civilians have not been spared the indignities of war that many Ukrainians have experienced for years,” Siobhán O’Grady and Tetiana Burianova wrote.

Snapshot

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a video meeting on the situation in the country’s Belgorod, Kursk, and Bryansk regions following Ukraine’s incursion into Russia, at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow on Aug. 22. Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images

Put on Your Radar

Friday, Aug. 23: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit Ukraine, on the eve of the country’s independence day.

Monday, Aug. 26: Tonga hosts the four-day Pacific Islands Forum. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is expected to attend.

Wednesday, Aug. 28: The Summer Paralympic Games begin.

Quote of the Week

“You have any food here you really don’t like? We’ll take some and feed it to the journalists on the plane.”

—Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance during a visit to a deli in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

What We’re Reading

“Super interesting.” The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd profiled Alex Karp, the elusive and eccentric co-founder of Palantir Technologies, the data analytics behemoth that has become a major U.S. defense contractor. Earlier this year, the U.S. Defense Department awarded the company a $480 million contract for its Maven Smart System, which is part of Project Maven, the Pentagon’s controversial AI program for target detection. “Saving lives and on occasion taking lives is super interesting,” Karp, who has a doctorate in neoclassical social theory, told Dowd.

This Week’s Most Read

• The Dangerous Decline in Israeli Strategy by Stephen M. Walt
• The Geopolitical Opportunity of Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive by A. Wess Mitchell
• Preparing for a Less Arrogant America by Michael Hirsh

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Fireable offense. If you want to make it in Afghanistan’s Taliban-controlled government, you’d better have facial hair. The Taliban’s morality ministry announced that it has fired hundreds of men from the country’s security services for failing to grow a beard, as required by the group’s strict interpretation of Islamic law. That’s a contrast with large swaths of the U.S. military, where beards generally aren’t allowed.

Wrong terminal. D.C. people will understand: Who hasn’t been in the position of being at Dulles International Airport when you’re supposed to be at Reagan for your flight, or vice versa? “Nobody will remember your salary, how ‘busy’ you were, or how many hours you worked,” Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport’s official social media account on X joked this week. But everyone will remember “that time you went to the wrong airport because you didn’t double check in advance.”