As WPR editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein predicted yesterday, last night’s U.S. presidential election debate between VP Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump included little discussion of U.S. foreign policy writ large, in terms of sounding out the candidates’ thinking on big-picture trends. That’s particularly unfortunate this year, because dramatic changes in global affairs over the past four years have made the question of America’s global role more relevant—and more contested—than ever.
Some specific but important issues were also given short shrift. Most notably, neither candidate was asked about U.S. strategic competition with China, despite the consensus in Washington, rightly or wrongly, that it is the country’s biggest foreign policy challenge. Instead, the only discussion of that competition by the candidates was around Trump’s proposal to implement substantial tariffs on trade with China. Climate change only came up once, and the conversation quickly pivoted to manufacturing. Both sequences underscored the degree to which U.S. foreign policy debates increasingly frame global challenges through a very narrow domestic lens.
Still, there was some discussion of the two major conflicts that the U.S. is most involved in: the Israel-Hamas war and the war in Ukraine. On the former, Harris took pains not to stray from the course she set with her speech at the Democratic National Convention, simultaneously pledging to maintain U.S. support for Israel and recognizing the humanitarian impact of Israel’s military operations on Palestinians in Gaza. Trump, meanwhile, said he would “get that settled and fast,” offering no details as to how.