Source: New York Review of Books
A paradox of American presidential elections—especially during the primaries—is that unless a war is looming or underway, voters pay little attention to the arena in which a president has the greatest power to affect their lives. On taxes, education, health care, and all the other domestic issues for which candidates put forward detailed plans, what a president wants will have to be exhaustively negotiated with Congress. On foreign policy, his or her freedom of action is vastly greater. Foreign policy, too, unlike domestic issues, frequently entails surprises—the collapse of the Soviet Union, say—that demand a swift response in unexpected conditions. In their own interest, then, voters ought to want to know what a candidate’s instincts about foreign policy are—what she or he makes of recent history, of global trends, of the threats the US faces, and of what its responsibilities in the world should be.
Candidates should care as well, since history suggests that foreign policy is likely to have a significant effect on their legacy if elected. Of Trump’s nine predecessors over the past half-century, the Vietnam War shaped the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. The Iran hostage crisis ended Jimmy Carter’s presidency after one term. The Iran-contra scandal dominated Ronald Reagan’s second term, eventually producing convictions of eleven administration officials. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, George W. Bush’s declaration of a “global war on terror,” the war in Afghanistan, and the tragically misconceived invasion of Iraq determined the course of Bush’s presidency and created many of the issues facing his successors.