US Elections 2024: Will Foreign Conflicts Define America's Future?

Outside, Israel is pounding Iran with bombs. Iran is sending back showers of missiles. Palestinians are living a hellish nightmare. Lebanon and Syria are wounded; they are hurting to get back at Israel. Russia has been bombarding Ukraine for over two years now. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries are in a quandary about how much to arm Ukraine before the war goes out of hand.

Inside, students and youngsters are disillusioned with capitalism. Two-thirds of those under 30 think socialism is a better option. Owning a house is an option for very few Americans. Homelessness is on the rise. Immigrants are feeling unsafe. Minorities are fearing a backlash. Women’s rights are regressing with laws on issues like abortion and a woman’s right over her body being reversed.

This is the United States Donald John Trump and Kamala Devi Harris are fiercely fighting to administer for the next four years.

Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon has opened fissures in the American society and questions its claims of being a force of good in the world. Young Americans are raising moral questions over President Joe Biden’s administration’s unquestioned support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct, and have called on the White House to stop providing lethal arms to Israel, used in what the Criminal Court of Justice and pro-Palestine supporters see as “genocide” in Gaza. The apathy of political leaders across the world has also shocked the youth in the US.

Soon after the Hamas attack on Israel last October, which killed 1,139 people, there was overwhelming support and sympathy for Israel. Biden and America stood like a rock behind Israel. Washington has provided $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel since the attack. It has also sent warships and military aircraft to the Eastern Mediterranean to bolster Israel’s defence and provided intelligence inputs and satellite pictures. More importantly, Washington provided Israel with political and diplomatic cover, even as it broke all rules of war enshrined in the Geneva Convention.

Israel’s overwhelming use of force has decapitated both the Hamas and the Hezbollah leadership. Yet, Netanyahu is in no mood to stop the onslaught. His ultra-orthodox supporters are dreaming of a Greater Israel, by incorporating Palestinian land in Gaza, the West Bank as well as the Golan heights.

Gaza has been bombed out of recognition. About 42,847 people have been killed, most of them women and children. Hospitals, schools and refugee camps, all have been attacked. Doctors, journalists and aid workers too have not been spared. In Lebanon, the death toll so far is 2,634. The figures keep rising by the day.

The plight of the civilians in Gaza has evoked angry reactions across the world. Student protests have rocked America’s Ivy League campuses and evoked memories of the anti-Vietnam era. Pro-Palestine marches across US cities gathered momentum last summer. But authorities cracked down heavily on the protestors. The powerful Israeli lobby in the US ensured that heads rolled. Presidents of universities such as Columbia’s Minouche Shafik, Harvard’s Claudine Gay, Cornell’s Martha Pollack, as well as Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania were forced to resign. In the US, any criticism of Netanyahu or the state of Israel was dubbed as anti-Semitic. Besides the presidents of institutions, several faculty members were also forced out of their jobs for daring to side with the student protestors. “Who would have thought the US government would, in the service of the Israeli State, undermine its cardinal principle of free speech by banning pro-Palestine slogans? The so-called moral architecture of Western democracies—with a few honourable exceptions—has become a grim laughing stock in the rest of the world,” said writer Arundhati Roy.

Neither Trump nor Harris brought up the issue of the pro-Palestine protests in the election campaign as both are wooing young voters. Trump is a friend and staunch supporter of Netanyahu. The Abraham Accords, by which the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco normalised ties with Israel, was signed and sealed during Trump’s presidency. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in law and a practicing Jew, did the heavy lifting to finalise the accords. Trump was also responsible for shifting the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to back Netanyahu’s claim to the divided city.

After the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Trump said that it would now be “easier” for peace to return to Gaza. “You have to finish it up and do it quickly,” he advised Netanyahu. “I think this election is going to make a big difference. I was respected over there, and [had] a great relationship with so many.” Trump also styled himself as the protector of Israel and believes a total victory for Israel is the key to peace.

Harris too has called for an end to the bloodletting, but her position is more nuanced. “I am working to ensure it ends, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realise their right to dignity, freedom and self-determination,” she said. Her husband is a Jew.

The political establishment, both the Republicans and the Democrats, backs Netanyahu’s war. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel lobby, spends billions of dollars to fund lawmakers to ensure that the Congress looks after Israel’s interest. Yet, this is not the complete picture.

“There is a significant body of opinion in the Democratic Party, and not only on the left of the party, as well as in government institutions such as the State Department or the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), that is dismayed by Biden’s policies on Israel-Palestine, the destruction of Gaza and the grave violations of international humanitarian law,” says Philip Golub, an academic and professor at the American University of Paris. “But it’s the president who decides and these critical voices have not allowed for a shift in policy. In the Democratic Party, the critics are part of or reflect a politically conscious younger generation which cannot be ignored going forward,” he adds.

Trump’s stand on the Ukraine war is very different from that of Harris. Trump has said more than once that he would end the war immediately. He is known to be an admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin. There is a fear in the US establishment and across Europe that Trump will quickly bring an end to the war in Ukraine and give Russia the upper hand. Biden is a Cold War warrior and sees Putin as evil, ready to pounce on poor European countries and expand the frontiers of Russia. In short, a modern-day Czar. Biden has prevailed on NATO to back Ukraine, and the Western alliance has provided both modern equipment and funds to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to fend off Russian aggression. Harris as president is likely to follow the same strategy. “We would likely see continuity with Biden’s foreign policy approach, with an emp­hasis on maintaining alliances and ensuring cohesion among US partners,’’ says Ali Mammadov, analyst and researcher in political science at the George Mason University in the US.

Trump’s approach will be diametrically opposite.

“Trump has talked of stopping military aid to Ukraine and ending the conflict ‘on day one’. This approach appeals to those who do not see the geostrategic significance in stopping Russia to advance its interests by invasion. Many in the foreign policy establishment (Republicans and Democrats) are very worried about this type of thinking, particularly as they worry that abandoning Ukraine would embolden China to take Taiwan by force in the expectation that the US would not react. The Trump argument does reflect a broader societal ‘fatigue’ about Ukraine and other conflicts,” says Joanna Spear, research professor at the George Washington University.

A growing number of Americans, including those who support Trump, are tired of war. They do not want taxpayers’ money to be wasted on funding foreign wars, dollars that could be better spent at home. Yet, only a small percentage of the overall aid package takes the form of cash transfers to Kyiv; the vast majority goes right back into the US economy. Most Ukraine aid bills fund America’s local industries. “The vast majority of US-Ukraine-related funding does not go directly to Ukraine; it stays in the US economy, subsidising the production of weapons in at least 31 states and 71 cities,” says a report by the Lawfare Institute in cooperation with Brookings Institute.

Now as China, and not Russia, is being seen as the main challenger to US power in the future, both Trump and Harris are expected to continue viewing the relationship through the lens of strategic competition. It was Trump who first called out China and slapped several rounds of tariffs on Chinese goods. Biden has continued with Trump’s trade policies. While there may be some attempts to cooperate, the rivalry will persist.

The US and its Western allies believe that America is the upholder of democracy, freedom, human rights and the value system of Western civilisation. Many in the Global South have quite the contrary view. Ask the Afghans who sided with the US and were left at the mercy of the Taliban; ask the Iraqis as to what happened after US President George Bush decided that regime change was necessary to stop the mythical weapons of mass destruction. The civil war that followed Saddam Hussein’s ouster led to the death of 1,120,000 people. They point to the US double standards and selective highlighting of human rights. Israel’s war in Gaza/Lebanon is again raising questions of America’s credibility around the world. “The genocide must end, but the US has abdicated its leadership here. The country is undermining itself as well as the very liberal order it claims to stand for”, says Manu Bhagavan, a professor at the City University of New York and a Harris supporter.

“The US presidential election will play a crucial role in shaping America’s engagement with the world at a time when global stability is being tested. With ongoing wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, the next administration’s policies will influence not only US foreign relations, but also the broader international landscape,’’ says Mammadov.

Trump is conjuring up fears of the “enemy within”—about people he assumes have wronged and betrayed him. He has threatened to use the powers of the federal government, including the military, to go after them.

“The crazy lunatics that we have—the fascists, the Marxists and the Communists—are actually running the country,” Trump said this month at a rally in Wisconsin. “Those people are more dangerous—the enemy from within—than Russia and China and other people.” Whether he is serious or this is just bluster is not known, but it certainly frightens the Democrats and makes it a good talking point at rallies.

Trump supporters tend to believe that Blacks have an unfair advantage over them. Many of the disgruntled Whites are victims of the crisis of capitalism that made the world a global village and shifted jobs to China and other places. These White folks from America’s rural heartland are looking to Trump to bring back production to the US. African Americans are joining the Trump bandwagon thanks to the economic woes. People believe the economy did better under Trump.

However, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the US is the only G-20 economy whose GDP level now exceeds the pre-Pandemic level, but price rise is hurting ordinary Americans and the Trump campaign is using it effectively against Harris. The average price of gas during Trump’s term was around $2.57 per gallon. This month, it was around $3.19. A dozen eggs cost between $1.40 and $1.74. Now, the average price is $2.50. A gallon of milk was between $2.90 and $3.55 during Trump’s tenure. Now it is $3.80. This is hurting the pockets of the poor and getting the less educated sections to support Trump.

Harris and the Democrats warn voters of what a second Trump presidency would mean.

Both Trump and Harris are facing tough elections—having to deal with problems of wars abroad and problems at home. The US, despite being the richest economy in the world, is battling race relations daily (remember Black Lives Matter, triggered by the murder of George Floyd in 2020) and gun violence—this year alone, 11,600 people have died of gun violence. Yet the gun lobby in America, represented by the National Rifle Association, has enormous political clout and has ensured that gun manufacturers continue to flourish. The Second Amendment of the US Constitution allows people to carry arms.

Despite all the problems in the US, immigrants from across the world are still looking at America as the land of milk and honey and take enormous risks to get there. Illegal immigration is a hot-button issue in these elections. Harris, as the sitting VP and one in-charge of border crossings, is facing flak for her failure to stem immigration.

“At the end of the day, the US remains indispensable to the world, economically of course, but also in terms of the ideals for which it stands,” says Bhagavan. This is a view shared by US allies, but questioned by many in the Global South. The people of Gaza or Lebanon would have a very different idea of American power.

This story was published as part of Outlook's 11 November, 2024 magazine issue with the title 'War Within and Without'. To read more stories from the issue, click here