The Next Republican Presidency—2

Why the 2024 election could present us with the starkest choice on foreign policy in over a century

Stock photo (Tetra Images/Getty Images)

This is the second in an occasional series of posts—the first appeared a week ago—about what the next Republican president may attempt to accomplish.

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In recent presidential election cycles, foreign policy has taken a far back seat to domestic (economic or culture-war) issues and themes. But that might not be the case in 2024—an election that may do more to determine America’s future stance toward the world than any in living memory.

That’s because the distance separating the Biden/Harris ticket and the Republican challenger is likely to be unusually vast.

The Backstory

Since the end of the 1990s—and in some ways going all the way back to the conclusion of World War II—foreign policy disagreements in the United States have usually been about how far and wide to project American power abroad within the framework of the international order the U.S. constructed after 1945. There were disagreements, sometimes significant ones, but they took place within broad parameters set by American hegemony across much of the globe.

George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 promising greater restraint and fewer efforts at nation-building than the Clinton administration undertook in its eight years in office. With 9/11, the Bush administration ditched restraint entirely and embraced an aggressive stance toward fighting Islamic terrorism around the world, leading John Kerry to run for president in 2004 as a critic of the Iraq War, despite having voted to authorize it (with caveats).

Barack Obama beat out Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries in part by positioning himself as an Iraq War opponent from the start, in contrast to Clinton’s consistent support for the invasion. Obama then beat John McCain, an inveterate Republican hawk, in the general election, and won re-election in 2012 against another Republican hawk (Mitt Romney), showing the electoral strength of the less aggressive position once again.

Yet the Obama administration ended up as a mixed bag. On the one hand, it actively pursued a nuclear deal with Iran and pulled American troops out of Iraq. On the other, the Afghanistan troop surge, Libyan intervention with European allies, return to Iraq to smash ISIS’s nascent caliphate, and heavy reliance on drone warfare to continue prosecuting the War on Terror demonstrated greater continuity with the policy and approach of the Bush administration than one might have expected.  

Donald Trump’s pronouncements on foreign affairs throughout the 2016 campaign against Clinton were all over the place, but his critical comments about the Iraq War, NATO, longstanding approaches toward China, the Iran nuclear deal, and other consensus positions affirmed by the foreign policy establishment in Washington signaled that voting for him would mark a significant break from business as usual.

In the end, the Trump administration’s foreign policy was all over the map: At first threatening nuclear war with North Korea and then exchanging love notes with Kim Jong-un; throwing elbows at NATO allies without making major shifts in policy toward Europe; expressing admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin while the administration imposed strong sanctions on Moscow; tough talk for China, but only on trade, followed by flattery for President Xi Jinping in pursuit of a deal; aggressive moves against Iran paired with encouraging greater ties between Israel and several Sunni-Arab states in the region; and attempting, but failing, to complete a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

In sum, there’s been a lot of volatility and variation in American foreign policy over the past 23 years. But that’s nothing compared with what may be coming. That’s because Republicans seem ready to rethink America’s most fundamental geopolitical assumptions, goals, and expectations more radically than anyone has in decades.

The Establishment Path: Biden

The Biden/Harris ticket will be running on broadly maintaining the status quo. The United States has committed to project its power into Europe through NATO and into East Asia via explicit or implicit commitments to numerous allies and partners in the region (including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan). With American troops (and military attention) out of Afghanistan, the Biden administration is focusing on these two core obligations: Keeping NATO safe and intact by forcing Russia to pay an extremely high price for its invasion of neighboring Ukraine; and protecting Taiwan against China’s military ambitions.

The assumption underlying these policies is that continuing to project American power into the two regions is both possible and desirable, even at the risk of war with Russia in Eastern Europe and/or with China in the Taiwan Straits.

If former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, or another Republican with strong ties to the pre-Trump GOP ended up as the nominee in 2024, the foreign policy debate would be broadly familiar, mainly focused on prudential considerations—that is, whether Biden and his team are making the right decisions and executing them wisely in pursuit of what would be very similar goals: the continuation of American hegemony in Europe and East Asia.

Yet neither Haley nor Pence (nor anyone like them) is likely to be the GOP nominee in 2024. Instead, the overwhelming favorites so far are former President Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—neither of whom appears to favor those goals.

Tradeoffs and Retrenchment: DeSantis

DeSantis has gotten a lot of grief for his halting and somewhat inconsistent comments about foreign policy. These remarks give the impression of someone trying to position himself both as a sweeping critic of the Biden administration’s policy in Ukraine and as a tough-minded hawkish realist. That has led some critics to mock the governor’s comments as incoherent and amateurish.

But DeSantis’ statements on foreign policy make considerable sense if we assume he is aligning himself with those on the right who advise backing away from our obligations to NATO and confrontational stance toward Russia in favor of aggressively confronting China over Taiwan and its other designs in the region. The underlying assumption of those who stake out this position is that the United States has neither the resources nor the will to defend interests in both regions at once. We therefore face a stark choice of defending Europe or our allies in East Asia, since we cannot do both, and (these analysts insist) we should prioritize China and Taiwan.

What this means is that a Biden-DeSantis general-election contest could well feature a debate over what could end up being a major shift in (and constriction of) American geopolitical priorities—perhaps the most dramatic one since 1945.

Withdrawal on Two Fronts at Once: Trump

But that’s nothing compared with what could follow a Trump victory in 2024.