Approaching the consequential elections of 2024, the United States faces a stark debate over the role of the country in international affairs. The media has generally presented the two positions as the internationalism of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris versus the isolationism of Donald Trump. The current team in the White House touts the importance of international treaties like the Paris agreement on climate change while the former president spent much of his term in office trying to build a wall—and even a moat—along the southern border with Mexico to keep out undocumented immigrants. Both Biden and likely Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris have stressed that America “is back” in the international community. Trump has insisted instead that he will make America “great again,” regardless of what other countries might think or do.
But the two main candidates in the presidential election do not, in fact, have quite such clear-cut positions. Biden and Harris have assumed many of the so-called isolationist positions of Trump—higher tariffs, more hawkish border policies—and the Republican has staked out his own version of internationalism, though of an illiberal variety. Meanwhile, the candidates of both major parties are responding to a common anxiety that is …read more
Source:: Institute for Policy Studies
