Foreign policy makes 2024 US race different from 1968

The Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week drew sweeping comparisons, ahead of time, with the party’s gathering in 1968, which was held in the same city during the Vietnam conflict. While there are some similarities, the foreign policy context was significantly different, however.
The 1968 election, which pitted Republican Richard Nixon against Democrat Hubert Humphrey, took place toward the end of a distinctive political period during the early Cold War era running from 1948 to 1972. During this time, foreign policy was usually the single most salient issue in US elections, and this was certainly the case in 1968 against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.
The election that year came at an unusually turbulent time, framed not only by the conflict in Vietnam but by President Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to run for reelection (paralleled this year by President Joe Biden’s decision not to seek a second term); the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4; and the killing of Robert Kennedy on June 5.
The turmoil was capped by riots at the Democratic Party’s convention in Chicago in August, and there was an important echo of this in recent days in the form of the high-profile, pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Since the 1970s, however, economic issues have tended to be the highest priority for the US electorate. Most recently, in the 2020 presidential race, during the first year of the pandemic, the American economy had spun into recession after more than a decade of growth, one of the longest periods of economic expansion in US history.
This is not to dismiss the importance of foreign policy to the 2024 presidential election campaign even though, unlike the situation in 1968, the US is not formally engaged in any wars.
Take for example an Associated Press-University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center survey this year in which 40 percent of voters cited foreign policy as a key issue. That is about double the proportion who highlighted international issues as a main concern in a similar AP-NORC poll in 2023.
The developments in the Middle East since the attacks on Israel by Hamas in October last year, and the subsequent Israeli military offensive in Gaza, have increased concerns among US voters about geopolitics. This is in addition to worries about the war in Ukraine and the possibility of wider challenges, including China’s posture on Taiwan.
While foreign policy is still not as important an issue to American voters in 2024 as it generally was during the early years of the Cold War, there are significant reasons why international affairs will play a prominent role over the coming months in the run-up to election day.
For one thing, there remains a very high risk of an escalation of violence in the Middle East, given the region is the most volatile it has been in years. The impact this is having internationally is not only geopolitical but also economic, with the possibility of an oil “shock” comparable to that experienced in the mid-1970s, when the price of oil quadrupled in less than a year. 

No clear consensus between the parties in the US on foreign policy has emerged in recent years.

Andrew Hammond

Turning to Ukraine, Kyiv this month launched a spectacular new offensive inside Russia, which at the time of writing has gained more than 1,000 sq. km of territory, estimates suggest. After months of Moscow making gains in Ukraine this has, at least temporarily, changed the narrative of the war.
In the Asia-Pacific, meanwhile, significant numbers of American voters are concerned about the potential for a crisis there, too, possibly over Taiwan. This could create a third major source of international conflict for the US and its Western allies, with their resources increasingly stretched.
Yet, even if foreign policy issues were to grow significantly during the remainder of this year, possibly as a result of heightened tensions in the Asia-Pacific, there is still one key difference between the situations now and during the first quarter-century of the Cold War: The earlier period was characterized by a relative consensus between Republicans and Democrats on policy, and widespread bipartisan cooperation, on foreign affairs.
Now, however, this policy domain is significantly more divisive. Certainly, the early Cold War consensus can be overstated. Nonetheless a significant degree of bipartisan agreement on foreign affairs, and wider political decorum, did exist at the time, at least until it fell apart in the late 1960s under the strain of the Vietnam debacle and the demise of the notion of monolithic Communism in light of the Sino-Soviet split.
No clear consensus between the parties in the US on foreign policy has emerged in recent years; if anything the gaps are widening. Even before Trump took office as president in 2017, many Republicans and Democrats differed significantly in their views on the power and standing of the US internationally; on the degree to which the country should be unilateralist in its approach; in their attitudes toward the fight against terrorism and the methods through which it was being fought; and on what the priorities of American foreign policy should be.
The divisions have only grown since Trump’s presidency, with significantly divergent US grand strategies evident this year: Trump’s “America First” agenda versus the more internationalist vision of the Biden-Harris administration, which is much more reminiscent of the foreign policy approach of Republican and Democratic predecessors in the early post-war era.
The increasing polarization of foreign policy reduces the scope for the longstanding tradition of Americans “rallying around the flag” in times of geopolitical tensions. This is illustrated by the attempt by some Republicans to blame the actions of the Biden-Harris administration for current geopolitical tensions.
It is, therefore, increasingly plausible, especially if the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine continue for the rest of the year, that the salience of international issues could remain high on election day.
Moreover, the partisan opinion splits on foreign policy will only reinforce the high degree of political polarization in the US, potentially increasing, even further, the global interest in the race for the White House.

• Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.