Whoever wins, their international inbox will be full

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Unlike 1968, Democrats gathering in Chicago this week will be remembered for choreography, not chaos, as Kamala Harris capped a cathartic convention that left delegates electrified.

The electorate will get its say on Nov. 5, in a race that started as a marathon but has become a sprint. Several seminal campaign moments await — most notably the Sept. 10 debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump, which along with an “October surprise” (or September or November one) could further turn an already turbulent campaign.

But soon after Election Day will come Inauguration Day, and whether it’s Madame or Mr. President on Jan. 20, 2025, they’ll have to immediately move from campaigning to governing. And despite the race mostly focused on domestic issues, a full international inbox awaits.

Including “known knowns,” said Clayton Allen, channeling a famous phrase from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Allen, who covers politics and policy in Washington for the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, said that there’s “the war in Ukraine, the ongoing crisis in Gaza, and the humanitarian response to both. There’s also a question of how the U.S. positions itself relative to China as an adversary, competitor, or something between the two.”

Additionally, said Allen, there’s “the question of how the U.S. positions itself globally. Does the U.S. continue to drive forward in some sort of global policing role? Does the U.S. put forward an interventionist foreign policy? Or does it shift to something that’s more inward focused, something a little bit more introspective or more domestically driven?”

Globally, “there are a lot of lit fuses out there,” said Thomas Hanson, diplomat-in-residence at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Hanson, a former Foreign Service officer deployed to multiple posts during his diplomatic career, said that there are “so many latent problems that have become manifest, kind of all at the same time.”

Like Allen, Hanson mentioned Eastern Europe first and foremost, saying that “how we go forward in Ukraine will be immediate; the balance between seeking peace but also defending Ukraine and trying to make sure that no nuclear dimension enters in.”

Proliferation problems beyond Kremlin threats will be prominent, both experts said. And they might not wait for January’s new (or renewed) residents of the White House, as evidenced by revelations reported in the New York Times this week that in March President Joe Biden revised the country’s Nuclear Employment Guidance that “for the first time, reorients America’s deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion of its nuclear arsenal” and “seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea.”

Include Iran into the authoritarian threat too, said Allen, adding that for the next president “the thing that’s maybe underappreciated in the U.S. is a lack of a clear path forward on containing Iran’s nuclear ambition. There’s no political willpower or space to negotiate a follow-on to the JCPOA [Iran nuclear deal]. U.S. policy writ large — specifically our increasing, deeper alliances with other Gulf partners and the need to respond to the Gaza crisis proactively — limits the U.S.’s ability to materially threaten military action to curtail Iran’s nuclear program. Without those two options, I really struggle to think about how the next administration will effectively contain or constrain” Iran’s potential proliferation.

And it’s not just adversaries, but allies tempted to proliferate, added Hanson, pointing to a growing debate in Seoul over whether South Korea should develop its own arsenal in response to Pyongyang’s seemingly permanent provocation.

“If you add it all up, it really is a lot of activity, of uncertainties and security dilemmas,” Hanson said. “So the question is: Should we be getting back to some kind of very focused arms control? And is that possible?” That’s a prospect made much harder, Hanson added, because the Cold War-era bilateral negotiations between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. now is multilateral, especially with Beijing beginning its program to close the gap. “This whole panoply of nuclear issues is something that may have a higher profile.”

International issues with a lower profile but a high propensity if not probability to spiral into crisis concern Allen and Hanson too. Conflicts within and between countries can be “unknown unknowns,” said Allen. Particularly in Africa, where “food inflation and resource competition are increasingly powerful forces. Combine that with significant movements of migrant populations, whether dictated by economic forces or external conflicts, I think you create a situation where there’s a risk of both a humanitarian crisis that could pose challenges for U.S. policymakers. And that’s been an area where the U.S. has focused less attention than I think it should have, and as a consequence has fewer options to respond.”

Beyond these geopolitical challenges come transnational ones. Among many mentioned by Allen are political destabilization from the global migration crisis and borderless, but certainly not harmless, crime, including the global trafficking of fentanyl, which may not only impact U.S.-China relations but the generally tight ties between America and Mexico, too. And Hanson warns that fiscal issues loom, like America’s unsustainable debt and adversaries’ initiatives to challenge “the rule of the dollar” as the world’s key currency.

Few specifics were offered about any of these consequential concerns at either convention. Or likely in the remaining days of the campaign, either. But just because candidates are domestically driven it doesn’t mean their eras will be.

“The simple fact is it’s domestic policies that win elections,” said Allen. “Voters, outside of extraordinary crises, are more influenced by the daily cost of living and by their own perceptions of their economic futures than they are by concerns for conflicts, crises and other happenings around the world.”

But these other happenings often happen to challenge and change an administration’s objectives — sometimes dramatically.

“Campaigns are in some ways a poor reflection or poor prediction of candidates’ abilities to respond to global crises,” said Allen, recalling, among other examples, that former President George W. Bush ran on domestic issues but post-9/11 “governed almost exclusively on foreign-policy issues and the growth of transnational terrorism. You can debate the effectiveness of his policies, but the fact of the matter is that he was defined by an issue that he campaigned on almost not at all. So I think that campaigns today offer a poor prediction of how either candidate might respond to some of the crises they will face.”

Indeed, international events may intervene and transcend the themes expressed at each convention, as malevolent state and nonstate actors alike try to derail Republicans’ quest to Make America Great Again or attempt to turn the Democrats’ “joy” into a jolt.