American Voters Need to Care About Foreign Policy Again

At the start of 2024, in an AP-NORC poll, only 4 out of 10 Americans mentioned a foreign policy topic when asked to list five important issues facing Americans. This represented an increase from years past but is still bleak since it means 6 in 10 Americans do not view foreign policy as a top concern.

Yet, as I write this, the United States is involved in multiple violent conflicts, many of which have no real end in sight, along with foreign interventions that drastically affects other countries’ well-being. While Israel’s now multi-front war has broken through to an extent over the past two years, and time will tell if this cease-fire is real, many of the other conflicts and interventions linger in the background, if, indeed, they are mentioned at all in day-to-day political chatter.

For instance, the United States is normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia despite open questions on that government’s knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and its hold on the oil industry, not to mention MBS’ brutal killing of a Washington Post journalist. In addition, Saudi Arabia’s relentless assaults on Yemen, backed with U.S. arms, began in 2015. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has gone on for almost three years while the United States supplies humanitarian aid and arms to Ukraine. Crippling sanctions on Cuba have decimated the country’s economy and caused it to struggle mightily after recent hurricanes. And that’s not even to begin to list the various ways the United States has increased its involvement in Africa via AFRICOM, arming countries and training paramilitary groups.

For many Americans, with their own positions so precarious due to our capitalistic approach to society, worrying about how to improve relations with China and Cuba is simply not a priority.

These events, all of which involve or are directly caused by the United States, can and in most cases will result in history-changing phenomena for better or worse. This is not to say that all of these situations require a complete reversal—humanitarian aid to Ukraine is a worthy cause in my opinion—but the scale of these endeavors should not be absent from the political sphere. So, why don’t more voters care?

Consider: In the 2024 vice president debate, the opening question was about foreign policy, but pitched in the most juvenile fashion possible, circling around the candidates’ eagerness to bomb Iran. Not an intellectually serious question but rather a little blood sport for the masses to enjoy. It led to no real discussion on the United States’ overall approach to foreign policy nor to the possible aftereffects of the country’s decisions. No discussion of Ukraine and NATO, no discussion of Cuba or even Yemen.

To an extent, this is understandable. Based on polling in general and exit polls in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, the average American does not seem to vote based on Ukraine or Yemen or Gaza (although recent polling shows that Gaza mattered a bit to those who didn’t vote in 2024). One of the downsides of having a weak safety net in the United States is that voters’ main issues will almost always be the economy and healthcare. If you lose your job, you receive a pitiable amount of unemployment and end up in dire straits with health insurance. For many Americans, with their own positions so precarious due to our capitalistic approach to society, worrying about how to improve relations with China and Cuba is simply not a priority.

But it should be. There’s a moral argument that the United States’ foreign policy is largely making lives worse for millions and that with the immense capital the United States has it can care for refugees fleeing desperate situations instead of vilifying such people.

While Americans may like that argument in the abstract, it does not appear to be a pressing concern for them nor one they see affecting their own lives in any real way. With the 2024 election’s remains smoldering behind us, it’s worth reviewing the speeches and discussions to see how often issues of migration and prevention of war came up. The verdict? Beyond glancing references to a cease-fire in the Middle East and supporting Ukraine, it’s hard to find much rhetoric that addresses American foreign policy.

Voters need to consider that the next economic impact on their wallets may well originate due to decisions made overseas as opposed to ones here in the homeland.

Immigration is entirely treated as a domestic issue and even then, largely in a law-and-order fashion. The economics of immigration, which are extremely positive, were mostly absent from the discussion. So, too, however, were the causes, and it is impossible to address immigration without noting that the United States itself is responsible for many of the migration issues. After spending much of the 1900s undermining government after government in South America, it is no surprise that many of those countries still struggle economically, resulting in migration. Ditto the unrest in the Middle East, which can easily be traced back to George W. Bush’s neocon policies. On a purely ethical level, it seems immoral to turn around and claim that the United States has no duty to help the people it has hurt. On a foreign policy level, it makes sense to examine how our continued interference in other countries’ elections, which is done both overtly and covertly, has caused such a destabilizing effect. Whether the U.S. has done it on behalf of the United Fruit Company or Halliburton, U.S. involvement in South America and the Middle East has helped only the very wealthy and hurt everyone else, both in those countries and in America itself.

The other foreign policy issue sometimes addressed is terrorism, although that, too, was not much mentioned this past election cycle outside of vague allusions to immigrants being terrorists in order to scare swing voters into voting for U.S. President Donald Trump. Yet in most cases, terrorism does not come from nowhere: Destabilized countries brew radicalization and radicalization brews terrorist attacks. An unstable Middle East is far likelier to lead to another terrorist attack than a stable Middle East. A foreign policy geared toward non-intervention could result in a severe decrease in terrorist acts around the world, including in the United States itself. In turn, this would allow for the United States’ economy to detangle itself from the web of the military industrial complex and perhaps spend some of the seemingly infinite cash on concerns closer to home, such as building a safety net that allows Americans to vote with a vision beyond whether their next paycheck will allow them to afford rent.

In short, foreign policy is not truly foreign; it remains a domestic issue, not some abstract concept that does not affect the average American’s everyday life. Voters do not realize this, but they need to.

Of course, much of this lies at the fault of politicians, many of whom could easily formulate a foreign policy narrative but choose not to. Voters are not blameless, they have their own agency and the ability to inform themselves, but politicians seem to see no pressing need to address any foreign policy issue that is not massive front-page news—and even then, not always as we saw this past election season. Why?

For one, it does allow them to make foreign policy decisions without much interest from the public, meaning they can make decisions that enrich their donors with zero pushback from your average voter. For another, involving foreign policy means political risk, something they are naturally averse to. Questioning the economic sense behind Cuban sanctions, for instance, invites pushback from neoconservatives. Politicians often take the cowardly route. Don’t rock the boat, receive your donations, smile, get reelected.

If that makes it all sound hopeless, well, that’s a fair interpretation. But, once again, America finds itself in a precarious position as Donald Trump takes the reins in the White House. His tariffs may well crash the economy, and such a circumstance would be a good occasion for the American public to be reminded that we do not exist separate from other countries and their own economies and cultures. This is a globalized world, and all chickens come home to roost in one way or another. Voters need to consider that the next economic impact on their wallets may well originate due to decisions made overseas as opposed to ones here in the homeland. I also hear there is a political party entirely out of power as of now: Perhaps they could involve this message and use it to their advantage?