War, peace and the American presidency

At the height of the Iraq war, there were certain quarters in Washington’s politico-media complex that were obsessed about whether Karl Rove, George W Bush’s political Svengali, was participating in military planning sessions at the White House. The implications were clear: if Rove was attending the meetings, then the political wing of the Bush operation may be attempting to exploit his status as a wartime president.

It was, and still is, a debate that really can only occur in Washington. The clear policy “lanes” debated relentlessly inside American government officialdom appear more and more blurry the further one travels from the Capital Beltway. The great military strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously said that war is “the continuation of politics by other means” — a concept that is sometimes more readily grasped by the average American voter than bureaucratic turf warriors on either side of the Potomac River. War inevitably is about politics as much it is about foreign policy or national security.

The politics of war are sadly again relevant as hostilities between Israel and Iran escalate just a month before an American presidential election. Already, Donald Trump has sought to politicise the conflict by arguing the escalation is a sign of how President Joe Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, have presided over a “world on fire”.

Trump is not wrong to try to make political hay out of global instability, since any number of American presidential campaigns have been shaped by foreign wars. Lyndon Johnson decided against seeking re-election because of his failures in Vietnam. Many credit Barack Obama’s opposition to Bush’s Iraq war as the stance that ultimately catapulted him to the top of the Democratic field in 2008.

The common assumption is that wars can unify a nation behind their president, but the Middle East has claimed as many presidential campaigns as it has given birth to. President Jimmy Carter’s ham-handed management of the Iran hostage crisis played a large part in dooming his 1980 re-election hopes, and President George H W Bush’s inability to pivot to domestic concerns after pushing Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait was widely blamed for his re-election loss in 1992.

But what is different between those Middle East conflicts and the current one is the involvement (or lack thereof) of American military and diplomatic personnel. The Iraq wars of Bush père et fils involved US troops on the ground; Carter’s Iran hostage crisis saw American diplomats paraded in front of television cameras by Iranian militants.

Even before the recent offensive by Israel into Lebanon, and Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes inside Israel, Middle East instability and the war in Ukraine have never risen above bread-and-butter economic issues in the minds of the American electorate. Foreign wars may be troublesome, but they do not move voting blocs.

It is telling that before he dropped out of the 2024 race, one of Biden’s go-to campaign lines was that he alone had brought American soldiers home after three presidencies of Middle Eastern wars. “The truth is, I’m the only president this century . . . that doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world, like he did,” Biden said in his lone, infamous 2024 debate performance against Trump.

It is equally telling that Trump continues to harp on the American forces that actually did die under Biden’s watch: the 13 service members killed by Isis at Abbey Gate during the administration’s calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan. That Trump would stoop so low as to use the Arlington Cemetery graves of those same soldiers as a campaign prop demonstrates just how powerful American war dead can be for a presidential candidate.

Rana, I’m well aware that the uncertainties of war could change the ongoing presidential campaign in an instant. Iran has threatened to attack American troops in Syria and Iraq if Tehran detects signs the US aided in any Israeli retaliation against Iran. But without American lives in the balance, war and peace rarely penetrates the myopia of a US presidential campaign. Biden’s successor may indeed be inheriting a world on fire. But I think that is unlikely to matter to those voting in November. Do you agree?

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• The other major political event this week was Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate in New York. Although I normally try to find points of dissent when debating my distinguished fellow Swampians, I had a hard time finding anything to disagree with in Ed Luce’s analysis. JD Vance bested Tim Walz — who suffered from his decision not to engage with media interviewers over the course of the campaign — but it’s unlikely to matter.

• The far more interesting story involving Vance in the last week was a Washington Post report that the Ohio Senator has been disparaging Trump’s economic record to friends in private as recently as 2020. It’s not the first time Vance has been exposed for having more mainstream views behind closed doors; the New York Times had similar revelations over the summer, though those private comments from Vance were much older. And of course Vance’s best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, is a far more nuanced take on economic despair than his current public persona would indicate.

• Last week, Ed and I riffed on the legacy of Jimmy Carter, who turned 100 on Tuesday. But his birthday reminded me of one of my favourite recent revelations (well, at least a revelation to me) about the former president: he was hugely popular among a certain group of rock heroes. The New Yorker chronicled the history after a documentary on Carter and his music ties was released last year. My favourite line came from Bob Dylan: “He’s a nuclear engineer, woodworking carpenter. He’s also a poet. He’s a dirt farmer. If you told me he was a race-car driver, I wouldn’t even be surprised.”

Rana Foroohar responds

Peter, I must say that I wish Biden, prior to dropping out of the race, would have made a bigger deal about the fact that it was Trump’s “peace” deal with the Taliban, involving the release of 5,000 prisoners in exchange for unenforceable promises that the group wouldn’t harbour terrorists or engage in hostilities with US troops (good luck with that), that made the Afghan withdrawal such a nightmare for Biden. It was one of many reasons that Biden’s popularity went down, but it certainly wasn’t the reason that he pulled out of the race.

You are quite right that Americans tend not to vote on issues of war and peace, or on foreign affairs in general. That said, I think our colleague Gideon Rachman has a point that the Iranian missile strikes against Israel following its attacks on Lebanon put Harris in a tighter spot relative to Trump. He can blather on about how the White House was unable to manage the situation in Gaza. But she has to walk a fine line between looking tough on Iran and thus standing with Israel, and still not alienating younger voters who have been drawn in by the sense that she was sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians and critical of the Netanyahu government. That may be an issue on the margins of this election — but the entire election could be won or lost at the margins.

Your feedback

And now a word from our Swampians . . .

In response to “What swing states want:”
“That is interesting, but I think you are missing some key points. Voters, especially in the Midwest, want details, not ambiguity . . . And yes, we want to be tough on crime, but Harris is anything, but tough on crime.” — FT commenter Tim

In response to “Dear Kamala: a letter from Pennsylvania:”
“I’m with Jim. Governments shape markets. Money drives markets. Owners of money scalp those of modest means. Owners of money can even include pension funds looking after citizen savers, as they ‘should’. But at the expense of citizen non-savers. The good news is that, slowly, we are learning to invest for a world worth living in. More accurately, worth retiring into. But we are learning, the green shoots are there. And I use the word green advisedly. The challenge for Kamala will be to nuance the message. She can do that.” — Mike Clark