The New Yorker:

This year, looking at Gaza and Ukraine, what happens in the rest of the world seems to matter a bit more than usual to Americans.

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Presidential elections rarely hinge on issues of foreign policy, yet candidates delight in them. The lure is the scale. Spot a political pattern emerging across the globe, pin its fortunes to yours (Clinton’s Third Way neoliberalism, Reagan’s cheerily fierce anti-Communism), and your legacy might reach far beyond Washington, your ideas imprinted in the hearts of billions. Donald Trump praised foreign autocrats so frequently (Xi Jinping is “smart, brilliant, everything perfect”; Kim Jong Un is “a tough, smart guy”) that he seemed to envision them as strongman pals. John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, recently told CNN’s Jim Sciutto that the ex-President had mused repeatedly that Adolf Hitler “did some good things” and commanded “loyalty.” Kelly had to break the news that the Führer’s own officers tried, on several occasions, to disloyally assassinate him.

But, this year, what happens in the rest of the world seems to matter a bit more than usual to Americans. A recent A.P.-norc poll found that, compared with a year ago, twice as many voters—taking in the grinding war in Ukraine and the ferocious Israeli military offensive in Gaza—see foreign policy as a top national priority. Trump has been largely quiet on Israel, drawing a sharper contrast with Biden over Ukraine. He played host at Mar-a-Lago to Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister and Vladimir Putin ally, and told the crowd at a New Hampshire rally that he’d encourage Putin’s Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any nato member that, in his estimation, didn’t pay a sufficient share for mutual defense. As Trump’s influence has grown and Senator Mitch McConnell’s has waned, the Ukraine issue has become polarized: a majority of Americans support giving further aid, but more than half of Republicans think we’ve given enough. At Trump’s behest, House Speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to bring to the floor Senate-approved weapons funding that Kyiv badly needs. Putin has noticed the delay, saying, last week, “It would be ridiculous for us to negotiate with Ukraine just because it’s running out of ammunition.”

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