If Putin blinks, does Biden win?

It has long been conventional wisdom in Washington political circles that American voters don’t care about foreign policy. So much so, in fact, that the last time I substituted for Ed Luce here at Swamp Notes, I predicted that a complete collapse of the Afghan government after a US pullout would probably not affect Joe Biden’s standing at home.

I’m sure that you, dear reader, were as surprised as I was to find out that I was dead wrong on that. In fact, the collapse in Biden’s job-approval rating can be pegged almost to the date that the Taliban over-ran Kabul. The last time the president’s approval rating was above 50 per cent was the week before the US-backed Afghan government disappeared; he has been below 50 per cent ever since — and is now struggling to stay above the 40 per cent threshold.

The fall of Kabul came at the same time that a lot was going wrong for Biden: the Delta surge was dashing hopes that mass vaccinations would bring a quick end to the pandemic; Democrats in Congress were fighting over Biden’s domestic spending plans; and fears that inflation was something more than transitory were beginning to grip average Americans.

Taken together, these events punctured the image of competence that helped Biden defeat the slightly more mercurial Donald Trump. But given the centrality of the Afghan collapse to this litany of woes, I thought it was worth revisiting the assumption that foreign affairs have a limited impact on domestic political standing — particularly now, with a land war in Europe in the offing.

This week, for the first time since Vladimir Putin began amassing troops on the Ukrainian border, there were signs the Russian president might blink. First, there was the Austin Powers-esque long table meeting with Sergei Lavrov, where Putin’s foreign minister seemed to suggest the US had made substantive diplomatic overtures that could preclude an invasion. That was followed by a Kremlin announcement that some Russian troops deployed to the border regions were heading back to barracks after a series of drills.

By week’s end, those hopes were dashed by intelligence showing Russian troops actually increasing at the Ukrainian border and White House warnings that an attack was again “imminent”. Still, Biden has won rare bipartisan support for his ability to rally the west; to go toe-to-toe with the Kremlin in the information war; and to strike the proper balance between carrots offered (diplomatic negotiations) and sticks threatened (sanctions). If Putin does step back from the brink, could Biden reverse his political slide at home?

I rang Jason McMann, the head of geopolitical risk analysis at Morning Consult, a Washington-based polling and research firm that recently released a detailed study of global opinion on the Ukraine conflict. Although the report showed Americans divided over Biden’s handling of the crisis (39 per cent approve, 40 per cent disapprove), they overwhelmingly support the policies he is pursuing. They back his troop deployments to eastern Europe, for instance, as well as his diplomatic engagement. Perhaps most hearteningly, they overwhelmingly support the right of Ukraine to join Nato.

I asked McMann whether he thought foreign policy was becoming more central to voter opinion about US political leaders, and he pointed to an interesting data point in his Ukraine study: normally, when Americans are asked about an overseas event, the percentage who volunteer “don’t know” or “have no opinion” hovers between 20 and 25 per cent. But when they were asked whether they were concerned about a Russian invasion of Ukraine, only 9 per cent said they had no opinion — a clear sign that the vast majority of Americans are paying attention.

“It goes to the fact that even a smallish country like Ukraine can now capture the attention of the American public,” McMann said.

Like almost everything else in modern American politics, McMann thinks the trigger for this change was Donald Trump. He said that Trump’s trade war with China appeared to be a tipping point, a moment where Americans began to view the geopolitical as domestic. Trump’s “America First” nationalism also played a part, McMann added, putting the naked promotion of American interests abroad at the centre of what constitutes Trumpism at home.

That thesis rang true to me, particularly when you consider Biden’s foreign policy team came into office touting the slightly mealy-mouthed principle of a “foreign policy for the middle class”. They were probably looking at the same polling data as McMann, and tried to meld what they wanted to do abroad with the new domestic awareness of its impact at home — particularly with regard to China.  

Still, McMann is not convinced that a Putin blink over Ukraine will significantly shift Biden’s fortunes in the longer term, and certainly not enough to change Democratic prospects in November’s midterm elections. Like most political victories, Biden could get a short-term boost in the polls, he suggested, but nothing more.

With China, however, McMann sees a foreign policy issue with more staying power. “Until recently, you didn’t have major debates about China as a great power,” he said. “We now see it coming back time and again.” And if Biden didn’t get China right, he added, he would pay for it with American voters.

My question for you, Rana, is whether you think pointy-headed foreign policy wonks like me have finally convinced the average American to pay attention to international affairs. You’ve written a lot about free trade and its impact on middle America, so I suspect you agree with McMann — that China is a singular case, where working-class voters see their stagnant wages and shrinking number of factory jobs as directly tied to China’s rise as a manufacturing power. But I can still hope, can’t I?

Edward Luce is on book leave and will return in mid-March. 

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Rana Foroohar responds

Peter, thanks for joining me in the Swamp over the past two weeks. I’m fascinated by McMann’s take, which dovetails with a column that I’m planning to write for Monday entitled “It’s the geopolitics, stupid.”

It’s fascinating to me that the usual economic statistics — unemployment rates, wage hikes, even GDP — have been so strong recently, and yet confidence is so low. A big chunk of that is how inflation bites at America’s kitchen table. But that connects to geopolitics — energy inflation is in part about Ukraine and Russia and Europe. I think this gets to the larger point you make about how middle America understands at some deep level that we are going through a paradigm shift.

We are moving from a neoliberal world in which the markets knew best and all boats were rising, to one in which politics matter and things that happen in small, faraway countries can change the story on the ground at home. The world isn’t flat, after all. In fact it never was. As you know, this is one of the big topics of my upcoming book, Homecoming: The Path to Prosperity in a Post-Global World (hey, never miss an opportunity for book promo!) out in October. Americans understand that the world is changing, that we are in a new great power conflict with China (and its vassals, like Russia), that we will shift to either a bipolar or (more likely) a tripolar world (with Europe sitting in between and tugged both ways) and that this will bring conflict. I think that’s one reason savings rates have been elevated recently. My advice? Read less David Ricardo and more Carl von Clausewitz.

Thanks again for joining Peter! Swamp readers, you can look forward to my colleagues Gideon Rachman and Richard Waters joining me in the coming weeks.

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