While driving recently through Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, I was greeted by a host of political billboards, some expressing support for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, and others for former President Donald Trump, her Republican rival. Most expressed the campaigns’ official slogans: “Harris/Walz: A New Way Forward” and “Trump: Make America Great Again,” respectively. But the one that jumped out at me was the one that read, “Trump: For World Peace.”
The billboard echoed one of the goals that Trump has promised to fulfill if he returns to the White House. Indeed, at the recent presidential debate, Trump insisted that, if he wins the election, he would bring peace to both Ukraine and Gaza even before he was inaugurated. That claim stands out because it underscores a broader point. It is common to hear Trump described as isolationist and nationalistic, as someone who denigrates U.S. allies and looks askance at a host of international organizations. But he still holds on to a core tenet of U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War: the idea of the United States as the indispensable nation.
The phrase comes from former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who first uttered it in the 1990s at the peak of the post-Cold War “unipolar moment” of U.S. global dominance, and she continued to speak about the idea years afterward. It is the notion that solving the world’s greatest challenges, or really any challenge in the world, requires the involvement of the United States.
That President Joe Biden embraces the idea comes as no surprise. Upon taking office, Biden declared that “America is back.” His approach to foreign policy has been one of hardnosed realpolitik with an internationalist flair, meaning he has found ways to continue to place the U.S. in a leading role in world affairs despite facing economic and political constraints at home. He has been vocal about his belief that the U.S. is both a bastion of democracy on the world stage and a nation whose involvement is key to addressing the world’s problems.
Like Biden, Harris also expresses the view that the U.S. must be in a position to lead in the world. During her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Harris emphasized that this requires both the hard power of the U.S. military, promising that as commander in chief she “will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world”; and the soft power of attraction, noting that she sees “an America where we hold fast to the fearless belief that built our nation and inspired the world.” She reiterated those views during the debate with Trump, while also noting that Trump is disrespected on the world stage and susceptible to being manipulated by world leaders.
It might surprise many to learn that Trump wouldn’t disagree with Biden or Harris on the need for the U.S. to lead the world as the indispensable nation.
But it might surprise many to learn that Trump wouldn’t disagree with Biden or Harris on the need for the U.S. to lead the world as the indispensable nation. Consider again his declarations at the debate. Not only did he assert that he could end the war in Ukraine “with a phone call to Putin” and broker a cease-fire to the war in Gaza. He also warned that if he is not reelected president, the Middle East “would be destroyed,” Israel would “cease to exist” and China would no longer be “afraid” to harass its neighbors. More generally, in his own acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July, he declared that the scourge of war and conflict currently erupting around the world would never have happened if he had still been president.
Of course, such statements reflect the confidence, however misplaced, that Trump holds in himself and his abilities. But they also reflect Trump’s understanding that the office of the president of the United States puts whoever holds it in a position to not only influence the workings of the nation itself, but to influence world affairs. And far from recoiling from that knowledge, he embraces it.
As I have pointed out on a number of occasions, the foreign policies of the Trump and Biden administrations, for all of their differences in rhetoric, were strikingly similar. Indeed, Biden continued to implement many policies initiated by Trump, from the military withdrawal from Afghanistan to the trade war with China. One could say that this is simply a product of foreign policy inertia, a product of the “blob”—as some observers disparagingly call the Washington foreign policy establishment—wielding its influence no matter who is in the White House. There is likely some truth to that. After all, the president only has so much time to spend on any given issue, which creates space for policymakers in the government bureaucracy to wield influence.
But the similarities between Trump’s and Biden’s foreign policies, and the potential for the Harris foreign policy to bear some resemblance to that of Biden, also point to something more fundamental that they have in common: They all embrace the idea that the U.S. truly is the most powerful nation on Earth and that it should wield that power.
To be clear, while all three see the U.S. as indispensable to managing the world’s problems, they do differ in a key way: the extent to which the rest of the world is indispensable to the United States. While Biden and Harris appear willing to have the U.S. accept some level of economic constraint for the sake of advancing climate diplomacy, Trump would rather just “drill baby drill.” While Biden and Harris are more open to allowing immigration into the U.S., Trump wants to “build the wall.” And while Biden and Harris are more open to ensuring that the U.S. participates in global organizations, Trump sees them as constraints on U.S. power.
More generally, Trump is more inclined to see the U.S. role in the world as transactional: Engagement must result in material gain. This isn’t to say that Biden and Harris don’t seek material gain for the United States. But they are also likely to take action in support of an idea, such as promoting democracy, buttressing the rules-based order and defending human rights. Trump doesn’t have much tolerance for such notions.
But despite these notable differences between Trump and Harris, and between Trump and Biden, and despite their many other contrasts in style, temperament and even grasps of factual reality, they all three have a key belief in common: that the United States is indispensable for shaping world affairs.
Paul Poast is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a nonresident fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.