Antimilitarism As An Antidote for Alienation
A more cautious foreign policy could win back disillusioned voters.
The following essay is a guest post by Christopher Shell. You might remember Chris from his appearance just before the 2024 presidential election, when he discussed polling data indicating very strongly that Kamala Harris’s positions on foreign policy—especially Gaza—were going to lead crucial voting constituencies to “vote the couch” rather than vote for Democrats. Prescient.
In early December 2024, I sat in my barber’s chair in Harlem, New York, listening as she vented about her financial woes—primarily medical debt. Her rant was punctuated with, “they (referring to the Government) have all this money for Ukraine—but I’m saddled with this debt!” When I asked her if she voted in this election, she responded, “no, I didn’t vote, they’re going to do what they’re going to do,” suggesting a belief that the political elite in Washington are so out of touch with everyday people that no amount of participation in electoral politics can alter the political winds.
This was deep-blue New York, where the absence of my barber’s vote—along with, presumably, most others in the shop—was probably not as consequential as in swing states such as Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Michigan, all of which Trump won in November. Yet, while Harris secured victory in historically Democrat New York, the broader numbers tell a story of changing political allegiance and growing political apathy.
In New York City, Democrats lost half a million votes compared to 2020, while Trump gained 95,000 votes. In majority-Black areas, where Harris still secured a victory, there was a 21-percentage point decline in Democratic support compared to 2020. Precents with the lowest median incomes, regardless of race, experienced the largest drop-in Democratic support (32%), compared to a 17% drop in precincts with the highest median incomes.
This trend held true in the swing state of Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia, Harris clearly won the cities majority Black precincts, however - the number of votes in those precents declined 6.1% from 2020 to 2024—more than double the 2.7 % falloff across the cities overall. There was a class element with turnout among Black voters who made less than $50,000 per year dropping by 6.9% compared to a 4% drop among those that made more than $50,000 a year.
This trend, captured in my barber’s comments, reflects a broader issue: how working-class Americans perceive their government’s role in the world, particularly the trade-offs between maintaining global primacy and investing in domestic social safety nets and wellbeing.
Of course, some will argue that foreign policy had no bearing on the election—that voters based their calculations solely on the economy and inflation, that the administration’s policies were beyond reproach, and those that did not vote for Harris were either morally or ethically deficient (i.e. racist or sexist) or were under the spell of misinformation from an overseas Svengali. I beg to differ.
Americans outside of the beltway and the ivory towers of coastal elite universities can, in fact, analyze their material conditions and see that the prospect of a social democracy is continuously deferred in favor of maintaining global military dominance.
While domestic concerns—the perceived failure to enact police reform, expand affordable housing, and promote workforce development, to name a few—can partially explain the souring relationship between Black voters and democrats, it would be shortsighted to overlook the impact of foreign policy.
Two major international crises have colored the past few years. One is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and Biden’s steadfast support of Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” The second is Hamas’ October attack on Israel and the administration’s steadfast backing of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Both have contributed to eroding enthusiasm among one of the Democrat’s most reliable voting blocs.
Regarding the Ukraine-Russia war, it’s plausible that many feel that while life remains tenuous at home, the ruling party doubled downed on its foreign policy commitment to Europe security…even though Europe, as a wealthy region, should, in theory, be able to defend itself. After all, many European nations have achieved a social democracy that feels increasingly out of reach in the US (recall that universal healthcare or a mandatory minimum wage was virtually absent from the Democratic party’s election platform). Notably, polling conducted by the Chicago Council for Foreign Affairs revealed that Black Americans were ten percentage points less likely than White Americans to believe that the US should support Ukraine indefinitely, even if American households will have to pay higher gas and food prices as a consequence.
Displeasure with the Biden-Harris Gaza policy first became evident in February 2024, when Black faith leaders—followed by the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP )—called for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel. During commencement season, in what seemed like an attempt by the Biden administration to shore up support among the Black professional class, the president was met with pro-Palestine silent protests at Morehouse College. Then, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield’s commencement speech was cancelled at Xavier University of Louisiana due to opposition from the student body.
Some Black voters are disillusioned with the Democratic Party’s Israel-Palestine policy out of a broad concern with human rights and solidarity with other oppressed peoples. Others might be more worried about the risks that involvement in overseas conflicts puts on US servicemembers, as highlighted in African Americans news outlets’ coverage of three Black soldiers killed in a February 2024 attack by an Iranian-backed militia.
To add insult to injury, as pre-election polling signaled the severe apathy for the Democrats, Obama concluded that Black voters—particularly Black men—were reluctant to support Harris largely due to discomfort with seeing a Black woman in power. This perspective, rooted in identity reductionism, not only flattens the salience of other issues that inform voter’s decision making but also erases meaningful debate, particularly about the US’s role in the world and how it relates to domestic wellbeing.
What Obama himself seems to have forgotten is that, in the 2008 election, he captured 95% of the Black vote and Black voter turnout increased by 5 percentage points from 2004 on an explicitly anti-war campaign. He not only opposed the US war in Iraq but also challenged the logic of US primacy, stating in his January 2008 primary debate “I don’t want to just end the war. I want to end the mindset that got us into the war in the first place.” African Americans, it should be noted, were among some of the earliest opponents of that war.
The lesson from 2008 should have been that a candidate espousing a US role in the world that prioritizes minimizing harm abroad, reducing military overreach that places servicemembers in harm’s way, and avoiding excessive taxpayer waste, would have outsized appeal to the electorate.
Obama’s bold stand against the foreign policy status quo of US militarism and global hegemony was eerily reminiscent of the critiques made by Black intellectuals like WEB Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr against the excesses of the Cold War’s anti-communist policy of containment in the 1950s and 60s. It also speaks to Jesse Jackson’s critique of security commitments and domestic neglect during his historic 1980s Presidential Run, as well as Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s courageous and solitary vote against the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Afghanistan.
All four individuals were, in part, influenced by a commitment to reducing harm—both to US service members, many of whom came from marginalized communities, and to developing nations—while also recognizing the financial trade-offs of military primacy at the expense of domestic social welfare. The Democratic party of yesteryear was a place in which Americans, particularly African Americans skeptical of the excesses of American power abroad, could find a space to voice their anti-foreign policy status quo opinions.
Rather than relying on rappers gyrating on convention stages or last-minute promises of weed and crypto and bragging about “a most lethal military,” Democrats had a chance to make a more compelling case to voters. Instead of ceding the anti-war, “peace candidate” lane to Trump, the argument could have been that security aid to Ukraine helps keep US soldiers out of a war in Europe, while also articulating a vision that would end the war on Ukraine’s terms.
On Israel-Palestine, foreign policy watchers saw the Biden-Harris administration publicly endorse a ceasefire while continuing to supply offensive munitions to Israel: a contradictory message. This contradiction became so pronounced that Black civil society organizations that normally refrain from the international arena felt compelled to take a stand.
The Democratic party is now recalibrating with a selection of Ken Martin as new DNC chair and a Gen Zer as co-chair, David hogg, in what appears as an effort to gain ground with young voters. Moving forward, the DNC would do well to resist the impulse of identity reductionism, that is, assuming voters should vote for a party simply because their racial group is represented, and not policies that align with their values. Instead, the party must recognize that everyday Americans possess a deep sense of reality and a rich tradition that synthesizes the complexities of the world while also seeking to fundamentally reshape the logics that have driven the beltway for decades.
Does the average American voter, regardless of race, care deeply about intricate foreign policy issues like NATO expansion, containing China, and the maintenance of the US-led neoliberal world order? probably not. But when individuals see other nations with universal healthcare—some of whom also receive US security commitments and military aid—the message that “we can do both” rings hollow, especially when material conditions at home are dire.
This is an opportune moment for the Democratic party not only to rebuild the broad coalition it assembled in 2008, if it so desires, but also to reclaim the anti-war, anti-imperialist mantle that it once carried decades ago.
Christopher Shell is a fellow in the Carnegie Endowment’s American Statecraft Program. His work focuses on the intersection of race and U.S. foreign policy, as well as U.S. foreign policy toward the Western Hemisphere. A trained historian, he received his PhD from Michigan State University.