Few United States elections have been watched abroad as avidly as the Nov. 3 midterms. This global attention says a lot about the multiple contexts from which people around the world view its significance.
It was undoubtedly a referendum on President Donald Trump. The Democratic sweep of both houses of Congress was a stern rebuke of his presidency. But one wonders whether it was also a rejection of his populist strongman form of governance.
Even Vice President JD Vance now attributes the Republican losses largely to the war against Iran. The more useful question is what voters rejected. Polling suggests they opposed the Iran war as a policy: about six in 10 said the decision to go to war was wrong. But only about a third called it crucial to their vote, well behind those who cited the cost of living or government corruption. What is even less clear is whether they also rejected the unilateral use of military power abroad.
These questions are worth asking even in the midst of rejoicing, because beneath the sharp differences between Democrats and Republicans lies a long-standing consensus about America’s place in the world. In a column I wrote in 2012, after watching Barack Obama and Mitt Romney debate foreign policy, I was struck by how little separated them. Obama called America the “indispensable nation”; Romney described it as “the hope of the earth.” Both assumed that America had a special responsibility to lead the world. They differed mainly on how to exercise it.
I suggested then that this implicit consensus undergirded American political stability. Fierce competition between Democrats and Republicans seldom questioned the nation’s role in world affairs. Presidential debates, I wrote, served an ideological function, shaping how Americans viewed their country and the world.
American exceptionalism draws on pride in the country’s institutions, scientific achievements, and military strength, and on the idea of America as an experiment in unity amid diversity. This universalist ethos supplied the legitimating content of America’s postwar role. As chief architect and guarantor of the emerging world order, the US championed international cooperation and the rule of law. Yet it pursued these ideals as a hegemonic power, helping to craft international rules while declining to submit to some of them, as with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the International Criminal Court.
When the Soviet Union disintegrated in late 1991, American power seemed unchallengeable. The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks drew the US into war in Afghanistan, then Iraq, then interventions in Libya and Syria. These wars showed the limits of military supremacy, while China’s rise as an economic and technological power began to challenge American predominance.
Trump seized upon exhaustion with these “forever wars” and the loss of industrial jobs when he first ran in 2016. He blamed Washington elites for squandering American wealth abroad and letting factories move overseas.
His second presidency gave this nationalism a more aggressive form. Tariffs became an instrument for extracting concessions even from friendly neighbors like Canada and Mexico, and he berated North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies for freeloading on US power by not spending enough on defense. In January 2026, US forces captured Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, and Trump said Washington would henceforth run Venezuela and tap its oil reserves. Then, in February, the US joined Israel in attacking Iran, hoping to provoke regime change after decapitating its leadership. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes.
Iran responded by disrupting passage through the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes, and by attacking US forces stationed across the Gulf region. The conflict has spread well beyond its origins. Ceasefire arrangements have been repeatedly stalled by renewed fire, while the economic costs continue to be felt far beyond the Middle East.
On the home front, brutal crackdowns against suspected undocumented migrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement provoked outrage. Rising living costs, the Iran war, and anxiety over democratic norms turned voters against the administration. But opposition to Trump’s policies does not mean that support for restrictive immigration, protectionism, and the projection of American military might has vanished.
The midterms show that American democracy can still check an overbearing presidency. It would be premature, however, to read the Democratic victory as a rejection of populist authoritarianism or of American unilateralism. Many Americans may want less reckless leadership while retaining the belief that their country has a special right to shape events abroad.
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