Why the Kamala Harris Doctrine Must be Defeated
President Biden’s foreign policy record is viewed unfavorably by most Americans and has been for more than three years now as a string of failures and disappointments. Normally, any vice president is considered a member of the existing administration, inevitably associated with its weaknesses and strengths. However, the problem for Kamala Harris is that the president’s inability to stave off chaos overseas is held in wide contempt—and she knows it.
The vice president’s supporters have thus adopted the following technique to defend their candidate. First, they claim she is now an experienced foreign policy hand, having flown many miles to many different countries. Second, they suggest more quietly that she should not be associated with any failures on the president’s part. For instance, she was “not in the room” when crucial decisions were made in Afghanistan. And by the way, they insist, she was never “border czar.”
Therefore, Kamala Harris appears to be the Cheshire Cat in Biden’s foreign policy record. She was there but not there—a part of its supposed successes yet absent for its numerous failures. These contradictions will all be resolved by a smiling, giggling Harris foreign policy doctrine, only to be revealed after she’s president.
Allow me to speculate on the true content of the Harris doctrine on U.S. foreign policy, one that will be more convincing to those who’ve followed her political career over the years: she will say and do whatever is required to become president.
This might not be so bad if Harris were at the head of an elite coalition with sensible instincts on national security. But she is not. Like Biden before her, Harris now sits atop an increasingly left-wing political establishment that demands deference from her, as it does from all Americans. So, for example, to keep her coalition together, she is politically unable to simply allow Israel to fight terrorists. Instead, she needs to lecture Israelis on their failings even as they combat murderous anti-Semites. It is what progressives demand.
To be sure, Harris will occasionally tack toward the country’s political center on foreign policy, as she has done on several domestic issues this election season, attempting to inoculate herself from charges of radicalism. That is also part of trying to win. But if she is elected, we can safely expect her to push forward as many culturally, politically, and economically left-wing “transformations” of American life as the traffic will bear. That’s what Democratic Party activists insist upon, and it is what she will deliver.
This forward push will include foreign policy and defense matters. The “woke-industrial complex” solidified over the past eight years will further extend its demands deep into the U.S. military and diplomatic apparatus. For instance, U.S. embassies in Africa will no doubt be expected to emphasize transgender rights as a vital American interest on that continent. Most Africans will continue to be baffled by this emphasis. China and Russia will take advantage of that bafflement. In this way, the Harris administration will undermine its stated focus on great power competition, just as Biden is doing now. The Harris doctrine will certainly offer many such measures.
The larger problem is that if elected, Kamala Harris will face the most dangerous combination of international security challenges since the 1940s. During Biden’s presidency, a loosely coordinated axis of hostile regimes has ramped up their aggressions all over the world. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea assist one another with weapons and supplies even as they eat away at American alliances overseas. Most serious analysts agree that the U.S. armed forces are not prepared under current conditions to fight and win a multi-front war against these combined dictatorships. Indeed, credible wargame simulations suggest that the United States could lose even a one-front war, notably against China over Taiwan.
Xi Jinping, in particular, is the most formidable opponent the United States has faced since either Josef Stalin or Adolf Hitler. The notion that China’s current leader will be deterred or defeated by anything less than a serious change in course on the part of the United States is absurd.
The United States thus needs to reorient itself from the international failings of the Biden administration. We need a far more hard-nosed, pragmatic leader who is willing to make tough choices and face up to existing tradeoffs. We need to boost America’s deterrent posture overseas and rebuild U.S. military strength free from woke stupidity. We need to be willing to act alone or with ad hoc coalitions when necessary. We need to work with allies but without illusions as to what multilateral institutions can or cannot do. We need to reinstill fear in the minds of hostile aggressors who take advantage of timidity in the White House. We need to be willing to use a broader range of sticks and carrots to protect U.S. interests abroad. And when the moment is right, having reestablished escalation dominance, we need to be able to embrace prudent, tough-minded negotiations in the interest of peace.
The point of such a course correction is not to encourage a third world war but to prevent it. With a second Trump administration, it is at least possible to imagine this being achieved. With another four years of the Obama-Biden-Harris approach, I see no such possibility. Instead, we will get more toothless warnings, more lectures on liberal norms, more politically correct gibberish, and no substantial strengthening of America’s military or economy.
The Left’s never-ending culture war, which is bad enough domestically, will continue to undermine U.S. military effectiveness overseas. Having secured the White House with vague platitudes, Harris will no doubt snap back to the radical agenda demanded by her core supporters. With no true foreign policy experience, no record, and no solid instincts, she will defer to the failed twenty-first-century liberal internationalists that have run the show under Biden and Obama. If anything, she may turn out to be the worst of the three, stumbling into a global conflagration through an unfortunate mixture of incompetence, inexperience, and left-wing delusions. That is too much of a risk to take. Harris must be defeated.
Colin Dueck is a professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Image: Lev Radin / Shutterstock.com.