Harris? Trump? A Depressing Foreign Policy Election

We’re back from a trip to Berlin and Hamburg, and the Presidential race is as bad as when we left.  Actually, I think it may be worse because the Biden administration is doing even worse in foreign policy now than before we left – and there is no reason to think Kamala Harris will be any different than the Biden administration. 

But first, Donald Trump still doesn’t have the character to be President and that is not going to change. 

On the other side, Joe Biden, and the Biden administration, is still getting it wrong.  In 2014, Robert Gates wrote, of Joe Biden, “I think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."  He reaffirmed that statement in 2019.  Since Joe Biden became President, he has continued to get these things wrong on foreign policy and national security.

Even if we should have left Afghanistan (and Donald Trump signed the original agreement with the Taliban to leave; i.e., the surrender agreement), the way we left was a disaster.  Then, we couldn’t deter Vladimir Putin from his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  We knew it was going to happen, and we couldn’t stop it.  And once it started, we thought Ukraine would collapse in days or weeks.  They didn’t.  We said we would back them, but we have been slow and hesitant in doing so.  We have been too scared of what Putin might do, instead of doing what we needed to do and letting Putin worry about us.  And now, because we have been so slow in helping Ukraine, voters, in the United States and Europe are getting weary of helping Ukraine.  If we had helped Ukraine more and quicker, support for Ukraine would be higher and both we, and Ukraine, would be in a better situation vis-à-vis Russia, and Tsar Vladimir.

Biden has been getting the Middle East wrong, too.  Instead of standing up to Iran, we have resurrected the failed accommodation policies of the Obama administration.  At the beginning of October of 2023, Jake Sullivan published an article in Foreign Affairs about how quiet things were in the Middle East.  Oops. 

While Biden has backed Israel, we keep telling them to stop fighting and negotiate.  Negotiate with whom?  Does the other side really want to negotiate and stop killing Jews?  For how long?  Sixty days doesn’t count.  Neither does five or ten years.  The Israelis need to be sure that they are not going to have another massacre of the Jews in ten years.  While some on the left will say that what Hamas, et al, does is because of the way Israel has treated the Palestinians over the last 50 or 80 years.  I don’t agree.  Hatred of Jews is one of the constants of history. 

I don’t see how that kind of antisemitism ends at a negotiating table that the other side won’t even sit at; the U.S. has to shuttle back and forth between rooms, or even hotels, because the Hamas, et al, won’t even sit with Israel.

And even with all these things, and more, happening around the world, the Biden administration is still requesting, less and less money, on an inflation-adjusted basis, for defense.  As I said above, I don’t see Kamala Harris changing any of this.

H.R. McMaster says the perception of weakness is provocative.  The “perception of weakness” is what the Biden administration has been all about.  That is why Putin felt he could invade Ukraine.  That is why Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah/the Houthis are doing what they are doing in the Middle East.  And that is why China is not only threatening the Philippines but could be aiming at Taiwan sooner rather than later. 

What we need is a President who can think through complicated and intersecting problems.  A President who doesn’t give a knee-jerk don’t-escalate-we-have-to-negotiate response to every crisis.  A President who can be trusted by friends and allies around the world – because friends and allies make us stronger and safer.  We need a President who can come up with a plan that he or she can explain to the American people and then continue to explain to the American people over an extended period of time.

We have had Presidents like that in the past.  But this year, we have Harris and Trump.  I find it hard to believe Harris would be any better than Biden (or Obama).  As for Trump, while the perception of weakness can be provocative, a lack of constancy, reliability, and trustworthiness is just as dangerous.  Which means we, and the world, have no good, or even less bad, choice in November.  Our best hope may be that our adversaries are even more incompetent than we are.