This essay was originally published in Discourse magazine.
The single most important piece in the geopolitical chessboard is the person of the president of the United States. He — or, as may soon come to pass, she — provides the focal point around which the players of all other nations align themselves.
A strong and experienced president like Dwight Eisenhower inspires confidence in our allies and caution in our opponents. A weak or incompetent president is an invitation to chaos and worse.
That John F. Kennedy tolerated Nikita Khrushchev’s tongue-lashing during their Vienna summit in 1961 was no doubt an element in the decision process that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba.
In the same way, Joe Biden’s bungled flight from Afghanistan encouraged hostile powers, like Russia and Iran, to launch military adventures.
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the policies and character of the president are the keys to war and peace in the world today.
How remarkable is it, then, that Kamala Harris was awarded the Democratic Party nomination, and may become the next president of the United States, while remaining a virtual blank slate on foreign affairs? In her two years as senator and four as vice president, Harris has managed to say nothing meaningful on the subject — a curious reticence, given that American politicians love to strut and lecture on the global stage.
Eager conformism
It isn’t a question of inexperience. Barack Obama had less experience when he first ran for president, but his entire candidacy hinged on opposition to the Iraq War.
Donald Trump had literally zero foreign policy experience, but he loudly advocated confronting China and making our allies pay their way. Obama and Trump were both candidates of revolt, and part of the change they wished to bring about was a reorientation in this country’s relations with the world.
Harris is in a tight race for the presidency. She has no wish to alienate voters, and she, or at least her handlers, must be aware that her propensity to toss random words into the air amounts almost to a speech impediment.
Here she is, for example, trying to explain her administration’s influence over Israel: “The work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”
When the English language is your enemy, it may be the better part of valor to say little or nothing.
But another factor also comes into play. Harris is the exact opposite of a candidate of revolt — she represents the golden progressive establishment that today controls most American institutions.
In this regard, her strange vacuity is an ideal condition: Policies favored by the establishment will simply be stuffed into that void. I suspect most foreign governments look on her as the latest iteration of the Obama and Biden worldview. Because of her office and party, no less than her eager conformism, she’s the candidate who needs no introduction.
To get a sense of what Harris’ foreign policy might look like, I’m trying to say, we first need to understand the journey traveled by her Democratic predecessors.
The Obama fallacy
Barack Obama arrived at the White House with an original hypothesis about the way the world worked.
He rejected the notion of US interests entirely. To pursue such parochial obsessions, he thought, was selfish and primitive — a legacy of the barbaric human past. Instead, he envisioned the coming of a “rules-based world order” that would regulate affairs between nations in a rational and ethical manner.
History, Obama believed, was a long march from violence to benevolence — a pilgrim’s progress that could never be reversed. The rules-based world order, therefore, wasn’t an objective to fight for or an ideal to be defended, but a sort of destiny. Since the tide of history would deliver a peaceable future, the optimal strategy was to hunker down and wait for things to get better.
Reality wasn’t kind to the Obama hypothesis. The Russians invaded Ukraine, conquered and annexed Crimea and returned in force to the eastern Mediterranean.
After our precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, the Islamic Caliphate (ISIS) overran a territory equal in size to Great Britain. In proportion as the US retreated, the Chinese and Iranians expanded their influence. The Middle East disintegrated into chaos and bloodshed, with hundreds of thousands of deaths in Syria, Iraq and Libya. A million-strong horde of refugees swept into Europe, causing massive political turbulence that has yet to abate.
None of these events shook Obama’s confidence in his vision of the world, or the establishment’s faith that the former president was correct in all essential points.
What did put that vision into question, in an urgent and surprising way, was a development here at home: the rise of Trump.
It is impossible to overstate the shock administered by the 2016 election to the most cherished assumptions of the Democratic establishment.
Coming on the heels of Brexit, another shock for the great and the good, the world after the American election seemed to be turned upside down. Foreign villains like Putin had to be recruited to explain a traumatic political catastrophe.
But the worst was this: The triumph of the new world order now seemed nothing like inevitable.
Since his election in 2020, Joe Biden has struggled to modify the Obama hypothesis to prevent its utter collapse in the face of events. In spite of the triumphalist tone at the beginning of his administration (“America is back!”) it’s fair to say that success has eluded him.
The urge to withdraw and disengage is still strong in Biden. So is the primacy of words over action. But a new factor has entered the picture: that archenemy of democracy, Trump, and his rotating band of look-alikes around the world, who have stuck around and remain at least as strong as ever. Suddenly, history appeared to be moving in the wrong direction.
In a radical change of tone from Obama’s smug admonishments, Biden now maintains that we live in apocalyptic times — an “inflection point” in history that “will determine the direction of our future for generations to come.”
But if the defense of democracy is now the prime directive, why abandon Afghanistan to the odious Taliban?
Not a strategic thinker
Why continue to bribe and appease the terrorist-friendly regime in Iran?
Why cozy up to the Saudis and Venezuelans to lobby for higher oil production?
The president, alas, has never been a strategic thinker. In his hands, the Obama hypothesis, with its burden of naivete and wish-fulfillment, has descended into narrative collapse.
Nevertheless, this is the path Harris has so far chosen to follow.
Her few pronouncements on foreign policy are little more than rote recitations of the Obama-Biden doctrines, with nothing added to address the events that have battered and falsified them.
The towering figure in her global landscape is naturally Trump. Harris considers herself an internationalist, whereas Trump, in her view, is a dangerous isolationist.
Can we paint a coherent picture of how Harris, if elected, will deal with the world? Since I’m about to do just that, I obviously think the answer is “yes” — but let’s be clear about the difficulties. Information is scarce.
I will assume that the next Democratic president, like the last one, will be a creature of the establishment, shackled inexorably to the Obama legacy. The many gaps can then be filled with plausible material. What follows, good reader, should be understood to be a variable mix of analysis, projection and speculation.
The world according to Harris is a fog-bound, incomprehensible place. Any action, any step forward, may lead to danger — or worse, political failure. The logic of such a world elevates paralysis to the highest virtue. Potential threats must be ignored or downplayed. Burning crises will be defused through a Zen-like passivity. Words of great magic power are to be uttered in difficult times: They make inaction appear like action and disaster look like success.
Echoed in transnational organizations — NATO, the EU, the UN — these incantations, though meaningless in themselves, take on the aspect of a second nature, an agreed-upon reality.
Ukraine stands for democracy, which is at an inflection point, so there must be no cease-fire — but neither will there be enough military assistance given to defeat Putin’s legions.
Should Ukraine go under, Harris will give voice to the outrage of that magical entity, the “international community” — a most satisfying exercise.
Israel will be supported materially like an ally but attacked rhetorically like an irreconcilable enemy.
While the Trump-adjacent Netanyahu clings to office, any controversial incident can trigger a permanent rupture. Magic words like “cease-fire” and “two-state solution,” which change nothing on the ground, will mimic real policy in the region.
Iran must be given whatever it wants so long as it delays testing its first nuclear bomb until Harris is safely out of office. The same principle applies to China and Taiwan. The Saudis will be angrily condemned when they behave like an absolute monarchy but applauded when they increase oil production.
Hostile Islamist groups like the Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS are someone else’s problem. Should they attack our citizens, our shipping or our military, the response will be appropriately nuanced. Harris will inherit a Sahel that, thanks in part to Russian mischief, has already slipped into Islamist hands — but who among us can point to a map and say, “This is exactly where Sahel is”?
‘Internationalism’
Latin America exists mainly as a welcomed source of immigrants. Africa produces good material for moralistic lectures about slavery and colonialism. India, while reminiscent of Gandhi and spirituality, is a strategic cipher. The Asian heartland, with all those unpronounceable ’stans, might as well be on the dark side of the moon.
The United States, chief disturber of the world’s peace, will be taught by Harris and her administration to retreat on every front, apologize to victim nations and reject any responsibility for handling dangerous places.
The magic word for this is “internationalism.”
Events — rather than “the rules,” or the democracies or American power — will therefore be in control. What those events might look like can be inferred from the track record of the last four years: Think Afghanistan, Ukraine and Oct. 7, only with compound interest. We will react with words and more words. War, if it comes, won’t be of choice or necessity — the Obama categories — but of misjudgment. It will be fought with a demoralized US military that has been allowed to atrophy for years.
Under the hammer of events, the Obama hypothesis and the Biden modifications will disintegrate beyond the possibility of repair. There will be few rules, no order, in a wild and unpredictable world. The democracies will emerge from their inflection point divided, diminished and afraid.
Gripped by geopolitical disorientation, we could skate too close to the edge of the abyss — all it would take is for the Russians, or the Iranians or the North Koreans, to conclude that the use of nuclear weapons carries no great risk.
They have been held back so far by fear of retaliation — but I have no idea whether retaliation is a virtue, a crime or even a conscious thought, in the world according to Harris.
VP’s ‘Russian roulette’
None of this is fated, of course. Harris could turn out to be a quick study and grow into the job, as we used to say of our presidents in better times.
The United States commands enormous power and almost unlimited wealth, and our institutions, though weakened and confused, retain in their muscle memory the instinct for survival.
The many nations that shelter behind Uncle Sam’s broad back desperately wish to see us do well in the world. With a bit of luck, we could overcome another four years of dreamland policies and get by.
But I would assign a low probability to that happy outcome — and there’s really no reward for playing Russian roulette with the future.