Will Harris continue Biden’s foreign policy mistakes?
If Kamala Harris becomes president five months from now, the first challenge she is likely to confront as commander-in-chief is the growing danger from at least four declared adversaries overseas — ones that not only have openly advertised their hostile intentions toward the West but are also coordinating their actions against America.
During her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Harris took on the most controversial of the issues for her party: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Let me be clear,” she said. “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself….At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating….President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”
And although Harris addressed the sponsoring force behind the attacks against Israel and against America — “I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists” — she did not mention the looming threat from Iran’s near breakout as a nuclear power, which Biden has said the U.S. will not allow. Yet U.S. and Israeli intelligence indicate that Teheran is on the verge of making that happen in the waning days of Biden’s term.
Harris also addressed the other shooting war, between Russia and Ukraine, where the U.S. is supplying Ukraine with defensive weapons but is not directly involved in any of the kinetic action, including a no-fly zone over Ukraine. That’s because, Biden has declared, “That’s called World War III.”
The vice president described her own involvement with the issue. “Five days before Russia attacked Ukraine, I met with President Zelensky to warn him about Russia’s plan to invade. I helped mobilize a global response — over 50 countries — to defend against Putin’s aggression.”
But her account glossed over one of the major foreign policy failures of the Biden-Harris administration: its inability and/or unwillingness to confront Vladimir Putin and deter the invasion in the first place. It was a natural follow-up to the Obama-Biden administration’s passive approach to Putin’s first aggression in Ukraine, in 2014, when Russia was allowed unimpeded to seize Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. That posture, in turn, was consistent with Barack Obama’s assurance to Putin in 2012 that he “would be more flexible” after his re-election.
As Biden’s sitting vice president, Harris has no latitude to announce her intention, if she were so inclined, to be “more flexible” with Ukraine by providing more potent weapons or removing the debilitating limitations on their use. Ukraine’s incursion into Russia this month exposes the timidity of the Obama-Biden-Harris national security approach, which has allowed fears of escalation to paralyze U.S. policy.
The most powerful and dangerous adversary the next administration will confront is communist China. Xi Jinping, watching the war in Ukraine, is learning things about the administration’s response to anti-Western aggression that will be useful in his plan to move against Taiwan.
Harris told the convention, “As president, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.” But under Biden, that commitment has not contemplated ejecting Russia from all Ukrainian territory. Applying U.S. thinking on Ukraine to a Taiwan scenario, Xi could well believe that, if China were to conduct a lightning seizure of a Taiwanese island — say, Kinmen (Quemoy) — a Harris-Walz administration would prefer to just live with it rather than risk triggering a major war with nuclear-armed China.
Harris had nothing to say about Taiwan and only a passing, anodyne reference to China, stating on that she would “make sure that we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence. That America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership.”
Harris, if she wins, would have the opportunity to do something no president has had the courage or foresight to do: issue a formal, credible declaration of commitment to defend Taiwan, thereby ending the dangerous U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity.
As to the fourth member of the anti-Western axis, North Korea, Harris took the occasion to lash out at her opponent: “I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un, who are rooting for Trump. Because they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable — because he wants to be an autocrat himself.”
Therein lies the depressing alternatives on national security still facing American voters, even with Biden no longer in the picture: a weak, temporizing Harris-Walz administration or an openly isolationist, pro-authoritarian Trump-Vance team.
As Nikki Haley often said in her campaign, “We have a country to save.” It is not too late for a credible conservative Republican to step up and rescue the country.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute.
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