U.S. President Joe Biden has pitched himself as a transitional figure—someone who could right the ship after former President Donald Trump’s mercurial tenure while a new generation of Democrats readied for the future. On matters of foreign policy, it often felt as though Biden had one foot in the past and another in the present. His worldview is shaped by the Cold War and steeped in conventional notions of American indispensability. Yet his foreign-policy legacy will also include ending the United States’ longest war and engaging in creative diplomacy, including the kind that led to the release of American prisoners from Russia last week.
U.S. President Joe Biden has pitched himself as a transitional figure—someone who could right the ship after former President Donald Trump’s mercurial tenure while a new generation of Democrats readied for the future. On matters of foreign policy, it often felt as though Biden had one foot in the past and another in the present. His worldview is shaped by the Cold War and steeped in conventional notions of American indispensability. Yet his foreign-policy legacy will also include ending the United States’ longest war and engaging in creative diplomacy, including the kind that led to the release of American prisoners from Russia last week.
Now that she is atop the presidential ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris must define her own approach to the world. The choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate might help. As a Midwestern leader attuned to the preferences of heartland voters, who has spent more years in the Army National Guard than in professional politics, there is little indication Walz is invested in the stale foreign-policy ideas Washington continues to feed itself.
Biden’s foreign-policy slogan, “America is back,” was a double-edged sword. For some voters, it heralded a welcome return to pre-Trump normalcy. For others, it signaled an uncritical reversion to a status quo that is neither politically popular nor strategically wise. Harris offered a glimpse at a more forward-looking vision during her presidential campaign launch last month. Her rallying cry of “We are not going back” is ostensibly about Trump-era policies, but it could equally apply to the ossified thinking of much of America’s national security leadership.
If polls are any indication, many of those cheering Harris are disinclined to return to an era when notions of American exceptionalism justified ill-fated regime-change wars, when the United States saw itself as democracy’s lone arsenal and “indispensable” defender, when criticism of Israel was tantamount to heresy, and when revamping the U.S.-Europe relationship elicited accusations of abandoning allies. Harris might yet develop a more pragmatic and progressive foreign policy, pursuing a strategy of “what can be, unburdened by what has been.” This line—which Harris has repeated often—has become a sort of mantra for her. When applied to foreign policy, it could inform a pragmatic, forward-looking realism that’s all too rare in Washington.
This sentiment aligns with a growing expert consensus. A recent Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study concluded that the United States’ current approach to the world is “poorly adapted to the challenges of today and tomorrow.” It also noted a widespread demand among analysts for “a major strategic reorientation.” This reorientation could be from an everything-everywhere-all-at-once approach to a more judicious and strategic use of American might.
Harris and Walz have an advantage over Republicans on shifting attitudes toward Israel. Americans’ support for unconditionally backing Israel decreases with every younger generation, while concern for Palestinian suffering increases. This isn’t limited to college activists; polling shows significant attitudinal differences even between 60-year-olds and 40-year-olds. Across demographics, regardless of ethnicity or age, there is broad support for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Nevertheless, pro-Israel sentiment remains strong in the United States, particularly among more moderate voters, requiring Harris to toe a fine line as she tries to court a broader base of support. This is no small task: Harris must shore up the U.S.-Israel partnership while calling out the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The vice president has undoubtedly seen the polls: Arab American voters, who gave Biden nearly twice as many votes as Trump in 2020, were poised to support Trump more than Biden in the upcoming election before Biden dropped out in July. Some activists went so far as to label him “Genocide Joe,” insisting he allowed Israel to indiscriminately bomb civilians in Gaza. These constituencies are concentrated in critical battleground states like Pennsylvania and Michigan—a state where more than 100,000 voters cast ballots for “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary.
In fact, the tension over Israel and the war in Gaza may have ultimately played into Harris’s decision to choose Walz over the other vice president finalist: Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Activists railed loudly against Shapiro over his pro-Israel stance in recent weeks. (Some argue he was unfairly criticized because he is Jewish.)
The allure of generational change isn’t exclusive to the Democratic ticket. Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, offers a similar break from the past, articulating a new approach to U.S.-Europe relations. He has been critical of U.S. allies like Germany, asking why the United States subsidizes “idiotic German energy policy and weak defense policy.” He has also been a proponent of wealthy European allies leading efforts to support Ukraine and taking more responsibility for security on the continent.
However provocatively expressed, Vance’s proposal appeals to the modest international ambitions of many moderate voters. Democratic strategists should take note before reflexively accusing Vance of doing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding when he criticizes Biden’s open-ended, cost-incurred commitment to Ukraine’s defense. One of us led a survey that recently revealed that Americans are more than twice as likely to favor a negotiated settlement in Ukraine than not, and that they prioritize de-escalation over Ukraine’s full territorial restoration.
This sentiment reflects a war-weary nation that is still nursing the wounds of protracted and costly engagements from multidecade misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Grandiose pronouncements equating unlimited aid to Ukraine with the very survival of democracy itself, as Biden has made—frustrating some on his national security staff—are more likely to elicit skepticism than enthusiasm from independent voters. So it’s auspicious that Harris, at least out of the gate, has departed from such rhetoric.
Walz may help Harris reinvest in diplomacy and abandon America’s reflex for world-saving military interventionism. He ran for Congress in 2006 on opposition to the Iraq War, later led a group of Democrats urging then-President Barack Obama to abstain from war with Syria, and was an early co-sponsor of a war powers resolution that tried to end U.S. troop involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. He was also a vocal supporter of the Iran deal and saw the mutual benefits of opening up trade between Cuba and the United States.
The United States has long played the role of NATO’s backbone and Europe’s security guarantor. While this structure has successfully deterred Russian aggression against member states, it has also fostered European dependence and hindered the development of an integrated continental defense industrial base. Today’s geopolitical realities—a strengthening China and a weakening Europe—demand a recalibration of U.S. foreign-policy priorities and resources.
The Republican ticket has more successfully articulated the need for greater European self-reliance. If Harris and Walz reaffirm the importance of European allies while praising Europe’s progress on security and advocating for a more balanced trans-Atlantic partnership, they would present a more responsible alternative to their Republican rivals. The pair can acknowledge public skepticism of the status quo without engaging in strategic folly.
As they seek to break with foreign-policy orthodoxy, both tickets will have to resist stubborn, obsolete tenets within their parties. Trump and Vance must reconcile the GOP’s hawkish stance on China with the non-hawkish views of younger voters. Harris bears the weight of the Biden administration’s legacy, including its more unpopular policies that may alienate the next generation of Democratic voters. But clinging to continuity in a rapidly changing world is as politically risky as it is geopolitically feckless.
Who will offer a new vision for the purpose and priorities of American power—not in the world that was but in the world that will be? Whoever does will be more likely to win the chance to make that vision a reality.
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