If you want to learn more about the U.S. Democratic Party’s foreign-policy vision as the Democratic National Convention (DNC) gets underway this week, you have two options: a webpage that apparently hasn’t been updated in three years or a massive PDF document that is still written as if President Joe Biden, not Vice President Kamala Harris, is the party’s candidate.
If you want to learn more about the U.S. Democratic Party’s foreign-policy vision as the Democratic National Convention (DNC) gets underway this week, you have two options: a webpage that apparently hasn’t been updated in three years or a massive PDF document that is still written as if President Joe Biden, not Vice President Kamala Harris, is the party’s candidate.
The outdated platform and slapdash messaging on foreign policy represent a significant misstep on the part of a party machine looking to distinguish itself from former President Donald Trump’s Republican Party. But it also may reflect how little top Democratic strategists believe foreign policy will factor into voters’ decisions in the upcoming presidential election.
The Democrats’ main website has a section on “Renewing American leadership” that, at the time of this writing, talks about the war in Afghanistan in present tense (the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021) and makes no mention of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that has pushed the Middle East to the brink of a full-scale regional conflict. Evidently, party leaders haven’t yet copied and pasted in the new 2024 platform and have just left the old one from 2020 up on the site.
As for the Democrats’ actual 2024 policy platform document, which passed by a largely ceremonial voice vote on Monday before being released to the public (though you still have to do a bit of work to find it on their site), it contains at least 20 references to Biden’s “second term.” The 92-page document, which lays out the party’s vision for the next four years should it clinch the presidential election in November, was finalized by the platform committee on July 16—less than a week before Biden announced his decision to step aside, paving the way for Harris to secure the party’s nomination.
The foreign-policy section—which comes at the end—is principally a recitation of Biden’s achievements and policy as president, with the promise of continuity in a second term. Elements of the section on China hew closely to (at times copying word-for-word) an essay that Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, wrote in Foreign Affairs last year. (In that piece, written shortly before the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that launched the ongoing war in Gaza, Sullivan also proclaimed that the Middle East region is “quieter than it has been for decades.” The online version of the piece was later edited to strike that phrase.)
All of this speaks to the unusual circumstances of this year’s race. “Nobody’s ever seen this before, where you get a nominee basically three weeks before the convention,” said Joel Rubin, a Democratic strategist who served as a deputy assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration.
Biden’s decision in July to halt his reelection campaign and hand the reins over to Harris jolted what had been an otherwise lackluster race between two men whose track records as president are well known to the U.S. public. In the weeks since, Harris’s record as a prosecutor, senator, and vice president have been scrutinized for clues on how she may govern and what her priorities would be as commander in chief.
Aside from an economic speech last Friday, Harris’s campaign has offered few details as to her agenda, and she has yet to do any substantive interviews with the press since becoming her party’s candidate. Her only remarks on foreign policy have come in response to activists interrupting a rally to protest Israel’s war in Gaza, in which she reaffirmed the need for a cease-fire and the release of hostages.
Despite its outdated references, the policy document represents the most detailed outline yet of the Democrats’ foreign-policy platform—which would likely be reflected in a Harris presidency—with a focus on strengthening alliance structures in the Indo-Pacific to counter China as well as in Europe to back Ukraine in its war against Russia.
“The threat posed by Russia transcends its war of aggression in Ukraine. Russia is enlisting North Korea, Iran and China in its efforts to attack freedom across the world through military equipment sales and economic partnerships,” the document states.
On China, the Democrats have touted the Biden administration’s attempted strategy of “de-risking” economic ties between the two countries without fully decoupling the economy, as well as the strategy of blocking China’s access to sensitive U.S. technologies deemed critical to national security.
The outdated documents may present a missed opportunity for Harris and her team to hash out a clear foreign-policy platform at the DNC, the marquee political event for the Democratic Party to cement its unity and policies ahead of what is expected to be a difficult election.
“There’s a tendency among some to say foreign policy doesn’t matter, and I think it should,” said Matt Duss of the Center for International Policy, a progressive think tank. “Obviously this platform was drafted to reflect President Biden as the candidate—that was a process that was already essentially complete when President Biden decided to step down. I understand it would’ve been a tough process to go back and redraft it in a way that reflected more accurately the views of Vice President Harris, but that’s why it is important for her and her team to articulate where they might take things in a different direction.”
Yet the dearth of substantive foreign-policy language in the platform may not matter much at the ballot box, administration and campaign insiders say, as the DNC and recent polling shows that Harris’s surprise entrance into the race has electrified the Democratic base and narrowed Trump’s chances for an electoral victory.
Leaving her foreign policy in the eye of the beholder, for now, could also be a shrewd move, said Rubin, the Democratic strategist. “That’s the mark of a smart politician,” he said.
This is most apparent with regard to the Israel-Hamas war, where both progressive critics of the administration’s handling of the conflict and staunch supporters of Israel see cause for optimism in a Harris presidency.
However, Duss said that foreign policy will still be laced into the Democratic party’s platform and discussions in the DNC, even if explicit conversations on wars and diplomatic deals don’t take center stage.
“Foreign policy will definitely factor in [to the election cycle], but it will factor in in ways that people don’t immediately recognize as traditional foreign policy,” he said. “When we talk about climate, when we talk about immigration, when we talk about post-neoliberal economics, these all have enormous foreign-policy implications.”
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