The U.S. Republican and Democratic parties have chosen their presidential nominees. As part of that process, they have also issued official statements—the so-called party platforms—stating what they stand for and propose to do should they emerge victorious in November. It’s tempting to go through them looking for signs of how Donald Trump/J.D. Vance or Kamala Harris/Tim Walz will govern, but having read through them both, my advice to you is: Don’t bother. When it comes to foreign policy, at least, neither document tells you very much about what to expect in 2025 and beyond.
The U.S. Republican and Democratic parties have chosen their presidential nominees. As part of that process, they have also issued official statements—the so-called party platforms—stating what they stand for and propose to do should they emerge victorious in November. It’s tempting to go through them looking for signs of how Donald Trump/J.D. Vance or Kamala Harris/Tim Walz will govern, but having read through them both, my advice to you is: Don’t bother. When it comes to foreign policy, at least, neither document tells you very much about what to expect in 2025 and beyond.
To be sure, the two documents are quite different animals. The Republican platform is a Trumpian word salad that reads More like One of his Incoherent, ODDLY capitalized Tweets than a serious programmatic statement, let alone a blueprint for governing or managing relations with other countries. It invokes most of his familiar grievance-laden themes, but it’s vague to the point of uselessness, which is probably the point. It’s the political equivalent one of those old ads for Trump University: a con job.
By contrast, the Democratic platform is long, earnest, wonkish, and kind of boring, and it makes far more promises than any president could possibly keep. It presents a rosy-eyed appraisal of President Joe Biden’s foreign-policy achievements, highlighting the good things (i.e., improved relations with allies) and spinning like mad to portray its handling of Ukraine and Gaza in a positive light. There’s enough substance here to merit some attention, except for the fact that it doesn’t tell you all that much about what Harris will do if she’s elected.
“So how can we hope to interpret these documents? For starters, it’s important to understand what a party platform is and how it gets negotiated. They are mostly a reflection of who holds sufficient political power within the party to get their views expressed in writing in the document. In the case of the GOP, its 2024 platform shows you the near-total control that Trump now exercises over what used to be a proud and principled political organization.
As for the Democrats, their document reflects the main foreign-policy commitments of key interest groups and stakeholders—and especially big donors—which is why it puts a positive spin on Biden’s decidedly mixed record and rejects trade policies that “let middle-class jobs move offshore, hollowed out our supply chains, rewarded corporate CEOs instead of valuing workers, and failed to generate inclusive economic growth.” While rejecting “forever wars,” it still depicts a world where every region is vital and insists that the United States “must continue to lead on the world stage.” Call it liberal hegemony lite.
So why shouldn’t you take these statements seriously? The first and most obvious reason is that presidents have enormous latitude when it comes to foreign policy, and they aren’t bound by anything that gets written for the purposes of winning a campaign or attracting financial contributions. Presidents can’t simply ignore what major donors or other interest groups might want, but they aren’t bound by them, especially early in their terms, when they don’t have to obsess about reelection. They’ll need support on Capitol Hill to pass a budget and get their domestic agendas authorized, but what a president does in foreign and defense policy is mostly up to them.
Moreover, key foreign-policy decisions won’t be made by the platform committee, by powerful party figures in Congress, or by prominent governors and the party chair. Instead, they will be made by a small inner circle of aides and appointees who are chosen primarily for their loyalty to president and their compatibility with that president’s worldview. Sen. Bernie Sanders helped Biden get elected in 2020, for example, but none of his close associates got important jobs in the Biden administration, and his views on foreign policy were consistently ignored. It’s true that former President Barack Obama sought to unify the party by appointing former rival Hillary Clinton as secretary of state in 2009, but he didn’t give her much to do in the job and relied instead on his own White House aides and the National Security Council to make and implement major foreign-policy decisions.
Third, the arguments and positions that sound good in a party platform and play well in a campaign often look different once the election is over and an administration takes office. During the 1992 campaign, for example, Democratic candidate Bill Clinton repeatedly criticized incumbent President George H. W. Bush for turning a blind eye to Chinese human rights abuses, only to discover in office that his own leverage on Beijing was limited and that it made more sense to downplay this issue. Similarly, the 2020 Democratic Party platform was harshly critical of Trump’s reliance on tariffs and his abandonment of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, but Biden kept many of the Trump-era economic restrictions in place and never fulfilled his campaign pledge to reenter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Tehran.
Party platforms are also misleading because they overpromise and underdeliver. They are a wish list of things that a party wants to convince you it will accomplish, so they downplay or omit all the political obstacles that will make it hard to bring these goals about. As noted, although presidents have considerable individual authority in the conduct of foreign policy, they must still deal with entrenched bureaucracies (especially in the Defense Department) and pushback from interest groups, lobbies, and the media, not to mention the opposing party. Because time and political capital are finite quantities, some of the lofty goals contained in the party platform inevitably end up on the back burner, if not entirely abandoned.
But the most important reason that party platforms should be (mostly) ignored is simply that no campaign can anticipate what is going to happen after its candidate takes office. Or as former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan reportedly quipped when asked what challenged politicians most: “Events, my dear boy, events.” The United States is very powerful, but it is still not the only important global actor, and surprising stuff happens all the time. Former President George W. Bush didn’t see Sept. 11 coming; Obama was blindsided by the Arab Spring; Trump was befuddled by COVID-19; and Biden’s foreign policy was hijacked by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
It’s a safe bet that whoever wins in November will face some big issues that weren’t even mentioned in the respective party platforms, and nobody is going to dig up this document for guidance on how to respond to them.
I don’t mean to be cynical: Party platforms do provide a sense of what a party aspires to, and they are useful for rallying the faithful, generating some energy, and presenting a clear message. But what they don’t reveal is what the next president is going to do after January 2025, and nobody is going to go back to study these documents once the election is over.
So if you’re pressed for time, you can probably skip them now.
The post On Foreign Policy, U.S. Parties Don’t Have the Power appeared first on Foreign Policy.
