It’s Debatable: The Stimson Center’s Emma Ashford and the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig debate pressing issues for policymakers.
Emma Ashford: Good morning, Matt! It’s almost September here in Washington, and that means just one thing: The presidential race is really heating up.
Not that it was a quiet summer exactly, with an assassination attempt on Donald Trump and Joe Biden dropping out of the race, making way for a new Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris. But we’re entering the home stretch of the election now, and I thought it might be a good time for us to finally broach the question of what this election could mean for U.S. foreign policy. Did you watch the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention (DNC)?
Matthew Kroenig: Hi, Emma! You’re right. School is starting, people are returning from summer vacation, and the presidential election is entering the final stretch.
I watched the DNC last week. As usual, there was not much focus on foreign policy—or policy of any kind really. Much of the event, and Harris’s acceptance speech as nominee, focused on introducing the new Democratic candidate to the country by telling her life story.
There were two foreign-policy items that struck me, however. First, it did seem that the Democrats were trying to move to the middle and reclaim patriotism from the Republicans. Harris called the United States “the greatest nation on Earth,” that she would “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” and so on.
Moreover, much of the imagery (American flags, football players on stage, etc.) seemed to emphasize more conservative themes.
EA: Yeah, that was certainly a notable shift. Democrats are always keen to be perceived as tough on national security to counteract the traditional idea that they’re dovish or anti-war. And that problem is worsened for Harris by the fact she’s a woman. There’s no actual evidence that female leaders are less warlike than male leaders—in fact, there’s evidence that the opposite is true! Think of Margaret Thatcher during the Falklands War or any number of female queens in history, for example. But it’s still a perception that women such as Harris and Hillary Clinton have had to try to counteract.
MK: Yes. My former Ph.D. student Madison Schramm and her co-author Alexandra Stark have conducted statistical analysis showing that female leaders are actually more likely to initiate conflict. They argue that female politicians need to be seen as even tougher than men (“Iron Ladies,” as they call them) to rise and retain power in what has been a male-dominated space.
EA: It was more than just imagery and reinforcing the idea that Harris could be tough in foreign policy, though. I was struck by the choice to have former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta give a speech on the final night of the convention—and by all the talk about America as the indispensable nation and defender of global democracy. That language has been more traditionally coded as neoconservative than Democratic, but it seems that Harris might be continuing the Biden administration’s rhetoric on that point. They also criticized Trump as soft on Russia and implied that his foreign policy was un-American.
Whether or not this actually tells us anything about Harris’s own foreign-policy proclivities, I am certainly concerned that the Democratic Party seems to be moving in a much more hawkish direction and openly embracing “Never Trump” neoconservative thinkers such as Bill Kristol and the more than 200 former staffers to John McCain, Mitt Romney, and George W. Bush who endorsed Harris this week.
MK: I think it probably says more about electoral strategy than her proclivities. Winning elections is all about growing the coalition.
I was also watching closely to see how she would discuss the Israel-Hamas war. This issue has divided Democrats, with older, centrist party members supporting Israel and younger, progressive voters empathizing more with the plight of the Palestinians.
Harris, like her boss Biden, tried to have it both ways, saying both that she would defend Israel and that she would advance the Palestinian “right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.” I noted, however, that she said one sentence about Israel and a couple of paragraphs on the Palestinians, I think showing where her real sympathies lie.
There might be daylight between her and Biden on this issue.
EA: That’s reading an awful lot into a few words, I think. The DNC refused to have a Palestinian speaker at the convention, and Harris herself has been broadly criticized by the left for not shifting away from Biden on Israel! Maybe she is secretly pro-Palestinian, but if so, she’s hiding it remarkably well.
That said, it would honestly be surprising if Harris weren’t somewhat different from Biden on this issue; the president is wildly out of step with much of his own party on the Israeli-Palestinian question. But I think this really gets at the big issue with Harris: On foreign policy—as on most other policy issues—we just don’t have a good idea of where she actually stands. She had very little foreign-policy experience prior to her time as vice president.
Her time in the Senate suggests that she might be more progressive-leaning on foreign policy—she voted in favor of bills barring arms sales to Saudi Arabia, opposing the war in Yemen, and in favor of war powers resolutions that would have prevented Trump from starting a war with Iran. But she’s never had it as a priority issue. The Biden administration mostly pushed her to focus on Latin America, where a few successes are probably mostly offset by her association with the border issue in the minds of voters.
It’s no surprise that many progressives see this as a potential opportunity, but the convention also suggests that there’s a lot of danger here: A candidate whose opinions are unformed and blurry on foreign policy is more easily led, and if “being tough” looks like a good attack vector against Trump, then she might end up with a foreign policy that progressives won’t like at all.
Long story short: This election might actually be pitting two more restrained (or at least realist) candidates against each other, but if they both keep yelling about how they’re tougher than the other, you’d never notice it!
Shall we pivot back to real-world events?
MK: Yes, let’s stick with the Middle East. For our past several columns, we have been waiting for the threatened Hezbollah and Iranian retaliation against Israel for killing top Hezbollah and Hamas leaders in Beirut and Tehran, respectively.
It may have happened this week.
On Sunday, Hezbollah prepared to conduct a drone and rocket attack against northern Israel. Israel saw the attack coming and launched a preemptive strike against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. In the end, there was not much damage, and both sides are now seeking a de-escalation.
We may have avoided a broader, regional war—although Iran is still threatening to carry out a reprisal at a time and place of its choosing.
EA: This certainly does appear to have fizzled out, which is a good thing when you consider the alternatives. Mostly, it highlights the utter futility of the current situation: Israel is fighting a failing war in Gaza, losing support internationally, and empowering domestic hard-liners with every week that passes. Iran seems to know that it doesn’t want a bigger war but can’t figure out what it actually wants. The violence will just keep flaring up until some broader resolution is found.
Meanwhile, the United States has rushed huge quantities of naval force—carriers, submarines, and destroyers—to the Middle East, leaving Asia with almost no U.S. presence. It’s absolutely absurd. The use of U.S. forces is supposed to counter genuine threats.
MK: If by a “broader resolution,” you mean a peace deal between Hamas and Israel, I don’t think that will be sufficient. Iran will still be Iran, and it is willing to fight to the last Arab in pursuit of its goal of weakening Israel.
The deployment of U.S. forces to the region was not so absurd. It has appeared to work in deterring Iranian retaliation, at least for now. Why else has Tehran not struck back if not for fear of possible larger-scale U.S. or Israeli retaliation?
I agree, however, that it is absurd that the U.S. military does not have enough forces to project power in its priority theaters simultaneously, and that is something that I hope the next president will rectify in the defense budget. With China’s increasing aggression and threats to attack Taiwan, Washington needs to ensure sufficient military power to maintain peace in Asia.
EA: Most of these ships take years—or decades—to get through the procurement and manufacturing process. That doesn’t change the fact that Washington doesn’t have enough of them to prioritize both the Middle East and Asia now.
And then there is the brewing controversy at Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount, one of the holiest sites in both Islam and Judaism. In violation of the existing status quo—which says Jews can visit but not pray—Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir suggested that Israel should build a synagogue on the site. The Biden administration did criticize this move but is still unwilling to exercise any actual pressure on Israeli leaders to get the nationalist right in line.
MK: This is a matter to be settled through Israel’s internal domestic politics; Washington should butt out.
EA: Before we wrap up, I want to talk about Kursk. We debated it last time around, but there wasn’t a lot of information at that point. Now, we have a bit more clarity. Ukrainian forces have seized some Russian territory, and their rate of advance has slowed, suggesting they’re consolidating control in some of those areas. But I’m still unclear about the endgame here: This has obviously been a tactical success for the Ukrainians, but how do they turn this into political or strategic outcomes? The Russians continue to gain territory in the Donbas, and this incursion doesn’t significantly impact their ability to continue the war.
MK: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky argued this week that the offensive is intended to strengthen Ukraine’s position for future negotiations. Holding internationally recognized Russian sovereign territory does give Ukraine significant leverage. Previously, a simple cease-fire along the current lines would have been a clear win for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now, it would mean giving up some Russian territory. Putin can’t agree to those terms, creating space for horse-trading in any future negotiation.
Zelensky has also argued persuasively that the Biden White House and the West have been way too cautious about tripping Russian “red lines.” If a ground invasion of a nuclear power does not trigger nuclear war, then what will? He has argued that this demonstrates that the West should immediately lift any remaining restrictions on weapons transfers and how they are used. Washington should provide more long-range ATACMS and allow Ukraine to use them however it sees fit, including deep strikes within Russia.
As he colorfully put it, “The sick old man from Red Square, who constantly threatens everyone with a red button, will not dictate any of his red lines to us.”
EA: Ironically, this gets to something we’ve debated before: nuclear blackmail. It turns out that nuclear weapons aren’t particularly good for anything except deterrence of other nuclear weapons. But the risk was never that the Russians were about to immediately go nuclear; it was that we’d end up in a spiral of escalation that would draw the United States and its NATO allies directly into the war. That risk is still there.
I am skeptical that the Ukrainians will be able to turn this into significant gains at the negotiating table for two reasons. First, this incursion itself likely killed off the prospect of negotiations in the near future. It had been looking as if Ukraine and Russia might have moved toward the negotiating table early this summer; a variety of events, including the elevation of Harris and the changing U.S. presidential race, made that less likely. But the Kursk offensive probably put the nail in the coffin.
And second, all the resources that Ukraine uses to take and hold this territory have to come from somewhere else. Does it really benefit Ukraine if they hold in Kursk and losses elsewhere inside Ukraine accelerate? This is a big gamble, and while I hope the Ukrainians are right that they can leverage this win, I suspect they are wrong. The fact that Russian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is already out in the press arguing that any failure by Ukraine is entirely due to the failure of the West to provide arms without restrictions says to me that they’re not confident either.
MK: Well, I suspect peace is not going to break out in either region anytime soon. I think that means we will be back here to argue about it again in two weeks.
EA: Maybe by then we’ll have some details on Harris’s foreign-policy views.