The Foreign Policy Stakes of 2024
Mike Watson
November 2, 2024Foreign policy is not usually the priority for American voters on Election Day. But as the situation darkens from Topeka to Tel Aviv, Americans and their overseas friends are looking to Washington for reassurance. Both major candidates present themselves as a source of certainty, but they are asking the American people to take enormous gambles. And the stakes are growing higher every day.
Kamala Harris portrays herself as a steady hand at the wheel. In her first major address as a candidate, at the Democratic convention, she claimed, "after decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security." From her perch in the Naval Observatory, she had "confronted threats to our security, negotiated with foreign leaders, strengthened our alliances, and engaged with our brave troops overseas." She promised to "be steadfast in advancing our security and values abroad" and to "ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world."
Her record inspires less confidence. She was the "last person in the room" when Joe Biden initiated the Afghanistan debacle. And as China’s military gained strength and Russian troops prowled menacingly around Ukraine, she sprang into action, directing the intelligence community to … root out gender-biased language from their reports and give analysts remedial sensitivity training. Somehow, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin recovered from this audacious maneuver.
Like most of the coastal elites, she has not developed a new seriousness of purpose despite the major wars in Europe and the Middle East. She reportedly shares Biden’s hesitancy about helping Ukraine win and was one of the first senior Democrats to criticize Israel’s counteroffensive against Hamas. When a heckler recently accused Israel of committing genocide, she replied, "What he’s talking about, it’s real." It is not.
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https://freebeacon.com/columns/the-foreign-policy-stakes-of-2024/
