The Dems need a more muscular approach abroad

In an interconnected world filled to the brim with miscreants, speak moderately but very clearly, and carry a huge stick.

By Robert Hamilton and Dan Perry

The nervous anticipation of yet wider chaos in the Middle East serves to clarify the immense choices facing the United States’ electorate in November. The coming days may further raise the stakes — and both major US parties need to think hard.

President Joe Biden bestrode the narrow earth as a values-oriented colossus with loftier thoughts than who paid for what — or at least that was the idea. It aimed to contrast with the transactionalist Donald Trump – but much of the world looked on, surveyed the actual results and often identified weakness. It’s a vulnerability for Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden’s successor as the Democratic nominee for president.

The key foreign policy message the Trump campaign can be expected to deploy is that the Democrats inherited stability and leave “a world in flames” – from devastating wars in Ukraine and Gaza to possible escalation in the Middle East and fears of an emboldened China – having gotten away with gutting the autonomy of Hong Kong – finally attacking Taiwan.

The irony is that Trump had actually admired the disruptor-dictators who cause such mayhem – from Russia’s Vladimir Putin to China’s Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. But in Trumpworld’s telling of the story, what looks like infantile admiration and dangerous appeasement is actually deft maneuvering that prevents “forever wars.” Harris may find it difficult to disassociate herself from a Biden foreign policy that in fact does allow for plenty of criticism.

The example most people cite is the earliest – the shambolic August 2021 pullout from Afghanistan, eight months into Biden’s term, in which the U.S. appeared to flee while abandoning thousands of locals who had helped its efforts over two decades.

Sometimes forgotten is the fact that the pullout had been negotiated by the Trump administration with the Taliban in the Doha Agreement of February 2020.  But the implementation did not have to look as it did – and the Biden administration was extremely forgiving when the Taliban violated their commitment to good-faith negotiations with the Western-backed Afghan government to establish a permanent ceasefire and a political roadmap for the future of Afghanistan. This medieval mafia overran Kabul and giddily resumed their cruel oppression of women, to deafening silence from the West.

All of this not only undid years of effort and investment but also signaled to the world that the U.S. might no longer be willing or able to uphold the values of democracy and human rights – or stand by allies in the face of determined opposition.

That might have encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine six months later.