The Foreign Policy Establishment Licks Its Chops for Harris 

Any discussion of what U.S. foreign policy under a President Harris might look like must begin with a recognition that every Democratic president beginning with Truman has ended up being captured by the very institutions that presidents are ostensibly elected to oversee. The one exception was murdered in office in 1963.

Generally speaking, Harris has three foreign policy templates from which to choose: Achesonianism, reluctant realism, and progressive internationalism.

The foreign policy template that has governed the behavior of Democratic presidents since the days of President Truman and his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, can be defined by an ingrained belief in the efficacy of American military might and the right and duty to act unilaterally and against international law in the name of security; a hard-wired deference to the prerogatives of the U.S. national security and intelligence bureaucracy; a fear of appearing “weak” on national security and defense issues by their political opponents; a barely concealed disdain for the allegedly “isolationist” tendencies of everyday Americans.

While much of what defines Achesonianism could also fairly characterize the foreign policy of President Barack Obama, his willingness to buck AIPAC and the most powerful of the Democratic party’s donor base in pursuing the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran, his short-lived attempts to normalize and stabilize relations with Cuba and Russia, and his refusal—at the last minute—to launch a full-scale war on Syria make him more of a reluctant realist than a full-bore Achesonian.

The less said about the third Democratic foreign-policy template, progressive internationalism, the better. As I noted in a 2019 cover story for The American Conservative, progressive foreign policy too often glosses over

national context, history, and culture in favor of an all-encompassing theory that puts the ‘authoritarian’ nature of the governments they are criticizing at the center of their diagnosis…Progressive values crusades bear more than a passing resemblance to the neoconservative crusades to remake the world in the American self-image.

Progressive foreign-policy influencers remain convinced of their clout when no evidence for it exists. Outside a small community of “experts” who have somehow convinced themselves that funding a $100 billion proxy war against nuclear-armed Russia is necessary because it will somehow advance LGBTQ rights in Severodonetsk, there is little to indicate that Kamala Harris is in sympathy with their agenda—or indeed knows they exist.

From what little one can tell, given the scarcity of her public statements on such matters, Harris will almost certainly staff her administration with Achesonians who, over the past several weeks, have dutifully lined up to endorse her candidacy.

Notable among these was that of former CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta. Panetta’s speech to the DNC in Chicago was remarkable if only because it was so militaristic that it caused some in the convention to disrupt his address with chants of “No More War.” According to Panetta, “Trump tells tyrants like Putin they can do whatever the hell they want, Kamala Harris tells tyrants the hell you can. Not on my watch.”

Oh, wow.

Panetta’s speech won plaudits from the ever-predictable Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who gushed, “Panetta made clear no one is going to call Democrats weak on national security.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic nominee is mining a vein of support in what was once the center of gravity within the Republican party. A group of over 200 former aides and other assorted PR and campaign types who once worked for Mitt Romney, John McCain, and George W. Bush have been busy advertising their apostasy, releasing a letter endorsing the Harris/Walz ticket.

Other prominent Republican defectors include the former Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, while neocon royalty Liz Cheney is expected to endorse Harris soon. 

Clearly, the establishment likes what it sees in Kamala Harris. Whether that speaks well of her candidacy is a very different matter.