The vice president Kamala Harris touted her bipartisan support during Tuesday night’s debate, notably highlighting endorsements from two prominent Republicans.
“I actually got the endorsement of 200 Republicans,” she said, “including former Vice President Dick Cheney and Congresswoman Liz Cheney.”
Harris welcoming the Cheneys into her tent is not a huge shock in itself. What Reese did on Jan. 6 at the committee meeting made her popular with Democrats. Dick is 83, old enough to seem unlikely to start a reckless war, and was long ago surpassed as the Democratic Party’s top monster by Trump himself.
But if Cheney is no longer a Republican voter, she remains an unrepentant hawk, advocating the aggressive use of American military power to achieve American policy goals. And Harris’s embrace of the chief architect of the George W. Bush administration’s disastrous militarism was one of several signals that suggested fans of Cheney’s neoconservative foreign policy would feel comfortable with her as president.
On Gaza, Ukraine, Afghanistan and other national security issues, Harris appears to have been deliberately careful to appeal to the interventionist consensus of the Washington foreign policy establishment. As a result, Harris has made the latest, and perhaps most explicit, suggestion that she will not move much further to the left on national security than President Joe Biden or former President Barack Obama. That may or may not be good politics, but it is disappointing for many Americans who hoped Harris would pursue a more restrained anti-war foreign policy than Biden.
Harris, who wants to make the election result about Trump’s unfitness for office, is clearly trying to play it safe on national security, as she has on other policy areas. But what’s notable is what playing it safe entails.
Nowhere is that dynamic more evident than in Israel. While a small group of pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with Philadelphia police outside the debate, Harris responded to a question about reaching a ceasefire in Gaza by emphasizing her support for Israel’s “right to defend itself.” Of course, she then reversed course. “It’s also true that too many innocent Palestinians have died,” she said, using now-familiar cues. “Children, mothers. What we know is that this war has to end.” She also called for a two-state solution. But Harris’s formulation doesn’t really depart from Biden’s policies, which have so far failed to end the war.
On Tuesday, Harris appeared to suggest that the U.S. would limit efforts to deter Israel from taking actions that could spark a broader regional war. “One thing I will always assure you is that I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, particularly with regard to any threats that Iran and Iran and its proxies pose to Israel,” Harris said.
On Ukraine, Harris has focused on differentiating herself from Trump, who has touted his cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and repeated dubious claims that he could end the war “before I become president” by allowing Russia to hold onto Ukrainian territory it now occupies.
Harris appealed to “the 800,000 Polish Americans in Pennsylvania,” arguing that without American support, “Putin would be sitting in Kiev, watching Poland and the rest of Europe.” What the vice president did not mention was that Poland, as a NATO member, enjoys protections that Ukraine does not: mutual defense agreements with the United States and its allies. Russia has invaded former Soviet republics, but since NATO was founded, it has never attacked an ally to risk nuclear war.
Harris also did not offer her own prescription for ending the war in Ukraine without Ukraine, which is currently losing territory and is working toward the increasingly absurd goal of reclaiming all the territory Russia has seized since 2014. (Neither she nor Trump have said anything about whether the U.S. should allow Ukraine to launch missiles supplied by the U.S. or other countries at targets more than 60 miles from Russian territory.)
Harris “acted as if 2022 was the year the U.S. would continue to fund the war, with no real explanation of who would benefit from continuing in that direction, not even Ukraine,” wrote Kelly Boca-Vlahos, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute, a think tank that advocates for more dovish U.S. policy.
On Tuesday, Harris cited policy goals that included “having the most lethal fighting force in the world.” When asked about the deaths of U.S. troops during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Harris said, “I agree with President Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.” But the vice president also criticized Trump for negotiating ahead of the withdrawal. “He negotiated directly with the terrorist organization, the Taliban,” Harris said. Harris argued that Trump gave too much away in those talks and failed to include the then-Afghan government. That may be true, but her response ended up supporting an end to a 20-year war while ridiculing the very existence of negotiations with the group the U.S. was fighting in that war.
Harris also mocked Trump for exchanging “love letters” with Kim Jong Un. The details of Trump’s diplomatic efforts are highly controversial, but Harris pointed to negotiations with the Taliban and North Korea, adding that the U.S. should not be talking to bad actors at all. This kind of criticism has come more often from the hard right, and is reminiscent of the attacks on Obama by Republicans like John McCain and Mitt Romney (whom Harris named Tuesday).
Speaking of Afghanistan, Harris also made the interesting remark that “there is not a single American soldier on active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world today.” That’s true if you don’t think about the roughly 3,500 American soldiers in Syria and Iraq who are in war zones. But many of those soldiers are in bases that have been targeted by rocket attacks from Iran’s allies. In January, three American soldiers were killed and 30 wounded in a drone strike in Jordan near the Syrian border.
A Harris campaign spokesperson did not respond to questions about the statement. But the vice president’s comments do not suggest she sees an urgent need to end the U.S. military presence in the Middle East.
Dick Cheney, who helped send American troops to Iraq 20 years ago, probably approved of it.
Noah Ranard contributed to this article.
