A distressing number of my relatives, friends, and acquaintances have found themselves reduced to making a “choice” between the “lesser of two evils” in most elections. That ugly situation seems to be especially true regarding U.S. presidential elections, and the current contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris continues the distressing pattern.
I have long believed that U.S. foreign policy, especially issues of war and peace, should be the most important consideration when choosing a president. Close behind ought to be respect for civil liberties. Measured according to those standards, both Trump and Harris have dreadful track records.
Too many advocates of realism and restraint are still under the illusion that Trump shares their hopes for a more rational, cautious foreign policy. However, Trump largely gained that reputation because he criticized the Third World nation-building crusades of George W. Bush and Barack Obama in the 2016 election. When he was president, Trump’s foreign policy actually differed little from that of his predecessors, and it certainly showed very few signs of restraint. Indeed, with regard to both Iran and China, his conduct was even more hardline. For example, Trump regarded as a source of great pride his administration’s assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
Moreover, despite the campaign of the Democratic Party and its allies in the news media to paint Trump as Vladimir Putin’s puppet, U.S. policy toward Russia became more confrontational rather than less during Trump’s presidency. In addition, as the congressional votes in favor of continuing to pour U.S. weapons and money into Ukraine confirm, there is still a large contingent of conventional anti-Russian foreign policy hawks throughout the Republican Party.
However, voters who hope that Harris might pursue a more competent and less reckless foreign policy may be even more delusional than advocates of realism and restraint who back Trump. After all, she has been the number 2 official in an administration that has used Ukraine to wage a bloody and dangerous proxy war against Russia. In the process, Washington weakened the European Union’s economy and antagonized both large and midsize powers around the world who refused to join NATO’s crusade against Russia. The Biden administration’s knee-jerk support for Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians has further cost America support around the world.
Harris’s speech at the Democratic National Convention accepting her party’s presidential nomination also does not encourage hopes for a more prudent foreign policy. She denounced Trump for even being willing to talk to Putin, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, or other autocrats. Yet even during the worst days of the Cold War, U.S. leaders were willing to negotiate with Soviet officials, and several dangerous crises today (including tensions on the Korean Peninsula) are nearly certain to worsen if Harris is serious about refusing to communicate with U.S. adversaries.
The eagerness of Harris to receive the embrace of numerous ultra-hawkish GOP defectors should also make her Democratic and independent backers uneasy. It is alarming when she states that she is “honored” to have the support of Dick and Liz Cheney. Both Cheneys have horrid records on civil liberties and foreign policy. Harris backers should ponder why so many of the worst neoconservative hawks prefer her to Trump.
Equally troubling, Harris has been part of an administration that has gone to great lengths to harass and silence political critics—especially foreign policy critics. Sometimes the efforts have been direct and flagrant. More often, though, the administration has employed censorship by proxy, pressuring ostensibly private media companies to do the government’s dirty work. In any case, a chill has descended on debate and dissent during the Biden-Harris administration to a degree that has not been seen since the days of Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.That atmosphere of intimidation is especially apparent with respect to policy toward Russia and Ukraine.
Trump has made his own authoritarian inclinations quite clear, however. He has openly threatened to take revenge against political opponents who have orchestrated the series of court cases against him. On one occasion, he even stated that he intended to be “dictator for a day” to implement two parts of his policy agenda. Even if those who accuse Trump of leading an “insurrection” because of the violent demonstrations at the Capitol on January 6 are engaging in irresponsible hyperbole, there are ample reasons to be worried about his degree of respect for civil liberties and the Constitution in general.
Even voters who routinely succumb to the “lesser of two evils” rationale thus face a severe problem in the current election cycle. It is exceptionally difficult to determine whether Trump or Harris constitutes the lesser evil, especially with respect to foreign policy and civil liberties issues. Indeed, it is akin to trying to determine whether it would be better to ingest cyanide or strychnine.
Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute. He also served in several senior positions during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,300 articles on foreign policy, national security, and civil liberties topics. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).
