At this point, there might only be a few dozen undecided voters left in the United States, so writing a column to convince people to vote the right way may be pointless. But given that the election may come down to a few votes in some swing state, I’d feel bad afterward if I hadn’t done all I could. So here’s why I’m voting for Kamala Harris and why you should, too.
You might think a realist/restrainer like me would be leaning toward Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, especially given my dismay at how Biden and his colleagues have handled Gaza, the war in Ukraine, and some other foreign policy issues. Harris wasn’t responsible for those policies, but she has declined to say they were wrong when given the opportunity. Although her principal foreign policy advisor, Philip Gordon, has written sensible things about the limits of U.S. power and the folly of trying to remake whole regions in our image, there’s no sign that Harris’s own views on foreign policy lie outside the Beltway consensus or reflect a realist view of international affairs. By contrast, Trump and Vance say they want U.S. allies in Europe and Asia to bear more of the burden when it comes to their own defense, think it’s time to bring the war in Ukraine to a close, and regard the foreign policy “Blob” with skepticism if not outright contempt. That’s why some self-described realists are enamored with them, and you could easily conclude that I shared their view.
At this point, there might only be a few dozen undecided voters left in the United States, so writing a column to convince people to vote the right way may be pointless. But given that the election may come down to a few votes in some swing state, I’d feel bad afterward if I hadn’t done all I could. So here’s why I’m voting for Kamala Harris and why you should, too.
You might think a realist/restrainer like me would be leaning toward Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, especially given my dismay at how Biden and his colleagues have handled Gaza, the war in Ukraine, and some other foreign policy issues. Harris wasn’t responsible for those policies, but she has declined to say they were wrong when given the opportunity. Although her principal foreign policy advisor, Philip Gordon, has written sensible things about the limits of U.S. power and the folly of trying to remake whole regions in our image, there’s no sign that Harris’s own views on foreign policy lie outside the Beltway consensus or reflect a realist view of international affairs. By contrast, Trump and Vance say they want U.S. allies in Europe and Asia to bear more of the burden when it comes to their own defense, think it’s time to bring the war in Ukraine to a close, and regard the foreign policy “Blob” with skepticism if not outright contempt. That’s why some self-described realists are enamored with them, and you could easily conclude that I shared their view.
So why am I not ignoring Trump and Vance’s troubling deficiencies of character—which is putting it mildly—and planting a Trump-Vance sign in my yard? Let me count the ways.
First, as I noted repeatedly when Trump was president, he is not a realist, and you’re as likely to get sensible foreign policy from him as you were to get an education from Trump University. He is more accurately seen as a crude nationalist and unilateralist, and the “ism” that best captures him is narcissism. During his first term, he was better at garnering attention than making constructive diplomatic gains, which is why his reality show summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin went nowhere. He didn’t end any “forever wars” during his first term, gave the Defense Department more money that it didn’t need, and was perfectly content firing missiles into foreign countries to kill leaders he didn’t like. He was impulsive, crude, inattentive, and incapable of forging a clear strategy and sticking to it, which is why his four years in office were devoid of genuine foreign-policy achievements. The much-ballyhooed Abraham Accords don’t count, as they helped lay the groundwork for the carnage that is now convulsing the Middle East, just as critics had warned. (That’s what you get when a president lets his unqualified son-in-law play diplomat in a volatile region.)
And let’s not forget that Trump allowed Iran to restart its nuclear program by leaving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, abandoned the Paris climate accord, and weakened efforts to balance China by jettisoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership and picking fights with Asian allies instead. This is a foreign-policy record no serious realist should support. Nor would a realist think that sowing division and telling Americans to fear each other is the best way to strengthen the country, let alone make it great. Yet that is exactly what Trump has done throughout his career, and especially during this campaign.
None of this is surprising, given the long record of incompetence that is Trump’s business career. Its distinguishing features are not adroit dealmaking and shrewd management, but repeated bankruptcies, bilked customers, endless lawsuits, and a long history of felonious tax fraud. His supporters insist that his first term taught him to rely on his own people, but, unfortunately, he’s proven that he’s a terrible judge of talent. His first national security advisor lasted less than a month, and he burned through three more in a single term, along with multiple secretaries of state and defense. Staff turnover at Trump’s White House was one of the highest on record, and dozens of people who worked directly with him are adamantly opposed to giving him another shot.
Of course, Trump isn’t interested in hiring competent people to work in government; he wants loyalists who will do his bidding no matter how idiotic or illegal his decisions might be. His contempt for expertise is especially evident in his approach to science, about which he knows nothing. This blind spot was obvious in his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with his continued denial of the climate crisis. Harris understands that climate is a huge issue and that we need to do more to limit greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the effects we are already experiencing, while Trump still thinks it is a liberal hoax and favors policies that will make the problem much worse. Residents of Florida, take note.
Instead of appointing people sworn to defend the Constitution, who are competent at their jobs and committed to serving the public, he wants to populate the executive branch with personal flunkies. This is a deadly serious matter, because you cannot run a complex modern society without lots of well-trained, competent people who know what they are doing and aren’t vulnerable to political pressure. I’m talking about the civil servants who run the Treasury, the National Weather Service, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the various power grids on which ordinary life depends, the IRS, the Food and Drug Administration, and all the other institutions that allow our society to function.
Are these institutions perfect? No, because no organization made up of fallible human beings can be flawless. Would we be better off without them, or with an ignorant and willful president’s corrupt cronies in charge? Absolutely not. The United States has systematically underfunded key public agencies for decades (which is why government performance is often disappointing), and Trump (and the extremists who drafted Project 2025 for him) wants to make the problem worse. That won’t bother plutocrats who can buy all the services they might need or want, but it will render the United States an increasingly unpleasant and inefficient place for everyone else.
Third, Trump’s approach to foreign economic policy promises to be disastrous. His first-term tariffs were a bust—they didn’t shrink the trade deficit or alter China’s economic policies and did considerable harm to some sectors of the U.S. economy. Trump is now promising to double or triple down on those tariffs. Even today, he doesn’t understand that tariffs on foreign goods are a tax on American consumers, not a penalty that foreign exporters pay to us. (It was U.S. taxpayers, not Mexico, who paid for his dumb border wall, too.) The tariffs he’s proposing would rekindle inflation, reduce the dollar’s appeal as a reserve currency, and harm U.S. exporters. But don’t take my word for it—take a look at Martin Wolf’s concise and devastating assessment in the Financial Times. Harris might not do everything I’d like in terms of economic policy, but she’s also not going to adopt an approach to trade policy that has been rightly rejected for decades.
Most importantly, Trump is the only person in this race who poses a genuine threat to American democracy. Our system of government has its flaws, but it still affords most citizens enormous freedom and is capable of reform and renewal. It is clear from Trump’s entire career—and especially his career in politics—that he is contemptuous of the rule of law (hardly surprising given that he’s a convicted felon and confirmed sexual predator) and has zero commitment to preserving our constitutional order. If Harris is elected, she’ll undoubtedly do things I oppose, but she’s not going to impose an authoritarian system or refuse to leave office if she loses a reelection bid in 2028. Trump has already tried to do the latter, and there’s every indication he’d like to accomplish the former.
You think I’m exaggerating? I confess that I underestimated the danger Trump posed back in 2016, but I revised my view as the evidence piled up. The clearest indication comes from looking at who Trump admires. It is not people like Abraham Lincoln, FDR, or Nelson Mandela, it’s autocrats like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Mohammed bin Salman, and Benjamin Netanyahu—men as contemptuous of rules and norms as he is. He’d like to be as immune to checks and balances as they are, and if he gets his way, turning the clock back will not be easy and might even be impossible. Once a democracy collapses into autocracy, restoring it is usually a difficult and precarious process.
Because Trump is a gifted con man, it is not that surprising that he’s been able to bamboozle so many ordinary people, taking advantage of their anxieties about some of the changes that have occurred in the United States over the past 30 years. What is surprising is the number of well-educated and highly successful people who think Trump is on their side and won’t ever turn on them. I’m thinking of people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who remind me of those naïve and cocksure German politicians who thought they could control Adolf Hitler. If there’s one thing that’s clear about Trump (and it seems to be equally true of the shape-shifting Vance), it is that he would betray anyone if he thought it would advance his interests. Russian oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky thought they could control Putin and that their wealth would protect them from retribution, and look what happened to them. If you’re a tech-bro gazillionaire and you think Trump is a trustworthy ally, you might want to reflect on what happened to former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. And this warning goes double for all the people who go to his rallies and seem to genuinely think he’s going to do something for them.
So come Nov. 5, my vote will be cast for Harris. I’m not expecting miracles, but she may, in fact, realize just how far off-course U.S. foreign policy has drifted over the past 30 years and begin to steer the ship in a new direction. I’ve already seen the Trump show, and the sequel will be even worse than the original. For a realist like me, this is an easy call.
The post Kamala Harris Is Not a Realist. I’m Voting for Her Anyway appeared first on Foreign Policy.
