Or reflexively condemning Trump’s every policy. While we shouldn’t underestimate the danger he poses to our democracy, when he says he wants to end the war, the left should call his bluff.
The imminent return to the White House of someone as opposed to progressive values as Donald Trump might seem like an odd moment to point to a silver lining, but bear with me. The democratic establishment has screwed up once again. It has been shown that very serious people are not very serious at all. They got the administration they wanted. They ran the campaign they wanted. And they failed again. This is perhaps even more true in foreign policy than in other areas, given that it is where the Biden administration has been most resistant to progressive influence and most reluctant to break away from decades of orthodoxy. Not coincidentally, this is also the area of Biden’s most catastrophic and consequential failures, Gaza chief among them.
Progressives now have an opportunity to chart a new course, to define a foreign policy that is more in line with the United States and the world today. From there, it’s worth looking through the documents of the Biden administration to find policies worth preserving because they exist. Most significant is his departure from neoliberal economic and trade policies that have enriched multinational corporations at the expense of American workers. It was also important to end the war in Afghanistan and reduce the number of drone strikes. And Biden directed Washington to improve relations with Latin America (do not forget about the work of his administration to prevent a possible coup in Brazil). These are all laudable steps that we must continue to defend and build upon.
Just as we decide which Biden policies are the baby and which are the bathwater, we should do the same for Trump. While we absolutely must not underestimate the dangers that a Trump restoration poses to our democracy, we must also avoid thinking that reflexive resistance to everything Trump does is an effective way to protect democracy.
Trump claims he wants to end wars. Let’s be ready to do whatever we can to see what he does. Rather than viewing his diplomatic initiatives as an opportunity to attack Trump as “weak” — which too many Democrats did in 2018 when he met with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — the left should be willing to support negotiations with adversaries (so of course, while Trump do not put your personal interests above the interests of the country). The Iranian government has declared openness to negotiations with the United States. We have to hope that Trump will reciprocate, rather than squander such an opportunity early in his administration, as Biden did. Peace in Ukraine? Yes, great, but we must be clear that the terms of this peace will matter. (Robert Farley and I recently published an article in Foreign policy laying out the parameters for a lasting ceasefire that supports the security and independence of Ukraine.)
Although Trump poses as a defender of the working man, he is likely to bring the most predatory forms of capitalism down on America’s workers, taking their anger out on disaffected minorities and foreign enemies. However, if he shows some willingness to build a truly fairer post-neoliberal agenda, we should encourage him. Like Bernie Sanders, Trump has long argued that “the system is rigged” — and he’s right, even though it’s clearly rigged on behalf of wealthy elites like Trump. However, let’s call his bluff and propose that we work together to fix the system, starting with campaign finance reform.
At the same time, we must confront many of the dangerous and inhumane policies that Trump has promised: mass deportations, the new Muslim ban, the war with Mexico, the imposition of new sanctions against a number of countries, and the general recklessness that has brought our country to the brink of war several times. during his first presidency.
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However, we cannot play only defense. Progressive Democrats must offer a genuine alternative vision for our country’s role in the world, one that recognizes that our security and prosperity are tied to the security and prosperity of communities around the world, and therefore seeks to build a more just and inclusive global community—an order based on rules, but on this time for real. We need to make sure that the next Democratic administration is committed to a new, more progressive consensus on foreign policy and will not, as Biden did, simply split the difference between Trump and the old consensus.
We must do this work with confidence, remembering that the progressive left has been right on all the key foreign policy issues of the past few decades: the impact of corporate-dominated globalization (in November 25th anniversary the labor- and environmental-led protests that shut down the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, which the Washington mainstream scoffed at – now they’ve got the memo); the war in Iraq; the war on terror. And we’ve been right about Gaza over the last 14 months. The same people who mocked all of these positions are the ones who just drove the Democratic Party into the ditch. We must not let them or anyone else forget that.
