Following Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, Slate columnist Fred Kaplan described the vice president’s remarks on foreign policy as “among the most muscular delivered by any candidate at a Democratic convention in living memory.” But the past three and a half years show that Harris lacks the record to back up that supposedly “muscular” rhetoric.
As Kaplan described in what he called “the most impassioned part of her speech,” Harris pledged, “as commander in chief,” to “ensure that America has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” and “to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists.”
Donald Trump, she maintained, wishes to “cozy up to tyrants and dictators like [North Korean despot] Kim Jong-un, who are rooting for Trump.” According to Kaplan, Harris’s use of the phrase “most lethal fighting force” is uncommon coming from a Democratic presidential candidate and signifies “that she understands that the military’s weapons are designed to kill enemy soldiers, that she might have to order U.S. troops into battle with these weapons, and that, if so, the troops will need enough firepower to win their battles.”
Well, of course, one would assume that any plausible candidate for the presidency would “understand” such elemental facts. Kaplan’s praise unintentionally reveals just how low the corporate media has set the bar for Harris.
Voters must bear in mind that Harris has served in an administration that has cut the military budget (after inflation) every year – and has devoted a significant part of that budget to programs on DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) training that have nothing to do with making our forces any more lethal. All this has occurred while China has continued to engage in a massive military buildup, particularly in its navy and its investment in cybertechnology. (Beijing has decidedly not been wasting any of its military funding on DEI.)
Kaplan also emphasized Harris’s involvement in the Biden administration’s policy on national security, noting that, “as vice president, she has attended almost every National Security Council meeting and almost all of the president’s intelligence briefings” and was reportedly “taking part, asking crucial questions and suggesting policy plans” at those meetings.
While this is supposed to be a feather in Harris’s cap, Americans will no doubt recall that the administration’s foreign policy record includes a botched withdrawal from Afghanistan (Harris claimed to be “the last person in the room” with Biden before he made the final decision to retreat) a failure to prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a muddled response to Hamas’s attack on Israel, and America’s allies openly questioning U.S. leadership on the world stage. In light of this record, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s statement that there is “no daylight” between Biden and Harris on matters of policy is particularly chilling.
But just what would a “lethal” Harris defense policy look like? One indication that is far from reassuring was the recent appointment of Sneha Nair to the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Just a few months ago, Nair published an article in the Bulletin of the American Scientists titled “Queering Nuclear Weapons: How LGBT+ Inclusion Strengthens Security and Reshapes Disarmament.”
In the article, uncovered by Fox News, Nair explained her reasoning as follows: whereas “nuclear deterrence is associated with ‘rationality’ and ‘security,’” “disarmament and justice for nuclear weapon victims are coded as ‘emotion’ and a lack of understanding of the ‘real’ mechanics of security.” By contrast to the military’s customary reliance on the former concerns, Nair contended, “the queer lens prioritizes the rights and well-being of people over the abstract idea of national security, and it challenges the mainstream understanding of nuclear weapons – questioning whether they truly deter nuclear war, stabilize geopolitics, and reduce the likelihood of conventional war.”
“Queer theory,” Nair continues, also asks “who created these ideas” (such as national security), how they are “being upheld,” “whose interests they serve,” and “whose experiences are being excluded” from them.
Going back to 2016, Democrats have insisted that Trump is “unhinged” and presents an existential threat to national security. But it is inconceivable that a Trump administration would place anyone espousing anything close to Nair’s ideas in a position of responsibility for developing America’s nuclear policy.
(Here it’s worth briefly mentioning as well the case of Sam Brinton, a self-professed “non-binary” individual whom Biden appointed to lead the government’s nuclear waste disposal policy. In 2022, Brinton was arrested for repeatedly stealing women’s suitcases at airports so that he could don their clothing.)
Not only does Nair’s disparagement of national security as a merely “abstract idea,” in contrast to concern with the “rights of people,” make no sense (without security, rights have no effectual meaning); it promotes or reinforces the crudest sort of stereotypes about homosexuals themselves – that, as was once said about the female sex as a whole, they aren’t sufficiently “rational” to be entrusted with military leadership and therefore, by implication, with positions of high political authority.
This author knows of plenty of gay people who would be no less qualified to serve as military leaders than their heterosexual counterparts, and who would roundly reject Nair’s twisted conception of how their sexual orientation influences their view of national security – let alone the notion that gay people are less inclined to rely on reason, as opposed to emotion, when deciding security issues. But the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Biden-Harris administration has spent on DEI programming in the military, as a year-long study by the Arizona State University Center for American Institutions reports, have created a “race and sex-based scapegoating and stereotyping” environment in America’s armed forces that significantly hampers their readiness for conflict.
As Matt Lohmeier, former Space Force commander, remarked in connection with the ASU study, “It’s no surprise that young people are turning away from military service in record numbers… DEI indoctrination has become a core component of military training that begins for officers even at the service academies.” Lohmeier asked, “How can we be prepared to confront our adversaries if our warfighters aren’t laser-focused on the mission but instead are divided and distracted by ideology?”
Another recent appointment by Harris herself provides further reason to question her determination to defend America’s interests and those of its ally Israel (as she pledged to do in her speech). The nonpartisan Gatestone Institute, which focuses on the threat posed by the Iranian regime, reports that the Harris-Walz “team” has appointed Ilan Goldenberg as its “liaison” to the American Jewish community.
Goldenberg is a former Middle East adviser to Harris who previously served as part of John Kerry’s “team” under President Obama, pursuing an ill-fated nuclear “deal.” As Gatestone’s report observes, Goldenberg’s “biased attacks on Israel and support for Iran and Islamic terrorists in Israel helped lead to the current regional crisis.”
Specifically, Gatestone notes, that Goldenberg had spent the years leading up to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel “doing everything possible” to facilitate it. He “opposed every single pro-Israel move by both Republicans and Democrats, whether it was moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, or even cutting off aid to the ‘pay-for-slay’ program of the Palestinian Authority” (which provides financial support to the families of terrorist bombers and other “martyrs”).
Instead, Goldenberg urged such moves as the unilateral recognition of a “Palestinian” state within Israel’s territory. He recommended sending more U.S. funding into Gaza. And he exhorted Israel to admit more Gazan workers into its territory – when the workers already admitted wound up providing the terrorists with just the information they needed to locate Israeli defense forces and even the layout of kibbutzim they entered in order to slaughter men, women, and children on October 7.
Meanwhile, Goldenberg also served under Obama as a vocal proponent of the nuclear “deal” with Iran while championing that administration’s anti-Israel policies at the U.N. It may be significant as well that while Harris was pledging to support Israel, her niece, producer, and author Meena Harris, who appeared onstage during the convention, posted a photo of herself wearing a pin reading “Democrats for Palestinian Rights” on her Instagram account. (According to NBC News, the pin was handed out at the convention by “uncommitted” delegates who were protesting President Biden’s support for Israel.) Meena Harris is promoting a $1 million fundraising appeal for the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund which makes no reference to Hamas’s October 7 attack which precipitated the current chaos in Gaza.
Just to complete the Harris family story in this respect: Harris’s stepdaughter Ella Emhoff, a 24-year-old model, and designer who appeared with Meena on the DNC podium, recently posted on her Instagram account an appeal for donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). UNRWA is a branch of the UN that assists Palestinian “refugees,” but over ten percent of whose workers have been found by Israel to be members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, two of the groups that launched the recent attacks on the Jewish state, and which provides textbooks inculcating hatred of Israel among Palestinian youth.
While UNRWA recently dismissed nine employees over such extremist allegiances, following previous dismissals, Israel maintains that more were involved. Emhoff, who in contrast to her father disclaims any Jewish identity, apparently deleted the post after it was revealed just after the convention by the New York Post.
In sum, as the Goldstone report concludes, there is reason to suspect that through the Goldenberg appointment, and in more subtle ways, the Harris campaign is signaling its intent to lead “a fundamental break with Israel… while disguising it with happy talk for the benefit of some of [its] donors.”
Those who take seriously America’s need for heightened security through an increase in its military budget, an end to its appeasement of foes like Iran, and the importance of its assistance to the survival of America’s sole true ally in the Middle East need to see through Harris’s cheery, optimistic, but policy-free acceptance address to the harsh realities that lie behind it. Neither she nor Walz nor their “progressive” allies have given adequate reason for trusting that they will defend the cause of freedom, at home or abroad.
To conclude: it is not without reason that, as an August 26 story in The New York Times points out, Harris has taken pains both at the convention and the years leading up to it to misrepresent herself as a product of “Oakland” or, more broadly, California’s large “East Bay” region, rather than the actual site of most of her growing up, a place popularly called by its residents “the People’s Republic of Berkeley.” It would appear that the Democrats are planning to smuggle a radical-left foreign policy agenda past the electorate under a “moderate” disguise.
David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at College of the Holy Cross.
