Vice President Kamala Harris’s performance Sept. 10, in what may be her only presidential debate this election, showed the ruling class that she has adopted U.S. imperialism’s foreign policy, hook, line and sinker regarding Russia, Ukraine, China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, not to mention Israel where she and Donald Trump appear to share common views.
Even though Harris has held progressive views in the past on issues like prison justice and fracking and still campaigns for reproductive rights, she clearly demonstrated that she has fully embraced the ruling class’s program and is a reliable spokesperson for U.S. imperialism.
As vice president under Joe Biden for three-and-a-half years, Harris regularly attended meetings in the situation room, where foreign policy is discussed and decided. That Harris embraces Biden’s program should be no surprise, and she made every effort during the debate to make this clear.
Even when Joe Biden was still the Democratic Party front-runner, media spokespeople were questioning a second presidency for Trump, mainly calling him too weak when it came to foreign policy, especially regarding Russia and Ukraine. In March, after Trump became the confirmed GOP candidate, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin blasted him for not defending the imperialists’ war against Russia.
As part of the Biden administration, Harris carries the weight for the U.S. support for the expansion of NATO in Europe and beyond, including the military threat provoking Russia that led to providing the path to the war in Ukraine. She is second in command in an administration that is escalating the danger of a new nuclear war, and she has repeatedly called for a hard anti-Russia position.
Harris has said nothing to oppose growing economic and military threats against China and the DPRK, as well as the threat of a widening regional war in West Asia around Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, which she openly endorses.
Criticism of Trump by pro-war pundits, however, stops short of blasting his misogyny, racism, homophobia and dangerous xenophobia that is threatening immigrant/migrant communities in the U.S. even before votes are cast in November.
It comes as no surprise that Trump’s agenda, despite his denials, clearly aligns with the programmatic goals of Project 2025, a far-right document drafted by a task force of the Heritage Foundation. The document’s call for mass deportation of immigrants could have been written by Donald Trump.
Yet an op-ed column by Heritage Foundation trustee Mickey Edwards, written Sept. 10 after the debate, places less consideration on the candidates’ stance on immigration and more on which candidate best upholds U.S. foreign policy ahead of all else. Edwards writes: “Domestic policy matters, though its effects are often short term. … But in the realm of foreign policy, and defense policy, which is derived from it, the stakes are greater, because wrong steps can be disastrous and irreversible.”
Edwards, a former GOP House member, rejects Trump while supporting Harris. In the opinion of this bourgeois apologist: “Understanding the challenges of foreign policy is the single most important responsibility of a president of the United States.”
Workers and oppressed people in the U.S. have plenty of reasons for rejecting Donald Trump. When it comes to Harris, her strong allegiance to imperialism’s global policies, in particular her defense of Israel, are likewise uncontroversial reasons for refusing to support her.