Democrats Are Better Than GOP on Foreign Policy

I think it makes sense for South Africans to support Democrats going forward, even if we are more aligned with Republicans when it comes to domestic policy.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

As someone who is outside the US system looking in, it is striking how much better the Democrats are on foreign policy than the Republicans. This was surprising to me, since I am a conservatively minded Christian libertarian. On domestic policy, I am usually closer to Republicans than Democrats. But a look at the record shows that Democrats have generally had a more thoughtful foreign policy.

Don’t get me wrong, Democrats have made their own foreign policy mistakes: the destruction of Libya, intervention in Yugoslavia, the drone war on terror, etc. But they have usually been the more pragmatic party, while Republicans tend to be more zealous. Republicans do foreign policy through slogans, with “peace through strength” being the most popular one. When you watch a Republican foreign policy debate, it is like watching a bunch of schoolboys competing to see who can sound the toughest.

In contrast, Democrats are more measured and realistic in their approach. I still remember the 2012 US presidential debates between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. When it came to foreign policy, Romney did not care about limits on American power. He wanted to display strength, while Obama was more focused on American interests and how they could best be achieved within the available constraints.

That is why Obama correctly labelled China as America’s biggest threat, while Romney thought Russia, a regional power in Eastern Europe, was the biggest threat. Of course, Republican zealots think the subsequent Russian invasions of Crimea and the Donbas prove that Romney was right, but do they really? Russia has spent so many years fighting a poor, corrupt Ukraine, a country that would not be out of place in Africa.

Compare this to China. When it comes to the military, China has now reached parity with the US on some metrics, such as the number of naval vessels, although it still falls short on tonnage. Meanwhile, Russia struggles to keep its one aircraft carrier afloat. So Obama’s pivot to Asia and the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) were smart policies, and Trump ruined them by exiting the TPP and the Obama-negotiated Iran nuclear deal during his first term. These blunders have directly led to Trump being forced to pivot to the Middle East.

Obama also initiated a thaw with Cuba. Trump is also undoing that by intensifying the embargo and using pressure on other Latin American countries to isolate Cuba. That could still turn out well, however, because pressure might work better than Obama’s soft-power approach. If it does work, it will only be because Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, understands Cuba well, not because Trump has some grand strategy.

Then you have President Biden. He had what I consider to be the best American foreign policy of the 21st century. In fact, many of Obama’s successes were Biden’s ideas, most notably the pivot to Asia. President Biden made one serious mistake: he let Russia know that he would not intervene if they sent troops into Ukraine shortly before the 2022 invasion. I blame this on his senility. But at his best, Biden was a formidable foreign policy thinker.

His administration came up with an Africa strategy that would have gotten Africa on America’s side for the foreseeable future if it had been given a chance to work. This strategy is why I preferred a Harris victory over Trump in the last American election. For the first time, America was treating Africa as an adult. It was no longer simply lecturing on human rights, but negotiating on the basis of shared interests.

This is why, under Biden, one of South Africa’s top foreign policy goals, gaining a permanent UNSC seat for Africa, was nearly achieved. It failed when African countries could not agree on who should take up this seat. South African negotiators had simply assumed that the other African countries would be okay with South Africa taking the seat.

With Trump, I do not think Africa factors into his mind at all. That is why he so easily falls for the false white genocide narrative and launches a racist refugee policy as a result. Biden understood that taking Israel to the ICJ was a perfectly acceptable thing to do under the rules-based order that America is supposed to uphold. Trump does not care about the rules-based order. His biggest donor is Miriam Adelson, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner is pro-Israel. That is all Trump needs to know. There is no broader strategy focused on promoting American interests.

Given this history, and the fact that Republicans have made a mess of the world through their foreign policy incompetence, I think it makes sense for South Africans to support Democrats going forward, even if we are more aligned with Republicans when it comes to domestic policy. You would think Trump would at least help us fight the green agenda. This would be a major reason for supporting the Republicans, but he has no interest in marshalling international opposition to the climate cult. He just wants the US to exit the Paris Agreement.

Mpiyakhe Dhlamini is a libertarian, writer, programmer, entrepreneur, and associate of the Free Market Foundation. He writes about personal finance and wealth building from a South African perspective, as well as South African and African issues, policy, politics, and anything else that interests him. The views in this article are his own and not those of any organisation with which he is associated.