Harris-Walz Ticket Looks to Be as Bad as Trump-Vance on Foreign Policy

Harris’ VP choice embellished his military record, and voted to fund war after war even when claiming to be against some of them

Kamala Harris’s selection of Tim Walz as her running mate has garnered rave reviews in various liberal media outlets.

However, during his 12 years in Congress, Walz voted to fund war after war even when claiming to be against some of them.

A 24-year Army National Guard veteran, Walz is the highest-ranking enlisted soldier ever to serve in Congress.

In a tweet, he claimed to have “carried weapons in war” though, in reality, he never saw combat.

The invention of combat heroics is characteristic of a fascistic culture that glorifies soldiers and combat.^[1]

When Walz was elected to Congress in 2006, he voted to force the U.S. military to withdraw from Iraq within 90 days, but then back-tracked and voted to continue funding the war along with the war in Afghanistan.^[2]

Walz’s Iraq vote marked him as a chicken hawk because he had retired just before his National Guard battalion was sent to fight in Iraq, effectively selling out his platoon-mates serving under him.

In 2011, Walz voted for yet more war when he authorized U.S. forces to support NATO’s invasion of Libya and against a Republican-backed measure to pull Pentagon funding for Libya.

The illegally waged Libyan war was almost as bad of a foreign policy disaster as Iraq; it plunged Libya into violent chaos after deposing a nationalistic leader, Muammar Qaddafi, who had used Libya’s oil wealth to fund economic development and social welfare programs.

Matthew Petti wrote in Reason magazine that Walz has shown throughout his career “a tendency to shrink from tough political fights”—particularly when it comes to war and peace. 

In 2016, Walz joined with Republicans as a member of the House Armed Services Committee to oppose cuts to the Army’s troop levels, arguing that doing so would leave the service without the manpower to meet growing worldwide threats.^[3]

Walz also consistently supported military aid to Israel, raising no concerns about Israel’s human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank, and even speaking at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in 2010.

As Chair of the State Board of Investments in Minnesota, Walz invested $3.2 billion in Israeli companies complicit in the slaughter in Gaza.^[4]

On Ukraine, Walz is a hawk.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S. called him a “reliable friend of our country.”

Walz established an agricultural partnership between Minnesota and the north Ukrainian region of Chernihiv, offered “his unwavering support” to President Volodymyr Zelensky after meeting with him, and supported extensive U.S. military aid to Ukraine along with legislation ending Minnesota’s investments in Russia and Belarus.

In February 2022, Walz wrote on Twitter: “Minnesota stands with the people of Ukraine and condemns Russia for this illegal aggression. Leaders across the world must unite and respond to this attack on democracy.”

These comments show ignorance of the fact that Zelensky’s government had banned 12 political parties, and that the U.S. had provoked the war after sponsoring a violent coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014 and transforming Ukraine into a CIA base.

Walz’s position on Ukraine helped military contractors (i.e., “merchants of death”) with military production facilities in his state reap a fortune. Minnesota hosts a BAE Systems facility in Fridley, which produces howitzer parts, and a Northrop Grumman facility in Plymouth that makes drones and ammunition that are sent to Ukraine.

The GOP is currently attacking Walz because he speaks Mandarin and taught in China as part of a volunteer teaching program.^[5] Walz, however, has stated his belief that “we need to stand firm on what they’re doing in the South China Sea.”^[6]

According to Politico, Walz was “no dove to China during his years in Washington. As a member of Congress, he met with the Dalai Lama (leader of Tibetan government-in-exile supported historically by the CIA) and served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, an institutional watchdog within the U.S. government that monitors human rights and the rule of law in China.”

Walz was part of a congressional delegation to Tibet led by then House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Sinophobe who has supported Tibetan separatism (and Taiwanese separatism) with the goal of weakening China.^[7]

Walz has met not only with the Dalai Lama but also high-profile Hong Kong dissident Joshua Wong, who is also at the top of the Chinese government’s list of public enemies and has been accused of being financed by the CIA.^[8]

In 2017, Walz co-sponsored the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which imposed sanctions on China and pro-Chinese government officials in Hong Kong considered responsible for human rights abuses.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that the Walz bill “fully reveals the ill intentions of some people in the United States to mess up Hong Kong and contain China’s development.”

Perhaps most hypocritical is Walz’s support for censorship to prevent the spread of “misinformation”—when he has himself spread misinformation.

Back in 2013, for example, Walz stated that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons was “despicable and the world must take action to ensure that cruel dictators are not allowed to use such weapons without repercussions.”^[9]

An investigation by MIT scientist Theodore Postol and reporting by Seymour Hersh, among others, revealed, however, that Assad never used chemical weapons.^[10]

Good Sidekick for Arch-Imperialist Harris

Walz serves as a good sidekick to the arch-imperialist Kamala Harris.

Harris has been a hawk on Ukraine and China, is pro-NATO, and has “been in lock step with Mr. Biden regarding U.S. support for Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza,” according to The New York Times.

During the 2020 Democratic primary, in which she received less than 1% of the popular vote, Harris adopted red-baiting tactics against peace candidate Tulsi Gabbard, claiming that Gabbard was being “promoted by the Russian propaganda machine” when she advocated for improvements in U.S.-Russia relations and avoidance of military conflict.^[11]

In late July, The Washington Post reported that Harris had an unusually close relationship with Philippines ruler Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. (aka “Bong Bong”), son of the notoriously corrupt and brutal Cold War dictator who seems to want to replicate many of his father’s methods.^[12]

CovertAction Magazine reported on Harris’s visit to the Philippines in November 2022 where she met with Marcos Jr. in the Malacanang Palace in Manila and discussed U.S. plans to build new military bases, including two located adjacent to the South China Sea.

The purpose was to give the U.S. an important military presence near the Taiwan Strait—at a time when conflict with China over Taiwan was escalating.

The head of a Filipino fishermen’s group, whose livelihood was threatened by the new base construction, accused Harris of visiting “not to talk peace” but to “provoke China and push them to become more aggressive and hostile in the West Philippine Sea [South China Sea], at the further expense of the fishing security of Filipinos.”

Peace activists protesting Harris’s visit further said they did not want their country being used as a launching pad for a U.S. war on China.

Continuity with Biden

If the Democrats win the 2024 election, we will see a strong continuity in the realm of foreign policy from the Biden era.

Biden’s foreign policy has a) ratcheted up conflict with nuclear-armed Russia and nuclear-armed China at the same time; b) ensured the devastation of Ukraine and its people by allowing it to be used as a battering ram against Russia; c) supported Israeli genocide in Gaza and aggression toward Lebanon and Iran that threatens a wider Middle East war; d) supported gargantuan military budgets that account for 40% of the world’s military spending; e) escalated dirty wars in far-off places like Somalia that have devastated the local population; f) extended the U.S. empire of military bases; g) imposed devastating sanctions on huge swaths of the globe, hence enhancing human misery; and h) supported regime-change operations in Venezuela and Nicaragua and a harsh embargo on Cuba designed to starve the Cuban population because of its defiance.

Some liberal analysts claim that Biden is among the most progressive domestic U.S. presidents since FDR, but this is patently false.

Stefan Moore, in “The Real Joe Biden” (Consortium News, August 5, 2024), emphasizes that Biden a) abandoned child tax credits that promised to reduce child poverty, causing child poverty to double between 2021 and 2024; b) failed to renew federal benefits for families to afford food, housing and other needs; c) refused to pursue a single-payer health care system; d) refused to support a $15 minimum wage; and e) only minimally invested in public infrastructure despite boasts to the contrary.

Moore documents obscene inequality levels, which can be attributed in part to the prioritization of military spending over social welfare programs.

Comparisons with Trump-Vance

Harsh assessment of the Harris-Walz ticket in no way suggests that the GOP ticket is any better.

The Trump ticket is an incipient fascist one with its scapegoating of immigrants and embrace of white supremacist Christian nationalism.

In a December 2020 assessment of Trump’s foreign policy, I emphasized his support for gargantuan military budgets like Biden, creation of the U.S. Space Force, escalation of the U.S. drone war, support for regime-change operations targeting socialist countries, and escalation of the war in Ukraine and new Cold War with Russia despite his having been attacked as a best friend of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The Trump administration also escalated U.S. military provocations and economic warfare directed against China, and adopted dangerously Sinophobic rhetoric that included trying to blame China for the outbreak of COVID-19 (which Trump called “kung flu”).

J. D. Vance represents an important addition to the Trump ticket as a Marine Corps veteran tied in with Big Tech billionaires who are interlinked with the CIA.

Vance’s main financial supporter, Peter Thiel, was an early investor in Facebook, the “CIA’s wet dream,” and co-founded Palantir, a data analytics-spy company whose main client for years was the CIA.

This connection makes clear that, in spite of his folksy outward personae cultivated in his best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, Vance will support policies advancing the warfare and surveillance states—just like Walz, Harris and Trump.

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1. See Jerry Lembcke, PTSD: Diagnosis and Identity in Post-empire America (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015). Walz’ lies about his combat service extended to his claim during his 2008 congressional campaign that he was a veteran of the Operation Enduring Freedom when he never served in the Middle East. ↑

2. Walz had assisted the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan while on a troop deployment in Italy. ↑

3. The same year, Walz voted against a bill that would put an expiration date on war funding under the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) and against another bill that would defund military operations in Iraq and Syria. In 2017, Walz supported bombing of Syria by Donald Trump, though he claimed that any further escalation needed congressional approval. ↑

4. Gillian Rath of the Students For a Democratic Society, was among those arrested on Walz’ lawn when he was governor of Minnesota. The companies Walz’ board invested in include Elbit systems and Boeing, which make cluster bombs and surveillance technology (which is also used for repressive purposes on the U.S.-Mexican border). Others, such as Caterpillar, produce armored bulldozers that are used to collapse the homes of Palestinians. ↑

5. In a ridiculous statement, Donald Trump’s former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, said on Twitter/X. “Communist China is very happy. No one is more pro-China than Marxist Walz.” ↑

6. Unlike many in the GOP, Walz, to his credit, does believe that there are areas in which the U.S. and China can cooperate. ↑

7. In 2016, the same year he met with the Dalai Lama, Walz invited the then leader of Tibet’s government-in-exile, Lobsang Sangay, into his congressional office to meet a group of Minnesota high-schoolers. ↑

8. The CIA has long supported the Dalai Lama and Tibetan exiles as part of its strategy of trying to pry Tibet from China and deprive China of Tibet’s vast mineral wealth. See Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002). ↑

9. Walz also falsely referred to Iran as “aggressors” in the Middle East when the country has been besieged by the U.S. and Israel since the 1979 revolution established the country’s sovereignty. ↑

10. Walz has never retracted his false statements that lent support for the largest covert U.S. operation since the 1980s Afghan War. Walz voted for a bill to authorize war in Syria by the Obama administration. ↑

11. Harris further denounced Gabbard for meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and refusing to call Assad a war criminal, insinuating that Gabbard’s opposition to U.S. arming of jihadist terrorists in the country was akin to treason. See Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Kamala Harris: Progressive or Cold Warrior?” CovertAction Magazine, August 13, 2020. ↑

12. Michael Birnbaum, “Blinken, Austin detail new U.S. security commitments for Philippines,” The Washington Post, July 31, 2024, A15. ↑

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