Where is the Anti-War Left?

America deserves and demands a pro-peace party, now more than ever.

There are probably hundreds of “when you knew it” moments in the 2024 election. The moment when you knew, deep down, that Donald Trump was going to be president again. For many of us, that stomach knot began in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a defiant Trump made the difference in physical acuity unmistakably clear between himself and his addled competitor. For others, it might have been the first debate—the devastating “I don’t even think he knows what he said” delivered to a slack-jawed President Biden.

What I remember—when I knew that it was going to be President Donald Trump—was the first and only debate against Vice President Harris. Trump lost the debate, and badly. That’s not the point. In-between ranting about pet sacrifice, Trump painted a world on fire. Wars across the globe, with a Commander-in-Chief who seemed neither a leader nor in charge. Don’t you remember the Trump years? Low gas, lower prices, and a world that was stable. Or so the Trump team would argue.

You would expect that the accusation of war-mongering would be, for any politician, a reason to vigorously proclaim their love for peace. For Harris, though, it didn’t seem to work that way. Despite an otherwise fluid performance, Harris turned robotic at the mention of foreign policy. The war in Gaza was a tragedy. Israel had the right to defend itself. Civilian lives had to be taken into account. I don’t even need to write it out verbatim for your mind to revive the noose that hung around the neck of the Harris campaign. That response—so obviously a product of endless focus groups and messaging meetings among the campaign brass—attempted to please everyone and, in reality, served no one. It was representative of a broader failure of the Democratic Party to answer the “why” of their vision for the world.

Foreign policy operates in a unique space in American politics. Few Americans will feel the effects of our actions abroad in the same way they experience safer streets or cheaper homes. The vision of how and where America acts abroad is a moral question, not a policy one. It is a broad, sometimes hypocritical doctrine for how a country that spends over eight hundred billion dollars annually on defense should behave. A candidate who supports sending American soldiers to Taiwan is signaling far more than just a position on semiconductor manufacturing. As the “endless wars” of the Middle East took hold in American culture, so too did a new generation of young politicians without the misfortune of an early-2000s congressional voting record. Foreign policy can, by its very nature, say more about a campaign than any other issue simply because of its scale. A candidate who seizes that scale can have the winds of change behind them—just as it can sink the campaigns of those afraid to touch the issue.

Harris did not lose the election because of foreign policy, but her inability to offer a compelling vision for America abroad contributed to her defeat. The Democratic Party has lost sight, and lost voters, by abandoning an anti-war platform in favor of hollow moral victories about “democracy” and the “rules based international order”. To ensure that the Democratic Party, long the party opposed to endless wars, reclaims its mantle as the defender of diplomacy, we must first make clear our aim: to build a safer, better world. A sane and coherent foreign policy agenda is, in my view, the linchpin for a broader redefinition of the Democratic Party—one necessary to ensure that populism does not extinguish liberalism. Young people like myself see the same world everyone else does, and we are not mistaken about the path it is on: one of death, destruction, and calamity.

This was a fatal flaw of the Harris campaign. When asked about foreign affairs, the Vice President stuck to the script. A question about Ukraine would be answered specifically about Ukraine, just as it would be for Gaza or for China. The vision, if there was one, amounted to staying the course with the Biden administration. That course was not one many Americans wanted to stick with. Biden was more than twenty-five points underwater on foreign policy as voters watched the war in Ukraine teeter on escalation and Israel disregard the wishes of its security benefactor. While President Biden’s foreign policy résumé was certainly many pages long, Harris had the advantage of having no résumé at all. She had the agency to define her own vision for the world, and chose instead to remain with the President. That is a decision in and of itself.

For too long, this “go with the flow” mantra has distracted our country from both looking inward and helping outward. America can no longer, with good conscience or clear intention, entangle its security apparatus in conflicts that do not directly affect Americans. This was a mistake Vice President Harris made repeatedly on Ukraine, a war I have written about previously. Rather than repeating the expected and vague line, “we will support Ukraine for however long it takes,” the Democratic Party should boldly and proudly join the push for peace, for Ukrainians and Americans alike.

President Trump has badly overplayed his hand with regard to Ukraine. Just as Americans do not want to risk nuclear war over the conflict, they also do not want to see the leader of an allied nation berated in the Oval Office. For the second time since Pew began tracking approval of the war, a plurality of respondents believe the United States should take on a greater role in Ukraine. This should not be mistaken for a public suddenly indifferent to escalation, but rather as evidence of a sensible middle ground that supports Ukraine while actively pushing for peace. That peace, which can only be achieved through some form of international action, is something President Trump will never deliver, because he does not believe in multilateralism.

Effective multilateral diplomacy is only possible, though, when all actors are as invested in operational success as the United States. President Trump is correct that our allies in NATO have often shirked their responsibilities while still benefiting from American protection. But unlike the President, the Democratic Party should not hesitate to follow through on reducing our commitments to European allies that fail to contribute more to their own defense. When a nation like Spain. for example is unwilling to invest in its own security, the United States should be equally unwilling to defend Spanish interests or respond to Spanish crises. This is where the left draws strength: by using the rigidity of our institutions to serve a greater purpose, and to do so with a greater pace.

Institutions like the Department of State and U.S. A.I.D. remain, despite the onslaught of attacks from the current administration. The next Democratic administration should begin rebuilding these neglected engines of diplomacy by re-hiring the thousands of workers laid off during the Trump years. These career diplomats and public servants are the backbone of our ability to deliver effective aid to those who need it most. Beyond staffing, a future Democratic president should redirect funding within these agencies to better support diplomatic outcomes. In doing so, the administration must consider whether the Department of Defense can reasonably justify a budget nearly thirty times larger than that of the State Department. If not, the president should prioritize funding and expanding the State Department over our bloated defense complex.

A future Commander in Chief who believes in diplomacy can help revitalize our shared American purpose, and quickly. Large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans support providing food, medicine, and clothing as core elements of foreign aid. That aid must be grounded in universal human rights, not vague ideological debates over systems of national governance. A starving child is a starving child, whether they live under a parliament, president, or prince. We should focus on these shared priorities and move away from abstract appeals to “democratic values” that, in practice, often push populations further from equality. By doing so, the left can reclaim the bully pulpit of American governance, and use it to change minds and save lives across the next generation of rising global powers.

We are the strongest country on earth, and as Americans we will never not rise to defend the flame of America. The strength in the Democratic Party should be that we achieve what the Republican Party says is impossible, and we do it fast. We feed our hungry and house our homeless not because we dream big, but because we know there is no such thing as a dream to the United States of America. This country can and will be the pre-eminent producer of peace and prosperity if we let it. That can only happen if we shake the failed and distorted lessons of a failed agenda that puts Americans, and America, last.