Why I am wary of giving anyone from the Biden administration my vote

A little over four years ago, I served as the subcommittee chair for Asia-Pacific Security Affairs on the Biden Defence Working Group during the 2020 US presidential campaign. 

Some families would be proud of such an achievement. Mine was not one of them. 

All my family members are diehard Republicans. They have been for generations. One served in the Trump administration. Another worked for a Republican member of Congress. You can imagine what was probably said about me around their dinner tables. I doubt it was complementary.

In my eyes, Donald Trump is the antithesis of what is great about America. 

As a scholar on US-Africa relations, I have always struggled with his America First view of international relations. 

It seems to me that it will simply precipitate spheres of influence re-ordering of the international system to the disadvantage of the incumbent hegemon — his own country.

Then there is his us-other perspective on race and gender in the world. It is like something from a bygone era. The problem is that it isn’t. That poses a clear and present risk to my multiracial family and many others. I was therefore pretty happy with the outcome of the 2020 elections.

Fast forward two years from the inauguration. During the Turkey-Syrian earthquakes, I served as a security adviser to a nonprofit organisation composed largely of US military veterans with expertise in disaster response. 

My task was to try to figure out how to send emergency medical teams of civilian doctors and nurses into northwest Syria to help some of the communities most devastated by the natural disaster. 

Not surprisingly, the Bashar al-Assad regime refused to give us a greenlight to go in. We were not alone. 

That was not an unexpected outcome. Assad is the same guy who allegedly unleashed a chemical weapon attack on his own people. He was warned not to cross that red line by a former president. I campaigned for that guy too. 

What did Assad do? He allegedly flipped the proverbial middle finger to international norms and did it anyway. In response, the US government conducted limited military operations and sanctioned his regime. But Assad is still in power. That shows that American hegemony is not what it used to be.

US conflicts

Over the past two Democratic and two Republican administrations, the US has been in a relatively large number of conflicts. 

The US military eventually got out of Afghanistan, but it’s still in Iraq and Syria. That’s why we continue to talk about endless wars. 

It isn’t just the number of conflicts that is the problem. It is the performance of the US government in conducting them. 

Time and again, it has failed to achieve many of its strategic objectives in these conflicts. (The Russia-Ukraine conflict is one of the exceptions — at least to date.)

This has left many American taxpayers angry. Most of those angry people don’t fly Confederate flags. Most don’t spew white nationalist hate. Some are Democrats. Some are minorities. It’s complicated. 

There is no way of simplifying who is and who is not upset with the last two decades of US national security and foreign policy across the American electorate. Sometimes it seems like everyone is to some degree.

The government’s recent track record of mostly half wins and full losses has emboldened dictators such as Assad to cross red lines. It has also encouraged revisionist powers like Iran and Russia to resort to force and to remake the world order through political violence.

All know that there is a good chance that it won’t come up craps when they roll the dice on challenging US/Nato legitimacy or violating international norms. 

Even the leaders of major democracies are getting in on the action — and they are influencing the outcome of the US presidential election in the process. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu serves as case in point. This should not be unexpected. This is what happens when power decays in a unipolar system.

All of these US military campaigns have left broken trust relationships in their wake. 

Ask our Afghan, Iraqi, Syrian and Yemeni collaborators. These men and women risked their lives to support the work of US diplomats and soldiers — sometimes for many years.

Then a bunch of them got left behind when we pulled our own people out. Again and again. If you treat your friends that way, it is hard to get others to agree to play on your team in the future. Even if you pay them a lot of money. 

The Israelis have a different gripe. The Biden administration made a big bet that strategic patience with Iran would pay off. It didn’t. 

There’s no way to spin it otherwise. Iran and Israel remained on a collision course.

Attacks on Israel  

Then came the 7 October attacks. In broad daylight, an Iranian proxy launched a brazen invasion of Israel and killed and captured a large number of civilians, including US citizens. Whatever the larger context, most Americans would consider that to be a terrorist attack. 

Soon thereafter, another Iranian proxy launched an attack on US military bases. American soldiers died as a result of those attacks. 

They might not have made the headlines like those killed at the Kabul airport. But their sacrifices still matter. And they have put the US and Iran perilously close to a major conflict. Beijing must be ecstatic.

Back to the Turkey-Syria earthquakes response. 

There was a lot that frustrated me about that mission. One of the worst things was the amount of waste. It bothered me that so many nonprofit organisations just appeared to be going through the motions. 

By day two of the planning, it was pretty clear to me that no American medical teams were going to be sent into Northwest Syria. It was simply too dangerous. That didn’t stop some team members from being surged to hotels in Turkey. Why not when there were donations to cover their costs? 

The business of humanitarian response is a hard pill to swallow. You can’t sustain surge lists if you don’t surge those on it. And, you can always fudge the logic behind why you sent staff and what they are actually doing in the country. There is not a lot of accountability. 

In northwest Syria, the heart of the problem was the UN emergency response system. To be fair, the UN staff were put in a difficult position. As discussed, Assad had already crossed red lines. 

There was no Sharpie big enough to guarantee that he would comply with new ones. 

To compound matters, he was being supported by Iranians and Russians. Neither are big fans of abiding by international norms. Ask the Westerners being held hostage and unjustly detained in Moscow and Tehran. Their involvement upped the ante for all involved.

So, here’s the question that those trying to execute the humanitarian response faced: if the UN can’t prevent attacks on their own blue helmet peacekeeping forces, then what can they do for a bunch of Western doctors and nurses roaming around Aleppo in the midst of a civil war? 

There was a huge risk that they could end up becoming useful pawns in a great power game. Or targets of terrorist organisations, violent extremists, or criminal organisations who were operating in the region.

Discretion over valour  

The problem is that these pawns don’t just get knocked over. They might come back in body bags. So, the UN went with discretion over valour. 

By the end of the deployment, I was mentally and physically broken. There had been a lot of churn without a lot of meaningful deliverables. 

Around the time that I got back, three things happened. 

I was asked to give an on-the-record interview to the BBC about what went down in Syria. I was asked to give a lecture on humanitarian security to the graduate students at a prestigious US university, and I was given the opportunity to serve as the chair of the Humanitarian Working Group at the Summit for Democracy II. 

The BBC interview was a one-off. I rarely discuss what happens in war zones. If you want to work in humanitarian affairs, you learn quickly to self-censor. Otherwise, you won’t get many opportunities to support operations downrange. 

But I think I had reached an inflection point in my own professional life. I worked on the Sahel for more than a decade before it made international headlines. It was clear back then where things were headed. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that people will increasingly turn to political violence when they don’t have food and water on their table.

A decade later, I watched from the sidelines as the Western militaries went into Syria and then pulled most of those forces back out. 

Most Americans have no idea what a dark moment that was for our country’s reputation. I had colleagues who were deployed in Syria at the time. One resigned. Among other things they were frustrated with the fact that those who had risked their lives to support our operations were left behind by our government. 

In their eyes, it was just a do-over of Afghanistan. It is hard not to see it that way if you were the one who made the promises, only to have them broken by others.

The BBC segment was about what went wrong with the international response in northwest Syria. A few of my sound bites were included.

In them, I warned that world leaders knew that a northwest Syria scenario would happen. It had been written in the stars (and probably diplomatic cables) for a long time before that. 

Nevertheless, the response of UN and Western leaders was found wanting. Perhaps a complex humanitarian response was a bridge too far in an environment where major powers are openly contesting the world order. 

Either way, it comes at a cost for our country that often goes unnoticed. 

Failings of the world order

When the world order fails to deliver for you, there is a good chance that you may start supporting overthrowing that world order yourself. Ask the kids in camps for internally displaced people scattered across Lebanon, Syria and Turkey right now. 

These provide fertile recruitment grounds for proxies of the enemies of the US government. Future generations of Americans will probably have to pay that price on the battlefield and with their bank accounts if the US government doesn’t now mitigate that risk. And so the cycle continues.

As for the lecture, it was a sombre one. I traced the history of the breakdown in humanitarian security back to the killings of the International Committee of the Red Cross staff in Chechnya (1996). 

I acknowledged that was a subjective call. Where to mark the onset is open to debate.

Either way, I told the students that it is clear that this breakdown did not happen overnight. At the end of the lecture, there was a Q&A. 

One of the students asked what I thought about the future of humanitarian security in the 21st century. My response was quite pessimistic. Perhaps more so than the students expected. They’re sitting there after devoting one or two years of their life to prepare for a career as a humanitarian worker. And I showed up and delivered one of their last lectures on how the humanitarian order is coming apart. Not exactly a pep talk.

The Humanitarian Working Group at the Summit for Democracy went a little better for all parties involved. Our theme was the breakdown of the norm of humanitarian security. 

This lined-up perfectly with the White House focus on highlighting all that is wrong with authoritarian governments. Needless to say, we got a lot of support. 

The governments of Poland and Romania even gave us on-the-record statements in support of the need to better protect humanitarian workers. The summit organisers seemed happy. We got a lot of coverage for our work.

The Summit for Democracy did not change the world. Like many things promised on the Biden campaign trail, it has generally failed to live up to expectations. 

Inviting a famous African dictator to the first iteration of the summit certainly did not help.

That was one of many own goals by the White House over the past four years. Nevertheless, I was excited when we started the preparations to reconvene the working group for the next summit scheduled for South Korea. 

Our theme was supposed to be the breakdown of the norm of humanitarian access among democracies. In the aftermath of the Turkey-Syria earthquakes, that was an increasingly important topic. 

It was clear that there was a lot of daylight between how many democracies conceptualised the norm of humanitarian access. This even included Nato and major Non-Nato allies. So, I was excited to be able to deliver a policy relevant body of work. 

Initially, things went as I would have expected. There were introductory calls with the National Security Council and the South Korea embassy. We also spoke to the Norwegian, South African and Swiss embassies about potentially being our state sponsors. 

Hamas, Gaza and Israel

However, things quickly went off the rails when Hamas and its allies carried out their terrorist attack on Israel. 

Then, the Israeli military responded by invading Gaza. 

Then, Israel made the controversial decision to effectively limit/block humanitarian access. Then, a number of democracies criticised Israel for doing so. 

That sequence of events radically shifted the context for our working group. 

Suddenly, our theme risked being spun into a very different narrative of democracies against democracies against authoritarians, some of whose actions were being allegedly supported by other democracies. 

It was clear that the South Korean government was none too pleased with the risks that all of this posed to their own national interests. They had their own contingency with North Korea to think about. 

The last thing that they wanted was to set the stage for a discussion that might end up limiting their own military options in the event of a military conflict with Pyongyang. That’s when everything started to unravel. Not surprisingly, the lines of communication with their embassy suddenly went silent.

After a lot of advocacy from civil society, we were able to secure a slot on the agenda. It was very last minute. We had to act quick to secure a state sponsor. Faced with a time crunch, we focused on the member states of the European Union. It seemed like a no-brainer. 

They had one of the strongest track records on humanitarian response. It was therefore surprising to see the reactions. 

The Scandanavians, who are some of the most vocal on humanitarian affairs, passed. So did the Swiss — the home base for many of the UN agencies and international humanitarian organisations. 

Finally, we got a yes. And it was from a major European power. One was all that we needed. So, I got on a flight to start planning the logistics with their UN mission in Geneva. 

Apparently, someone in the Biden administration got wind of their support. Or maybe it was a bureaucrat in the state department. We’ll never know. 

One of the European diplomats relayed what happened next. 

The US embassy in their country reached out directly to their ministry of foreign affairs and delivered a very clear message.

Geneva

The US government did not want their government to sponsor a working group on the breakdown of the norm of humanitarian access among democracies in the middle of the Israeli invasion of Gaza. By the time I left Geneva, it was a done deal. 

The European power had withdrawn their support. But, they also took a stand. They told me that their minister would not attend the summit. Instead, they would attend a humanitarian event in Europe. I thanked them for their consideration and that was that. The summit was off.

Fast forward to this week. The news that the Israeli military had attacked UN peacekeeping outposts brought the last couple years of my life full circle. It is why I decided to finally put pen to paper on where I stand on the upcoming elections.

The news of the first attack on a UN outpost broke as I arrived for a meeting in Switzerland. 

The initial reports did not paint a good picture of the current state of the US-led world order. 

The military of a major non-Nato ally and the biggest democracy in the Middle East was allegedly endangering the lives and legitimacy of UN peacekeepers in the name of what it perceived to be its own national security interests. 

I couldn’t imagine the cables being sent from the Chinese, and Russian embassies back to their headquarters. This would have looked like a win for them. Not so much for the US and the Europeans.

After the attacks, some European ministries mobilised. A few officials gave on-the-record statements condemning what had happened and calling for Netanyahu to order a stop to it. 

Some of these officials represented the same countries that had passed on supporting our working group. These officials made a compelling case. But they had little leverage. So, it fell on deaf ears. The Israeli military breached a UN outpost the next day. 

Ultimately, international condemnation is unlikely to restore the norm of humanitarian access anytime soon. Nor is it likely to convince the Israelis that they can depend on the UN system to enforce the norm against armed attacks against their country. 

This includes WMD attacks from Iran and others. Both of these norms are too far unravelled and tangled to easily roll it back up into a ball. World leaders might need to start with entirely new hanks of string. That’s what happened in the aftermath of World War II. 

Kamala Harris

So, how do these stories relate back to the US elections?

Well, a lot of South Africans assume that I will vote for Vice-president Kamala Harris in a few weeks. 

In the past year, I have rarely been asked the question of who am I going to vote for. Instead, I typically get asked who I think is going to win. And that reveals something important about the upcoming election in the US.

Yes, I am a Democrat. Yes, I campaigned for Obama and Biden. But that does not mean that I am automatically going to vote for Harris. And no, that does not mean that I don’t like Harris. 

Nor does it mean that I will ever be voting for Trump. It simply means that I have had enough of our broken political party system. And it may be time to take a stand by withholding my vote.

To be clear, I  think that Harris is the far better of the two candidates that American voters have on offer. The problem is that the bar is not set very high. 

The way that I see it, Trump disqualified himself from higher office with his behaviour during the 6 January insurrection in our nation’s capital. Full stop. So Harris does not need to check a lot of boxes to get my vote. That should make for an easy win.

But I am very wary of giving anyone from the Biden administration another shot at the White House. 

The way that I see it: they had a once in a generation opportunity to reshape American foreign policy for the benefit of the middle class. 

Having grown up in Butler, Pennsylvania, that mattered to me. I saw a town that was a shell of itself and a lot of angry people. And I thought that the Biden administration was going to respond to many of their concerns. 

That didn’t happen.

Vested interests

Instead, the Biden administration delivered an American foreign policy that continues to benefit vested interests. Different administration, different party, same script. 

The only difference is which set of vested interests got to benefit. And, even there, there is a lot of overlap. Not to mention the cases of corruption. Queue Senator Bob Menendez.

It is therefore not surprising that the song, Rich Men North of Richmond, got so much play.

This is not what I had expected when Biden was on the campaign trail. I thought that a Biden administration would be a gamechanger for US national security and foreign policy.

Instead, there has been one national security and foreign policy trainwreck after another under their watch. (Again, the important exception being Russia-Ukraine — at least so far. The department of defence and the intelligence community deserve that credit.) 

To make matters worse, the Biden administration has demonstrated a strong disinclination to hold its senior leaders accountable for any of those failures — even the most egregious ones like the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and the gross mismanagement of American taxpayer funds in Ukraine. 

For those armchair historians, this fits a pattern of behaviour that is not unique to the Biden administration. 

Over the last couple of decades, the notion of honour has been increasingly lost on our top level public servants. In the 20th century, these sorts of leaders regularly fell on their own swords when they failed to live up to policy expectations. Not anymore. Or at least not regularly.

Jake Sullivan serves as the exemplar. Even after the Fall of Kabul and the 7 October attacks, he stayed in his position as the national security adviser. He should have stepped down. In my opinion. it was dishonourable for him not to do so. 

Someone at the top had to take the fall for those events. Moreover, his resignation would have deflected some of the blame for those policy failures away from Biden. As we all saw later, he needed that. It would have benefited his re-election campaign.

To vote, or not to vote?

So, where does all of this leave me in the upcoming elections? Uncertain, to say the least.

That blatantly honest account of where I stand — someone who has worked on Democratic congressional and presidential campaigns for two decades — should serve as a warning to the Harris campaign. 

They cannot afford to take any votes for granted in the upcoming election, especially in Pennsylvania. Their campaign still has a lot to do to earn them. Fortunately for them, they still have some time to do so. 

As I said, it would not take a lot to win my vote. So time is really not the crucial variable.

All I want is for the Harris campaign to do two things that demonstrate a fundamental break with her predecessor.

First, I want her to forcely demand accountability from the current leadership figures in the National Security Council and US department of state for their past national security and foreign policy failures. That requires delayed resignations.

Second, I want to see the campaign deliver a fully baked strategy for how the US can win in the Levant and Ukraine without sacrificing humanity or dividing democracies in the process. 

The American taxpayer deserves greater accountability than the current administration has delivered. ‘Trust us, we got it’ is no longer good enough. They have heard that tune too many times over the last two decades.

If the Harris campaign can do those two things, she has my vote. 

If not, I am probably going to sit this election out.

That stance will be seen as a betrayal from many Democratic political elites. So be it. 

Personally, I am far less worried about four more years of Trump than I am about my children growing up with such a broken two party political party system that cannot seem to serve its only purpose well.

Look at this election. The US policy party system left the American voter with two choices. One is a candidate who did not run as the presidential candidate in their own primary. The other disqualified himself from consideration due to his prior conduct in office. 

Even if Harris was the perfect candidate, the way that she ended up at the top of the Democratic ticket is harmful to the institution of democracy in our country. 

It effectively deprived millions of Democratic voters of an opportunity to have a direct say on who they wanted to be their presidential candidate. That should never happen.

Given this state of affairs, I really don’t think that withholding my vote is an entirely unreasonable option.

No doubt it is dangerous. It risks putting Trump in office. But, the other side of the argument matters. It may be the only way to send a message to the political elites who control my own party that enough is enough. 

There needs to be greater accountability to American voters from within the Democratic party.

If not, then I fear that there will be many more Hillary Clinton election nights, Donald Trump presidencies, Bob Menendez pay-to-play scandals, and Joe Biden re-election campaigns in the decades to come.

Michael Walsh is a policy analyst who specialises in US-Africa relations. He was born and raised in Butler, Pennsylvania, United States. This essay represents his personal views and not those of any of his employers.