The most striking aspect of the Democratic National Convention, which is currently underway in Chicago, is the absence of any discussion of the foreign policy of either the Biden administration or a future Harris administration, despite the fact that the United States is currently engaged in a war against Russia and preparing for a potential war with China.
The Democratic Party, and not just “Genocide Joe,” is fully culpable in the genocide in Gaza, which has officially killed 40,000 people, and could have killed as many as 200,000 people. Aside from a few insincere and hypocritical references to a “ceasefire,” the genocide has not been mentioned by the various officials who are dripping in the blood of the Palestinian people.
So too with the escalating US-NATO war against Russia and the preparations for war against China. Neither former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, nor vice presidential candidate Tim Walz made any reference to US policy regarding Russia or China. Biden briefly alluded to the US war with Russia and trade war with China in just a single paragraph.
But as the Democratic National Convention was taking place, US armored vehicles were crossing over Russia’s border as part of a NATO-backed offensive by Ukraine inside Russian territory. On Wednesday, Ukraine launched a salvo of drones at the Russian capital of Moscow, one of the largest direct attacks on Moscow since the war began.
On Tuesday, the day Obama addressed the convention, the New York Times reported that the Biden administration has adopted a new nuclear strategy document that would significantly expand the number of deployed US nuclear weapons, further driving up the already exorbitant costs of a nuclear modernization program estimated at $6 trillion.
“Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat” ran the headline of the Times article. Behind the backs of the American people, the Biden administration has authorized a new strategy that directs “US forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea,” according to the Times.
The complete lack of discussion of US foreign policy at the Democratic convention is even more striking considering that the platform adopted on the first day of the convention includes major changes in language related to nuclear policy compared to that adopted four years ago.
The 2020 platform condemned the Trump administration for building new nuclear weapons and pledged to expand nuclear non-proliferation treaties. It also stated, “Democrats are committed to strengthening the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, maintaining the moratorium on explosive nuclear weapons testing, advocating for the ratification of the UN Arms Trade Treaty and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and extending New START.”
However, all of this language is absent from the 2024 platform, which instead pledges to vastly expand the US nuclear arsenal. “The administration is modernizing each leg of our nuclear triad, updating our command, control, and communication systems, and investing in our nuclear enterprise—to ensure that we can sustain and enhance capabilities and posture if necessary.”
The platform goes on to state, in a passage which has not been edited since Biden dropped out and was replaced by Harris, “President Biden has never and will never turn his back on our military. In his second term, he will continue to invest in upgrading to next-generation weapon systems, cutting-edge training opportunities, and deterrence capabilities such as our submarine force and the nuclear triad.”
Nowhere in the convention speeches was the demand to massively expand the US nuclear arsenal even hinted at, much less argued for. With no explanation, the Democratic Party platform has gone from declaring that building new nuclear weapons is “indefensible” to instead asserting that every single US nuclear weapons system must be “modernized,” invested in and upgraded, at the cost of trillions of dollars.
In reality, the platform reflects a sea change in official US nuclear doctrine under the Biden administration, rejecting the concept of “mutually assured destruction” and instead proclaiming a “new nuclear age,” in which the US must not be “deterred” from waging war against nuclear-armed states by the threat of nuclear retaliation.
A Harris administration would seek to significantly expand US warmaking worldwide, including direct US-NATO intervention in the conflict in Ukraine and a potential war with China, both of which carry the risk of nuclear war. This will be accompanied by a massive assault on the working class, who will be told that they must “sacrifice” for the sake of the war effort.
In a statement posted on X Wednesday, Socialist Equality Party presidential candidate Joseph Kishore wrote, “The claims by Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) and others that Harris will implement major social reforms are lies, and they know they are lies. Everything is to be subordinated to the ruling class agenda of war abroad, of global plunder, which requires a massive escalation of the war on the working class at home.”
Kishore added, “The trade union apparatus is to play a central role—Biden referred to the AFL-CIO as his ‘domestic NATO.’ This is what he and UAW President Shawn Fain, a featured speaker at the convention, mean when they talk about an ‘arsenal of democracy.’”
Trump, for his part, is no less committed to escalating global war. He has pledged to further expand the size of the US military and impose 100 percent tariffs on Chinese goods, a move that would have devastating consequences for the living standards of working people and massively intensify the likelihood of a US war with China.
The bipartisan escalation of global war reflects the fundamental interests of American imperialism, which is determined to offset the decline of its global hegemony through military violence. For this reason, the struggle against war is the fight for socialism.