What would a President Kamala Harris’ foreign policy look like? She’s already signaled that Israel policy will remain unchanged. How about Russia?
For more insight there we can take a look at Philip Gordon, currently serving as Harris’s national security adviser. He’s been around for decades. He’s a regular at the Munich Security Conference. And he is widely expected to succeed Jake Sullivan as national security adviser should Harris win the presidency.
While it’s highly doubtful that the Kamala team is sitting around a table hashing out foreign policy that they think is in the best interests of all the American people (they likely do precious little in the way of big-picture decisions), their ideological makeup is likely a representation of what US oligarchs want. And judging by Gordon’s track record, it appears the American oligarchy has no intention of using Biden’s exit as an opportunity to change course or give up on Project Ukraine. So who is Philip Gordon?
He started out serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Bill Clinton. He then moved to a senior fellow position at the Brookings Institution from 1999 to 2009 where he founded the Center on the United States and Europe. Gordon was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2013. He then went on to serve as special assistant to then-President Barack Obama and White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region until 2015.
Author James Mann writes in “The Obamians” that Gordon and others like him “represented the generation of Democrats who learned how to run foreign policy during the 1990s. They were eager to show that the Democrats were not a bunch of pacifists, that they understood national security issues and were willing to use American force where necessary.”
They just think they’re smarter about it. For example, there was a time when the Obama White House touted NATO’s role in toppling Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as a vindication of the decision to “lead from behind.”
Gordon joined the Council on Foreign Relations in 2015 as a senior fellow focused on U.S. foreign and national security policy and stayed there until hitching himself to Harris in 2020 — first as foreign policy advisor to her disastrous campaign and then as National Security Advisor to the Vice President.
In a vice president’s office that has churned through staff, Gordon has been a mainstay and is among the select group of national security officials, which includes national security adviser Jake Sullivan and deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, to take part in the president’s daily intelligence briefing.
As a longtime survivor in Washington, it’s unsurprising that Gordon is an embodiment of all the violent orthodoxy that oozes out of the Blob, such as unwavering support for Israel and the indisputable belief that China is not only a threat to the US, but the biggest one.
On the issue of Ukraine where there isn’t quite consensus (the diehard Russophobes want to keep escalating while the China hawks want to hand the bag to the Europeans so they can focus on China), Gordon believes the US can do both.
A recent Politico piece describes how European Atlanticists, nervous that they’ll be forgotten if the US focuses too much on China and Asia, love themselves some Philip Gordon. He “speaks four European languages, wrote his thesis on Charles de Gaulle and even translated a book by the notoriously irascible former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.”
Best of all, Gordon loves soccer, writes Politico:
In June 2012, Gordon even took then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to see a UEFA Euro championship semi-finals in a bar filled with Germans, after a dinner in St. Petersburg with Sullivan and then-U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.
Quite the entourage. If you dig through all the fluff, though, here’s the real money section of the whole Politico profile piece:
To this day, he’s in regular contact with the European Commission. Norbert Röttgen, a Christian Democrat member of the German Bundestag, trusts that Harris’ adviser still thinks “European security is the cornerstone of U.S. global power” and welcomes that he shares his “criticism” of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for not sending long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.
The fact that Gordon is among those pressuring Berlin to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine places him among more hawkish, wreckless war cheerleaders.
Let’s not forget that the Taurus missiles have a range of roughly 500 kilometers, which means that they can hit Moscow. At the same time, they’re reportedly difficult to operate, the Ukrainians wouldn’t be able to do it, so Bundeswehr personnel would be called on to do so. That would mean Germany is openly firing missiles into Russia, and one can imagine all the consequences that would entail. Here’s German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht lambasting the warmongers in Germany back in March when it looked like those advocating for using the Taurus might carry the day:
“Have you all lost your minds?”.
Amazing and terrifying speech by @SWagenknecht on the folly of Germany’s warmongering approach to Russia. pic.twitter.com/wfOV1ebzoO
— Thomas Fazi (@battleforeurope) March 17, 2024
So has Gordon lost his mind? You wouldn’t know from the Politico puff piece, which casually mentions his criticism of the German government for not going to war with Russia and moves right along to friendly quotes from former US ambassador to Russia and big advocate for WWIII Michael McFaul. He concludes that if Gordon becomes Harris’ national security adviser in a Harris administration, “Europe will have an ally.”
Here’s probably a better spot than any to insert the old Kissinger quote that is almost obligatory when dealing with US foreign policy these days: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
If we pair Gordon’s time in the Obama White House and its “lead from behind” mantra with regards to Libya with his current insistence that Germany should be launching Taurus missiles into Russia, well, that should be awfully concerning for Germans and Europeans in general. And how ironic is it that this is the person who European diplomats would greet as a major friend in a Harris administration?
While Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken aren’t expected to keep their jobs in a Harris administration, Gordon would be expected to seamlessly take the place of the former. From Politico:
We reported on initial skepticism about Harris earlier this summer, mostly due to Europeans’ unfamiliarity with the current vice president. But her choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as a running mate and the likelihood that Phil Gordon, a confirmed Europhile, would become her national security adviser, appear to have quelled some jitters.
Back in 2018, Gordon co-authored a Council on Foreign Relations report with the Russia hardliner Republican Robert Blackwill. They called for the kitchen sink to be thrown at Russia, including sanctions, weapons, an undying commitment to Ukraine and Europe — basically what the US has done since. The reason Gordon was calling for such approach wasn’t just the situation in Ukraine, but because “of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
So Gordon is also a purveyor of the misinformation that Russia was behind Clinton’s 2016 presidential election loss. [1] He and Blackwill proudly announced that, “If this package of measures sounds like a prescription for a new Cold War with Russia, it is.”
Gordon’s position has not changed. Here he is driving that point home more recently:
As @VP has said, US support for the Ukrainian people is enduring. This latest security assistance package will provide much-needed support as Ukraine bravely defends itself against Russia’s senseless aggression and works toward a just and lasting peace. https://t.co/IKyPtNbrST
— Phil Gordon (@PhilGordon46) July 29, 2024
Of course, “enduring” could mean a few months in DC, but for now the Harris team — or its benefactors — are sticking to that line.
What about “America’s dad,” vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the other figure Europeans are breathing a sigh of relief over? Maybe he could be a voice of sanity? Keep looking.
Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova says that among American governors, “Walz is definitely one of the leaders of such support and a reliable friend of our country.”
Walz was one of the first US governors to condemn Russia in 2022 and issue an order requiring that state agencies terminate existing contracts with Russian entities and refrain from entering into any such future contracts. He’s been on board ever since.
Minnesota will continue to support Ukraine as they defend freedom and democracy.
I visited the Ukrainian Embassy to establish a formal partnership between the public, private, and academic sectors of Minnesota and Chernihiv Oblast, strengthening our state’s ties to Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/hm3kidti6Z
— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) February 22, 2024
In conclusion, all signs are that a Harris administration’s Ukraine policy would be a continuation of Biden (as would its Israel policy). In at least one way, it’s even worse because it’s throwing away another opportunity to take an off ramp. We’ve heard a lot about how the Biden team just wanted to drag the whole sorry affair across the election finish line. Now, the money behind Harris is announcing that even with new faces the losing and dangerous strategy will remain unchanged.
Notes
[1] Gordon is also a big believer in dubious chemical weapon allegations against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Not only that, but he is critical of one of Obama’s few successful foreign policy decisions — the one where he chose not to bomb Syria over the cooked intelligence that Assad crossed the chemical weapons red line in 2013. Gordon told The Atlantic in 2016 that “we should have bombed Assad.”