AOC and Progressive Blind Spots on Foreign Policy

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D–N.Y.) faltering and uncertain performance at last week’s Munich Security Conference is more than a sign that she is not yet ready to run for president. It’s also a sign that the progressive movement as a whole needs to think about foreign and defense policy as much as they have considered economic and social issues.

AOC garnered unfavorable headlines for her factual errors about Venezuela and her inability to answer a question about whether she wants the United States to defend Taiwan if attacked by China. No, Venezuela is not south of the equator, as she implied while criticizing President Donald Trump for seizing that country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. Nor is it “the long-settled policy of America” to come to the beleaguered island’s defense if invaded, as she stated.

In fact, America has long pursued a policy of “strategic ambiguity” over whether it would go to war to protect the self-governing, democratic island’s de facto independence. American officials rushed to correct President Joseph Biden at least three times when he stated, contrary to official policy, that America would defend Taiwan if attacked. One would think that AOC, or at least her staff, would have been aware of this continuing controversy as she took the stage at what is called “Davos with guns.”

But in retrospect, that massive failure is not at all surprising. One struggles to think of any prominent progressive figure or thinker who has advanced a comprehensive and persuasive critique of American foreign policy or provided a clear alternative. Using “a class-based internationalist perspective” as a touchstone principle for foreign policy, as AOC did in Germany, is a facile and naive way to view America’s responsibilities to its allies. Its implicit pacifist non-interventionism would make British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 sell-out of Czechoslovakia look like bellicose warmongering in comparison.

Sure, we know where progressives stand on Israel and its conflicts with Hamas and other Arab states. They minimize the horrors and sheer barbarity of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israeli Jewish citizens and call Israel’s response “genocide.” They increasingly call for America to stop selling offensive weapons to the Jewish state and support a two-state solution to the dispute with Palestinians, despite the fact that there is no current democratic majority within Israel itself for that to occur.

But what about America’s relationship with NATO? What about China? Can anyone really say that we know what a progressive president would do with either of these strategically crucial matters?

The use of force to settle disputes seems to be ruled out, given that many progressives rushed to criticize Trump’s shocking—and massively successful—seizure of Maduro. AOC followed that line herself as she said he should not have been “kidnapped” even though he was an anti-democratic ruler.

That disposition, however, fails to take account of global facts on the ground. America’s allies would prefer a clearer statement that Trump is offering that we will use military force to protect them, as our longstanding defense treaties with many require. They will not look kindly on a leading candidate who gives the impression that their approach to any global conflict will be to “give peace a chance.”

Progressive foreign policy thinking also runs the risk of giving off the scent of anti-Americanism. AOC criticized Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s widely acclaimed speech by attacking his invocation of “Western values” and by saying those values do not take the interests of “the global south” into account. That is at best disdainful and at worst in opposition to the American heritage that most, even most Democrats, believe in.

But that again is perhaps not surprising. A recent Gallup poll found that only 36 percent of Democrats are extremely or very proud to be Americans. A Pew Research poll released this week finds that 31 percent of Americans who do not identify with the governing Republicans mentioned something negative rather than positive when asked what makes them feel proud of their country. The data do not break these attitudes down further, but one would not be surprised if those views are more common among progressives than among other Democrats.

Other polls clearly show a lack of patriotism or love of country among liberal Democrats. An Economist/YouGov poll from July 2025 found that 30 percent of Harris voters and 42 percent of self-described liberals were either not very or not at all patriotic. Perhaps most tellingly, a 2021 Pew Research poll found that between 63 and 75 percent of the most progressive factions within the Democratic coalition—groups they labeled as ”Outsider Left” and “Progressive Left”—thought that there were “other countries better than the United States,” even when given the option of saying that America is “one of the greatest countries in the world, along with some others.”

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If you don’t like your country or feel patriotic about it, it’s not surprising that you haven’t given much thought about how to defend it from its genuine enemies.

That’s going to cause any progressive Democratic nominee endless problems in a presidential election should they not overcome their blind spot beforehand. Most Americans do like or love America, and they expect their president to share that sentiment. Americans may be leery of being the world’s policeman, but they do not want a president who will bend over backward to avoid conflict with even the worst global leaders imaginable.

This is not simply a Republican or “white” concept. Polls generally show that Hispanics—a key voting bloc for Democrats who want to reverse Trump’s popular vote win—are turning against President Trump as they weigh his performance in office. But they also show that Hispanics favor Maduro’s seizure. It seems that even many Americans who don’t approve of Trump generally like the strategic and limited use of force that has typified his foreign policy over the past year.

Older Democrats remember how Republicans used the party’s reputation for weakness to eviscerate their nominees during the 1970s and 1980s. President Richard Nixon ran a devastating television ad against Sen. George McGovern (D–S.D.) in 1972 attacking McGovern’s proposed defense cuts. Ronald Reagan also savaged President Jimmy Carter and former Vice President Walter Mondale in the 1980 and 1984 campaigns for their purported inability to stand up to the Soviet Union.

Reagan’s Vice President, George H.W. Bush, also used foreign policy as a cudgel to smash his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Repeated attacks led to Dukakis’ legendarily bad photo op of him driving a tank, an attempt at damage control that instead made him a laughingstock. The Bush campaign even used the footage as the background to an ad detailing the myriad weapons systems he had opposed.

President George W. Bush also used allegations of weakness to defeat Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in 2004. Kerry, a decorated officer during the Vietnam War, knew that could be a problem. He even started his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention by saluting and saying, “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.” But that was to no avail when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacked his war record and the Bush campaign used footage of Kerry windsurfing in an ad to show his changes of vote on the Iraq War and defense spending.

It is likely not a coincidence that these races are the only times since 1956 that Republican candidates have won a majority of the popular vote.

Progressives are on the upswing within the Democratic Party and will likely become even stronger as this year’s primaries progress. A failure to rectify their lack of serious international policy thinking, however, could make those successes turn into a poisoned chalice in 2028.