Walz's Pretty Good Antiwar Record

It is unusual and refreshing to have someone with Walz’s foreign policy record as a running mate.

I reviewed Tim Walz’s foreign policy record at greater length in my column for Responsible Statecraft this week:

Walz has some foreign policy experience from his time as a House member. He was first elected to Congress in 2006 running on opposition to the Iraq war, and voted for withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2007. Breaking with the Obama administration in 2013, he opposed military action in Syria over the “red line” episode. In 2017, Walz was an early co-sponsor of one of the first House war powers resolutions directing the president to remove U.S. forces from involvement in the Saudi coalition war on Yemen.

On the other hand, Walz initially said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the 2011 intervention in Libya in its first weeks, but added that “I think our engagement needs to be very narrow, it needs to be very defined and it needs to have a clear out time.” Walz seems to be generally skeptical of military intervention, but he has not opposed intervention in every case.

We haven’t had many candidates on a major party national ticket with well-established antiwar credentials, so it is unusual and refreshing to have someone with Walz’s foreign policy record as a running mate. I know Harris didn’t choose Walz primarily because of his foreign policy record. According to the reporting today, “Ms. Harris viewed him as an Everyman figure from Minnesota whose Midwestern-dad-vibe balanced out her Bay Area background” and that “Mr. Walz was thought to be someone who could match up well in a debate against Senator JD Vance of Ohio.” Walz also had the vocal backing of some major labor unions. No doubt his record in Minnesota was what interested his supporters, but it is still mildly encouraging to that he also has a record of opposing most unnecessary and illegal wars and wasn’t ruled out because of it.