The Democratic Party has been trying to paint negotiations as appeasement. During the 2024 elections, the Democratic platform condemned then-candidate Donald Trump's "fecklessness" on Iran and "love letters" to North Korea. When Trump argued that the U.S. should negotiate with countries like Iran and Russia over economic sanctions, Kamala Harris' campaign attacked his "weak" and "reckless foreign policy."
But some Democrats seem to regret taking that line. "Being afraid to negotiate, to my mind, is the ultimate sign of weakness because it just proves that you think that if I get in a room, you're going to trick me and I'm going to do something stupid," Rep. Adam Smith (D–Wash.) said during a panel discussion Wednesday.
Smith, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, was speaking to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an antiwar nonprofit where I worked as a researcher in 2020 and 2021. When asked by Quincy Institute Vice President Trita Parsi whether Democrats were seen as warmongers, Smith admitted that the party "walked into that problem."
