US President Joe Biden often speaks of the global contest between autocracy and democracy, while Vice President Kamala Harris prefers to talk about the need to promote a “rules-based order.” When foreign policy comes up at the presidential debate on September 10, viewers are likely to hear about it.

US President Joe Biden often speaks of the global contest between autocracy and democracy, while Vice President Kamala Harris prefers to talk about the need to promote a “rules-based order.” When foreign policy comes up at the presidential debate on September 10, viewers are likely to hear about it.

People close to Harris attribute this inclination to her past as a prosecutor – she knows the importance of rules – and to the inconvenient fact that so many U.S. allies are autocrats. But the change in terminology will not allow her to dodge the hypocrisy at the heart of U.S. foreign policy. Nothing illustrates this dilemma more clearly than Israel’s behavior in Gaza – and Washington’s continued and largely unconditional military support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

A growing number of Western governments have chosen a different path. Italy, Spain, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and, more recently, the new British government have restricted at least some of their arms sales to Israel because of Israel’s bombing and starvation of the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

Biden’s concern is justified about the autocratic challenge to democracy. China’s government under Xi Jinping is trying to simplify human rights laws so that they require only economic growth, “social stability” (often achieved through repression), and a vague, manipulable “happy life.” This redefinition, aimed at curbing condemnation of Beijing’s authoritarian rule, would – if widely endorsed – undermine the human rights that are essential to democracy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin takes a different approach. On the one hand, the Kremlin promotes so-called “traditional values,” a backward-looking social conservatism that leaves no room for LGBTQ rights and would leave many women at home. On the other hand, Russian propagandists seek to undermine the fact-based discourse needed to enforce legal standards. While Russian forces attack civilians in Ukraine, the Kremlin denies and distorts the truth. Russians who tell the truth are imprisoned.

But Biden is meeting these challenges to democracy by forging alliances that include autocrats. He was once accused of WashingtonPost The Saudi crown prince is now being courted to produce more oil and normalize relations with Israel. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has imposed the worst repression in Egypt’s modern history but is a key US partner in dealing with the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has crushed dissent and fomented violence and discrimination against Muslims but is a central player in Biden’s alliance against China.

Many governments, recognizing this hypocrisy, prefer to remain silent. If the US opposition to autocracy is so unprincipled, why shouldn’t other governments be selective and allow themselves to be bought off with Chinese loans or Russian weapons?

But promoting the “rules-based order” as an alternative framework also creates dilemmas for U.S. policy. Harris seems to emphasize respect for sovereignty – defined by rules like “don’t invade your neighbor” – and the standards required for global trade and investment, but that is far from the limit of international law. The rules-based order also includes international human rights and international humanitarian law. And as any prosecutor knows, a law-abiding person cannot choose which laws to follow.

Of course, autocrats disregard international human rights law. They work to prevent citizens from exercising their right to challenge their rule. But some democracies also violate international humanitarian law on the conduct of war—and that is exactly what Israel has been doing for nearly a year. While Hamas’s atrocities on October 7, 2023, and its ongoing hostage-taking are clearly war crimes, a fundamental assumption of international humanitarian law is that war crimes by one side never justify war crimes by the other.

As Harris himself noted, Israel’s right to self-defense does not exempt the country from the rules of warfare – such as the Geneva Convention and its subsequent additional protocols.

The Israeli military’s warfare in Gaza is rife with alleged war crimes, from reports of indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian civilians by Israel to accusations of starving them. The International Criminal Court prosecutor has indicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the starvation strategy, with more indictments likely to follow, and the International Court of Justice ordered Israel in January to end its partial blockade of food and other essential goods.

U.S. law, which supports these international standards, is also part of these “rules.” Today, most discussions about legal limits on U.S. military aid and arms sales rely on the Leahy Act, which prohibits U.S. aid to “foreign security forces” that commit serious human rights abuses. But that is a modest requirement compared to the far more comprehensive Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which remains in force and states that “no security assistance shall be provided to a country whose government repeatedly commits serious violations of internationally recognized human rights.”

The Leahy Act was passed in 1997 to allow a more incremental approach to military aid. But it turns out that it is often difficult to prove which specific unit is responsible for a military’s abuses. Targeting a single unit is far from enough to stop a military’s broader abuses. The State Department briefly considered, but decided against, cutting off aid to four Israeli units that allegedly mistreated Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Israel had supposedly taken remedial action. But Israel’s overall conduct in Gaza clearly does not pass the broader test.

It is also a violation of international criminal law to arm a systematically violent force. Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, convicted by an internationally backed tribunal in 2012, is currently serving a 50-year sentence in a British prison for aiding and abetting war crimes committed by a rebel force in neighboring Sierra Leone. No one expects the International Criminal Court to indict Biden for aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes, but the fact that it could underscores the gravity of today’s unconditional arms sales to Israel.

Harris could signal a different approach than Biden by declaring her determination to avoid U.S. complicity in Israeli war crimes.

The new Prime Minister of the United KingdomKeir Starmer – himself a former prosecutor – announced this month that Britain would suspend the sale of certain weapons that Israel could use in Gaza after a Foreign Office review found a “clear risk” that the use of British weapons could violate international humanitarian law. But the Biden administration is largely ignoring that right.

Washington has suspended the delivery of the huge 2,000-pound bombs Israel used to destroy neighborhoods in Gaza, but otherwise allowed weapons and billions in military aid to flow freely. The White House occasionally issues warnings to that effect—calling on Netanyahu to stop bombing and starving Palestinian civilians and agree to a ceasefire—but since the U.S. government does not impose consequences for ignoring these warnings, Netanyahu pays little attention to them.

The world sees this double standard. Given the massive suffering and loss of life in Gaza, outrage over Israel’s exception to the so-called rules-based order is likely to outweigh discontent over the various autocratic exceptions to Biden’s promotion of democracy.

Although Harris is vice president, she is virtually unable to publicly break with Biden’s policies. But that should not stop her from discussing how she would do things differently as president. There is undoubtedly an element of electoral calculation behind her caution, even as there is growing unease among key Democratic voters, including in the swing state of Michigan, which has a large Arab-American population, about Washington’s continued support for Israeli war crimes.

Beginning with today’s debate against Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, Harris should explain where she stands. Just as a prosecutor should not turn a blind eye to serious crimes, a president should not ignore serious violations of the “rules-based order.”