What Is The AOC Doctrine?
The New York Congresswoman — and potential Presidential candidate — outlines her foreign policy. What are its successes? What are its limits?
As part of running for president is proving you have international bona fides, there’s no better place to do that than, well, internationally. Much as they flock to Nowhereville, Iowa, years before declaring a candidacy to butter up crucial caucus votes, presidential contenders take international trips to display their statesmanship to foreign and domestic audiences. As expected, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent trip to Germany stoked speculation that she’s eyeing a 2028 presidential bid. While abroad, AOC attended the annual Munich Security Conference, gave a talk hosted by the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), and met with democratic socialist Die Linke to discuss an international wealth tax. As was her stated goal, the New York congresswoman presented a progressive foreign policy view that has a large constituency in the United States, but is rarely represented on the national stage. While the horse-race-obsessed media focused singularly on what the trip meant for her political future (which pissed off AOC), the core of her European message was the need to combat the global far-right through left-wing populism and class-based internationalism. If conveying this sentiment was the only point of her trip, then it was a job well done. Every camera was focused on AOC, to the point that no one seems to have realized Gavin Newsom was even there. And if she is angling for the White House, then that’s a success as well. By arguing a left-wing agenda is the cure to the surging fascist right embodied by Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, and former Brazilian President and current inmate #8934 Jair Bolsonaro, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez created a yet-to-be-filled role for a left-wing populist to defang the fascist serpent — one that she is positioning herself as the only figure able to fill.
Presidential ambitions aside, I found AOC’s international message intriguing and thought-provoking. Not just because it spoke to the domestic and international priorities of the socialist left, but because it also forces us to reckon with the electoral shortcomings of our anti-imperialist project. So, what is the AOC Doctrine? Let’s take a look.
At a high level, AOC’s foreign policy doctrine correctly ignores the Washington consensus that there is a firewall between domestic and foreign policy. Members of both parties have mistakenly assumed that what the American government does offshore will not reach the homeland. As we have all borne terrible witness, the war on terror has come home. ICE uses CIA torture techniques, the state kidnaps Palestinian activists just as Israel does, and Trump has designated every critic a “terrorist,” the label slapped on any prisoner the American government wishes to deprive of human rights. As Aime Cesaire theorized long ago, imperialism is a boomerang. The methods an Empire uses to suppress foreign populations will eventually return to the host nation in the form of fascism. But there is a political cost to this fallacy. As Ta-Nehisi Coates said, “If Democrats can’t draw the line at genocide, they can’t draw the line at democracy.” As Kamala Harris learned, voters aren’t going to trust your commitment to domestic honesty if you’re supporting foreign tyranny.
In Germany, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered a foreign policy that recognizes this error and seeks to correct it. Her particular focus was on how the refusal to address income inequality, corporate power, and imperialism leads to right-wing populist movements, such as Trump, Orban, and Bolsonaro. Through this lens, AOC portrayed a downward spiral: democracies fail to deliver results for the working class, so they turn to right-wing populists, who use scapegoats to distract the working class while exacerbating the anti-democratic movements Western democracies claim to despise. In Munich, the subtext was pointing a finger at those in the room with her: You all refused to share your growing wealth with the working class, so they turned to the right, and you’re freaking out. Either share the wealth or reap what you sow.
To no one’s surprise, this message was better received by the students in Berlin than by the politicians and arms dealers in Munich. But in each location, the message was clear. Here’s AOC outlining her theory of the problem.
“We have to have a working-class-centered politics if we are going to suceed, and also if we are going to stave-off the scourges of authoritarianism which also provides political siren calls to allure people into finding scapegoats to blame for rising economic inequality, both domestically and globally.”
I’d like to shout out the moderator for her work in the clip below for bringing up the elephant in the room. If the great fear is that democracies will fall to despots, then are defense budgets the best way to actually protect national sovereignty? Would it not be better to spread domestic investment elsewhere, ensuring populations have a higher standard of living that doesn’t force them to turn to fascists? AOC’s answer (from 21:16 to 24:00) shows a more expansive view of “national security” than what is typically said at conventions sponsored by weapons manufacturers. According to AOC, national security involves curtailing corporate power and income inequality.
Once free from the stares and leers of the trans-Atlantic elite, Ocasio-Cortez emphasized the class message at the heart of her policy, which sees little distinction between foreign and domestic. Talking before students in Berlin, here’s her answer to the question of how Trump got re-elected; more specifically, “How have authoritarian politics gained traction in the United States?” (from 13:00 to 20:00)
“The alternative [to a right-wing populist movement is] a populist movement that tells the truth. A populist movement that says, ‘This is an injustice. You are being screwed over.’ And that story is not a cultural one, but a class one.”
[Applause]
“And the answer is, you know, I think there there’s an inherent reaction when we have the right-wing blaming any given segment of people to say, ‘No, we stand with those people.’ It is important to say that, but we have to go deeper. We don’t stand with these populations because it is morally right thing to do, although it is. We don’t stand with them out of the goodness of our hearts or charity. We stand with them because it is strategic, because we are a we are united as a class and we will not be divided within our class.”
“And so the alternative truthtelling prescription is not expulsion and targeting of people based on our differences, but a championing of higher wages, stronger safety nets and accountability to those elites who are abusing our systems and our productivities for themselves.”
Damn. The last time a Red brought this must class consciousness to Berlin, Hitler put a gun in his mouth.
As the focus was on foreign policy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez faced questions about specific geopolitical issues. Like every politician, the intricate difficulties of complex foreign affairs were where she stumbled. She’ll have to brush up if she wants to sound like a polished stateswoman. (Though, in the age of Donald Trump, I’m not sure that’s as important as some think.)
During the foreign policy panel in Munich, she addressed the most pressing question: arms shipments to Israel. (42:00 - 43:30)
Haaretz journalist: “I wanted to know if you think that the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 elections should re-evaluate military aid to Israel.”
AOC: “To me this isn’t just about a presidential election. Personally, I think that the United States has an obligation to uphold its own laws, particularly the Leahy Laws. And I think that the the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense. I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza. And I think that we have thousands of women and children dead that was completely avoidable. And so I believe that enforcement of our own laws through the Leahy Laws, which requires conditioning aid in any circumstance when you see gross human rights violations is appropriate.”
Ending weapons shipments to Israel is the policy Americans want, and enacting the Leahy Laws is likely the easiest way for an American president to do it. Focusing on the statues named after the iconic Vermont legislator is a good way to remind the world that America’s enablement of the Gaza genocide violates not just international law, but American law. But it would also be good for AOC to specify how she thinks the Leahy Laws should be applied. Technically, the laws prevent military assistance to groups accused of gross human rights violations. The Biden Administration said it was applying the law to three specific IDF units (but then backed down), so it’s unclear if hypothetical President AOC would consider “Israel” or “The IDF” a group that shouldn’t be shipped weapons. She’s one of the few Democrats who has voted against sending weapons to Israel, so her record implies she’d prefer a more blanket cutoff than Biden’s choice of just a few units. Still, it would be helpful for her to be specific.
One of the congresswoman’s strongest answers came during a discussion on U.S.-China relations. With three panelists representing America’s three major political factions — NATO ambassador Matthew George representing the MAGA far-right, Governor Gretchen Whitmer standing in for the Democratic centrist establishment, and AOC for the progressive/democratic socialist lane— the panel gave insight into how each of the three American political factions views the China question. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s ambassador was hawkish, citing Elon Musk and the need to win the “AI race,” while Whitmer accused China of cheating the American auto industry. Alternatively, the New York congresswoman rejected the notion of a conflict and discussed the relationship as a competition, which she not-so-subtly indicated America is losing.
“China is of course an ascendant global global power growing very quickly and acting in its own self-interest. Often times in Washington, there’s this frame between conflict and competition. I think sometimes depending on what’s happening, that rhetoric can get a little conflict driven. I think that it’s really a question of competition and to the governor’s point, fair competition. But when I think about that, I think about how the United States, if you want to assert oneself as a global competitor, the kinds of things that one would do in order to really assert that position is investments in science and technology. We are gutting our NIH, we are gutting our health science research, we are cutting the very things that make us a global power in that respect in terms of government and public funded research.”
“An ascended global power should invest heavily in innovative energy solutions so that it can be sovereign. The United States, is at this point, instead of expanding our energy mix we are actively narrowing our energy mix to become increasingly more reliant on fossil fuels. This is in contrast to what you see is happening in China. Yes they burn a very large amount of fossil fuels, but they have also invested dramatically in wind and solar and in energy innovation.”
“And so to me, I see this as a as a question of competition and of course of trade to to the governor’s point. But we have to make sure that we are having, I think, a reflective conversation about how are we positioning ourselves to continue to offer the world uh the best of what America has to offer.”
We immediately see the benefits of the “competition” framing over the “conflict” framing. Instead of proposing to build more aircraft carriers and “stand up to China in the South China Seas,” AOC’s solution is domestic investment in science and technology through the National Institutes of Health and green energy to achieve energy sovereignty. Not only would that shift domestic spending out of the military-industrial complex and into more productive areas of the American economy, but it would also reduce dependence on fossil fuels, which drag America into foreign affairs and, inevitably, foreign wars. One could almost say, American security depends on a Green New Deal…
Though I was impressed by her trip, it wasn’t without its bumps and hurdles. Immediately after her above answer on U.S.-China relations, AOC was asked, “Should the U.S. commit troops to defending Taiwan?” Clearly unprepared, she stumbled through her answer, which The New York Times chose to portray with the below duplicitous framing. (As if we needed any more evidence that the media would pull out the Bernie playbook to try to sink AOC.)
Questioned about whether the United States should send troops to defend Taiwan if China invaded the island, she stalled for roughly 20 seconds before offering a substantive response.
“I think that, uh, this is such a, a — you know, I think that — this is a, um — this is of course, a, uh, a very longstanding, um, policy of the United States,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said, before saying that the country should try to avoid reaching that point with China in the first place.
It was a striking moment from a self-assured legislator who is normally nimble at answering impromptu questions from reporters on Capitol Hill, and conservative critics seized on the stumble online.
I’d be curious to see how often the Times reports Donald Trump’s blabbering statements verbatim. But with defense to the congresswoman, a say-a-lot-mean-nothing on fighting for Taiwan is the policy of both the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. It’s called “strategic ambiguity,” the official-sounding name for a policy of “neither of us would like to answer.” Neither Washington nor Beijing states they’ll invade or defend the island, allowing them to maintain their international prestige without forcing themselves or the other to actually play their hand. Faced with the same question, Trump’s ambassador said it’s up to Trump, and Whitmer said, “Taiwan is in the strategic interests of the United States.” On substance, AOC’s answer was identical to the rest.
The Taiwan gaffe was far from the only criticism of the foreign policy trip. As typically happens whenever AOC is in the news, everyone went cuckoo for cockoo puffs. The right raged about how she dared to accuse Israel of genocide while in Germany, as if every country is only allowed to talk about the atrocities committed on its own soil. DropSite Editor-in-Chief Ryan Grim, whom I consider one of the best American reporters of the modern era, equated the New York Congresswoman’s “liberal interventionist” tendencies to JFK. Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, whom I consider not a reporter, called her the next “John McCain.” To put it plainly, this is insane. JFK invaded Cuba, cemented America’s role in the Vietnam War, and was a die-hard anti-communist Cold Warrior. John McCain personally bombed Vietnam, supported the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and sang a “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” jingle on the 2008 campaign trail. To equate anything AOC said in Europe to either of these American imperialists indicates how critical thinking and sober judgment go out the window whenever someone says the name “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
But this is not to say there’s nothing to criticize in the New York congresswoman’s foreign policy agenda. With such a focus on Israel, many pointed out her past weaknesses on Palestine-related issues. During the 2024 Democratic Convention, AOC repeated the administration’s lie that Kamala Harris was working “tirelessly for a ceasefire.” Neither Harris nor Biden sought a ceasefire. While I sympathize with her lesser-evil election calculation, many people who supported the Democratic ticket did so without lying. This was wrong, and she should apologize for it. AOC also has a history of past support for the Iron Dome, Israel’s American-financed missle defense system. While the Iron Dome is framed as a “defensive weapon,” that’s not a thing. The imaginary “defensive vs. offensive weapon” arose to get around objections to arming Saudi Arabia during its genocide in Yemen. As far as I can tell, a “defensive weapon” is when a drone strikes a missle battery, and an “offensive weapon” is when a drone strikes a schoolbus. But as both Saudi Arabia and Israel have a habit of saying “that a school bus is a secret missle battery,” it’s better to just give them nothing at all.
That said, it’s technically not true to say AOC has voted to fund the Iron Dome, or to send any money to Israel. In 2021, she voted “present” on an Iron Dome funding bill and voted against a weapons shipment in 2024. In 2025, she voted against Marjorie Taylor Greene’s amendment stripping Iron Dome funding from a defense package, but then she voted against the entire package. Still, she offered the following statement about the 2025 vote, saying she saw the Iron Dome as a way to stop civilian casualties. That’s not where she should be, in either my opinion or in the opinion of the Democratic Socialists of America, who criticized her for the vote. That said, such statements should be taken as part of her overall record on Israel-Palestine, which is top-tier in Congress. According to the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights Congressional Scorecard, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of only five active representatives with an “A” grade.1 While I take issue with specifics, it’s important to remind myself that pressure should be directed at getting other congresspeople to where AOC is.
Specific issues aside, I find the overall left-wing critique of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s time in Europe to be the most intriguing. Likely because it raises the most difficult questions. Many on the socialist left took issue with AOC for attending the Munich Security Conference at all, given its close association with weapons manufacturers, NATO, and other bellicose actors. In their view, this puts the democratic socialist too close to the Blob — the political, economic, and structural systems, groups, and people who have set the United States up to be the world police. While Palestine is the hot-button issue, the tentacles of the American Empire reach every continent, ready to squeeze the life out of any threat to international capital, often at the expense of the global working class. Representative Ocasio-Cortez correctly called out the hypocrisy of the Atlantic Alliance, saying the invasion of Venezuela and the longstanding exploitation of the Global South indicate we were in a “pre-rules-based order” rather than a “post-rules-based order.” And if President AOC is sworn in, I would love to see the AOC Doctrine take root: eliminate the false seperation between domestic and foreign policy, invest in social welfare to increase domestic resilience rather than relying on defense budgets, and stop the foreign wars, coups, and invasions that have made the United Nations Charter a document that, in reality, protects the sovereignty of Euro-centric nations so they can exploit the rest. A foreign policy guided by this doctrine would greatly reduce the daily carnage of the American Empire, both at home and abroad. I would not just be eager to see this theory brought to Washington: I would find it my moral duty to do everything in my power to help it get there.
However, there is a deeper question of whether the “rules-based order” has yet to exist, as AOC says, or if the order existed and was designed to protect the White, capitalist nations while allowing the continued exploitation of colonized countries. After all, the U.S. and other nations violated national sovereignty immediately after World War II. So it’s not like there was a strong commitment to international cooperation that Washington “forgot” along the way. Personally, I lean towards the latter. And I don’t believe the congresswoman shares my foreign policy dream of closing all foreign U.S. military bases, handing Pete Hegseth over to be tried in Venezuela, paying reparations to all our victims, and creating a U.N. Peacekeeping mission to invade Tel Aviv and occupy genocidal Israel for a century, similar to what was done to Nazi Germany. This is not to say I’m not supportive of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or that I don’t appreciate what I have dubbed here as the AOC Doctrine. Quite the opposite. I’d sell my soul to get half of it enacted. Rather, this is to call into question the monumentous task American anti-imperialists face. What happens when a democratic socialist who strongly speaks out against the results of the American Empire, such as the starvation of Cuba and the genocide in Gaza, but might not fully grapple with the purported system that delivered those outcomes, is put in charge of the entire apparatus? If the post-World War II order was designed to perpetuate American and European imperialism, how deep do the roots need to be pulled out to achieve the more peaceful aims the New York congresswoman seeks?
These are important questions for both Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the American left to answer. It’s no exaggeration to say the fate of the world depends on it.
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In Solidarity — Joe
The others are Rashida Tlaib, Summer Lee, Delia Ramierz, and Ilhan Omar. The highest score in the Senate is Bernie Sanders, with a B.
AOC is not my dream candidate for 2028, but she's likely the best the Democrats are going to offer.
Excellent article. Thank you!