America doesn’t want Trump or Biden — we need a No Labels challenger, now 

I signed the Never Trump letter in 2016 (though I would have written it differently) and I voted for a third-party candidate (as I had in a prior election).   

In 2020, I voted for Donald Trump hoping to extend the tenure of his superb national security team that transformed U.S. China-Taiwan policy (despite Trump’s own shallow and erratic views) and to forestall the return of Clinton and Obama foreign policy officials. I will not vote for Trump again — among many other reasons, his redeeming national security staff cannot be reassembled and his ingratiating posture toward Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin and disdain for Taiwan and Ukraine have grown worse since 2020.   

I voted for Nikki Haley in the 2024 D.C. primary and looked forward to supporting her as the Republican nominee. But beyond Trump’s core supporters, Democrats refused to take advantage of open Republican primaries to help Haley block Trump. With that option gone, barring some dramatic turn of events, I will vote for the No Labels candidate. 

Biden and Kamala Harris seem especially unsuited for these perilous times, though Biden rejects concerns over his advanced age and evidence of diminished mental acuity.   

Presumably, he was in full possession of his faculties when he ordered the disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan; when he failed to deter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after boasting for months that he knew it was coming; when he allowed a Chinese spy balloon to collect intelligence from multiple sensitive U.S. sites; and when he, like Trump, left highly classified government documents exposed for years in unauthorized private locations. And whether Biden’s present mental state is in decline or not, Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates long ago indicted his decades of unsound national security judgments. 

No Labels offers a potential alternative. Though Haley has said she intends to remain a Republican and is not interested in a third-party run, it is time for her and No Labels, with their shared visions of a non-Trump, non-Biden America, to join forces. 

Those who see the possibility of another Trump term as even more frightening than four more years of Biden and/or Harris protest that a No Labels candidacy would split the pro-Biden vote and ensure Trump’s return to power. In reality, a bipartisan No Labels ticket headed by Haley or another moderately conservative Republican, joined by a centrist Democrat with strong national security credentials, is at least as likely to draw votes from Trump. 

Potentially, it will attract enough votes from both contenders to win outright, despite the history of futile third-party candidates serving only as spoilers. Given the low public esteem for both Trump and Biden, 2024 seems destined to produce a historic realignment of the parties, enhancing the prospect of an outright No Labels victory. 

The Biden-Trump specter now depressing the American electorate and further dividing the country has invoked comparisons to the pre-Civil War period. Beyond our shores, America being pitted against itself invites exploitation by enemies of the U.S.-led international order.

Russia’s two invasions of Ukraine spanning the Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris administrations and the Hamas-Israel war fomented by Iran’s radical, anti-Western Islamism already divert resources and distract Washington’s attention. 

Communist China continues to escalate military pressure against Taiwan, America’s security partner, and against our Philippines treaty ally.  For further distraction, North Korea, China’s malevolent junior partner, is poised to launch further missile or nuclear tests and to act aggressively against South Korea and/or Japan. 

Trump clearly lacks the geostrategic and moral vision to address these existential threats to Western interests and values, most of which he does not share. He is bizarrely attracted to the authoritarian leaders who manifest those threats, personally welcoming Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Putin’s friend, to Mar-a-Lago last week. 

Biden, by contrast, at least talks the talk. He expresses the right rhetoric about the global struggle between democracy and autocracy, and has succeeded in marshaling Western countries to support besieged Ukraine against the common Russian threat. 

However, long before Trump directed his congressional allies to halt the flow of critically needed weapons and munitions to Ukraine, Biden has been a reluctant and dilatory arms provider. He has resisted providing every major weapons system Ukraine urgently sought over the past two years for fear of provoking Russian escalation. 

Biden’s timid hesitancy has cost Ukraine tens of thousands of unnecessary military and civilian deaths. The initial lack of advanced tanks, then aircraft and longer-range air defenses, have severely hampered Ukraine’s ability to regain Russian-occupied territory. Its much-anticipated counter-offensive failed, and Russian forces are making fresh gains in their revived aggression. 

The neo-isolationist posture of Trump-subservient House Republicans has now put Ukraine’s situation in extremis, denying it even basic military resources such as ammunition. Blindly complicit in enabling Putin’s expansionist strategy, MAGA has effectively become MARGA —Make Russia Great Again.   

Trump and his obedient followers have forfeited what used to be the GOP’s claim to superiority on foreign policy and recklessly betray Ronald Reagan’s philosophy of peace through strength. 

A No Labels presidential ticket headed by Haley — or if she won’t do it, by another Republican strong on national security — can reclaim that patriotic mantle. America cannot be great again if it abandons friends and allies to enemies of the international order. Biden, partially following Trump’s lead, did that in Afghanistan, and Trump and his congressional coterie are about to do it with Ukraine and possibly even NATO. Ukraine, America and the world deserve better.   

As Haley often said in her campaign, we have a country to save. We still do. 

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010.