AOC’s foreign policy pitch was DOA at Munich
Over the course of a calendar year, there is a litany of largely meaningless and virtue signal-filled conferences attended by the world’s most notable business leaders, political scientists, economists, and politicians. The Aspen Ideas Festival, the World Economic Forum’s Davos Conference, and the Council on Foreign Relations’ annual National Conference come to mind. All of these types of gigs are really the much nerdier versions of a Met Gala or Kennedy Center Honors Ceremony.
Last week, it was the Munich Security Conference that brought together the world’s elite class of pundits to talk about geopolitics. As a foreign policy junkie, I at least tune into some of it or read some of the after-action reports. I certainly did not plan on writing about Munich this week. After all, there are more pressing issues to examine like the civil wars in Sudan and Myanmar or the U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations in Geneva. However, the esteemed Congresswoman from the People’s Republic of Queens, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, forced my hand with her foreign policy pundit debut at Munich.
Since 2019, Ocasio-Cortez (often referred to as AOC) has represented the deep blue Fourteenth Congressional District of New York after running as an outwardly proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Since then, she has been a Rorschach test of political celebrity. For the left, she is a brave young Latina (are we still doing that “Latinx” thing?) who is fighting for “the working class” and against the “establishment.” It also helps that she is a social media savant when it comes to messaging. To the right, she is this century’s Lenin who is bent on seizing the White House (and the means of production). My Occam’s razor take on AOC is that she is your standard, overly theatrical leftist millennial who is great on camera but who can’t defend their policy prescription when faced with challenging questions or debate.
Such is the case with her foreign policy takes over the past eight years. In a 2018 interview with Firing Line’s Margaret Hoover, AOC could not actually articulate what the Israeli “occupation” was and instead fell back on saying “I’m not the expert.” Flash forward to 2026 and not much seems to have changed. For starters, the congresswoman was invited to the Munich Security Conference despite not being a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee or the House Armed Services Committee. Instead, AOC has been a past member on Oversight & Accountability, Financial Services, and Natural Resources. She currently sits on the committee for Energy and Commerce. So her invitation (as well as that of Governors Newsom and Whitmer) to the MSC this year is head-scratching to say the least. In fact, her invitation is analogous to a neurologist asking the hospital HVAC guy to help with brain surgery because he works in the same building.
There were several instances in Munich where it was clear that AOC was over her head. Take for example an instance where she was asked what Trump’s biggest foreign policy shift of the past year was. What followed was a weaving answer of word salad that would make Kamala Harris blush: “Well, I think zooming out beyond just this presidential administration…, I think that what we are seeing is — between President Trump’s first administration pulling out of longstanding international agreements; then you have President Biden, who is opting back into some of them, such as, for example, with the Paris Climate Accords, and then you have President Trump that’s elected again — I think what we are seeing now is this idea that U.S. foreign policy is — and some of our more basic and foundational values-based commitments seem to be enacted based on the partisanship of whoever is elected.” Huh? I mean maybe mention his willingness to bomb Iran or unilaterally deposing Latin American strongmen?
Or how about when she was asked whether or not the U.S. would commit military forces to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression: “Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is, this is of course a very longstanding policy of the United States…. What we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point… and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation, and for that question to even arise.”I encourage the reader to watch the linked video of her response. (It’s even worse than how it reads.) AOC, if she had been prepped properly, could have talked about America’s strategic ambiguity towards Taiwan or the need for America to keep sea-lane commerce open. Instead, she gives another mealy-mouthed answer that says nothing.
Continuing her streak, AOC then claimed that Venezuela geographically fell below the equator. She then critiqued Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s well-received speech to European leaders as a “a pure appeal to ‘Western culture’” while simultaneously saying that the assembled audience needed to “deepen our partnership and increase commitment to integrity and our values.” Where might those values come from, congresswoman? Might it be from the western political tradition that was molded over centuries and internationalized after 1945?
Lastly (and perhaps the cherry on top), Alexandria “I’m no expert” Ocasio-Cortez went to Germany and accused the Jewish state of Israel of genocide. Going to the city where Hitler started his political rise and saying this is a clear attempt by AOC to draw a shameful parallel.
AOC assures us that she did not go to Munich as a soft launch of her 2028 campaign for president. Instead, she said she went to the MSC “not because I’m running for president, not because I’ve made some kind of decision about a horse race or a candidacy, but because we need to sound the alarm bells that a lot of those folks in nicely pressed suits in that room will not be there much longer if we do not do something about the runaway inequality that is fueling far-right populist movements.” This would be laughable if it wasn’t such a naked attempt at a bait-and-switch. I mean it’s the congress-speak equivalent of someone saying, “I’m not trying to be famous. I’m just trying to get my name out there.” AOC also said that the clips of her gaffes in Munich were disseminated to ““distract from the substance of what I am saying.” To that I say, welcome to politics in the year of our Lord 2026, Alex.
I encourage the reader to watch some of her full appearances at Munich, but watch carefully. AOC has one populist lane. That lane is the following: the global 1% is evil, free trade has done nothing for any workers anywhere, and we need to hold hands and talk about peace. When she is in that lane, she comes off as knowledgeable despite simply regurgitating DSA agitprop. However, when she is not trying to preach her own version of John Lennon’s Imagine and has to actually deal with realist critiques of the “rules-based order” she so desperately loves, she falls flat or pivots to academic jargon she learned as an undergrad at Boston University.
AOC and Bernie Sanders can really draw crowds domestically. But those audiences are self-selecting and will cheer regardless. Getting on the stump and preaching to a sycophantic Los Angeles crowd about the purported evils of Elon Musk is one thing. But grappling with complex geopolitical issues in front of a foreign audience is another. Just because the Harlem Globetrotters win all of their exhibition games does not mean they’re ready to play the Golden State Warriors. It would be wise for AOC and her team to hit the rhetorical gym before they have to play their next game even if they insist that 2028 isn’t on the schedule.
Jim Pomeroy, raised in Bucks County and a former congressional aide, works in higher education. He is the author of Alliances & Armor: Communist Diplomacy and Armored Warfare during the War in Vietnam.
