There is a Catholic doctrine of the lesser evil that can be summarized in these terms:
1. One can never positively and directly commit even the slightest evil;
2. to avoid a greater evil, one may tolerate a lesser evil committed by others, provided one does not approve of it as such and remembers the existence of a greater good to strive for.
This doctrine is fundamental for orientation in a confused age in which the notion of the principle has been lost: “Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu”(St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-IIae, q. 18, a. 4 ad 3).
In light of this principle, a Catholic can never vote for or approve an abortion law, even a minimal one, but he or she can vote for a candidate who is not an integral anti-abortionist. That is why it is permissible for an American Catholic to vote for Donald Trump, whose positions on abortion, as Edward Feser notes, leave much to be desired . In fact, Trump is in favor of keeping abortion legal in cases of rape, incest, and endangerment of the mother, and merely treats state murder as a purely procedural matter, relating to the government, central or local, that should regulate it. Moreover, the Republican Party platform at the Milwaukee convention last July 8 did not include a reference to a nationwide ban on abortion for the first time in 40 years. However, Trump does not make abortion a flag, unlike his opponent Kamala Harris. Harris' socialist and egalitarian agenda includes restoring the constitutional right to abortion, which was enshrined in Roe v. Wade in 1973, and overturned by the Supreme Court's June 24, 2022, decision. Moreover, during the 2019 primaries, Kamala announced that she would pass on her first day in the White House. the Equality Act, to guarantee all forms of rights to the Lgbt world (on the subject, see her book The Truths we hold. An American journey, Vintage, 2021, pp. 112-120).
The Democratic vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, a leading member of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, is, if possible, even more left-wing than Kamala Harris. Despite the media's insistence on Kamala Harris's moderation, if the Democrats win in November the process of moral decay in the United States will be accelerated by the Harris-Walz ticket, among the most progressive in the history of this country.
It is a pity that the Republican Party has failed to produce any candidate better than Donald Trump, but Kamala Harris certainly represents the greatest evil to be avoided. Trump deserves to be criticized on many points, but it is not fair to gift victory to Harris by voting for her or abstaining from voting.
In terms of international policy, whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins, there is unlikely to be much change. It is said that under Trump the United States would disengage from Europe and NATO, but this is an exaggerated perspective. Kamala Harris belongs to the Wilsonian school (named after Thomas Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921); Trump belongs to the Jacksonian school (named after Andrew Jackson, president from 1829 to 1837). The former argue that the United States has a moral duty to spread democratic values around the world; the latter believe that the United States should find no cause for conflict abroad. However, as historian Walter Russell Mead notes, the views of the Jacksonians agree with those of General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) that in the event of war, “there is no alternative to victory” (The Serpent and the Dove. History of the Foreign Policy of the United States of America, Garzanti, Milan 2002, p. 17).
During his first presidential term, Donald Trump had his picture taken in the Oval Office with a portrait behind him of President Jackson, whose statues have come into the crosshairs of “woke” activists with accusations that he was a racist and a slaveholder. Mead himself pointed out the connection between Trump and Jackson in an essay published in 2017 in Foreign Affairs magazine. Vice presidential candidate Vance, for his part, in an interview with New Statesman on Feb. 14, 2024, pointed out that Trump's “Jacksonian” approach, is “a mixture of extreme skepticism toward foreign intervention, combined with an extremely aggressive posture when intervening.” The United States, Mead observed, cannot wage a major international war without Jacksonian support, and once it has begun, it cannot stop it except on their terms.
Kamala Harris' foreign policy is certainly more interventionist than Trump's, yet despite his isolationist tendencies, the Republican candidate has America's national interest as his priority. Is the end of NATO and the fall of Europe under Russian rule in Washington's interests? Trump wants to focus on the scenario he finds most disturbing for the United States, the Indo-Pacific, but Europe is a key pivot of American power. If elected, he will likely press Europe to find within itself the economic and military resources to defend itself, but he will certainly not abandon it to its fate.
Democrats accuse Trump of being supported by Putin, but the Russian dictator's overriding interest is neither Trump's nor Harris's victory, but rather a destabilizing situation on the American continent that facilitates his plans to expand into Eastern Europe. The specter of civil war, or at least of strong internal tensions, is always alive in the United States, and it is no wonder that the scenario Putin would prefer would be that of a collapse of the American Empire similar to that of the Russian Empire in 1991.
On the other hand, the real help to Putin is not from Trump, but from all those who are convinced that the Russian-Ukrainian war is the consequence of a legitimate Kremlin reaction to American imperialism. If this were true, America would be Europe's primary enemy, as the European far left always thought before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet it seems obvious to any man of common sense that Europe's economic and military dependence on the United States remains a lesser evil than a situation of vassalage to Russia, which is itself becoming a vassal country to Communist China.
Accepting the lesser evil does not mean renouncing the greater good, which has nothing to do with either American liberalism or Russian-Chinese despotism.
The inalienable ideal is “the establishment of all things in Christ,” that is, the restoration of Christian Civilization as the West knew it in the Middle Ages, but pushed to a higher degree of perfection. St. Pius X pointed the way: “Civilization should not be invented, nor should the new society be built in the clouds. It has existed and exists: it is Christian Civilization, it is Catholic society. It is only a matter of unceasingly establishing and restoring it in its natural and divine foundations, against the reviving attacks of unhealthy utopia, revolt and impiety: Omnia instaurare in Christo (Eph. I, 10)” (Letter Notre Charge Apostolique, Aug. 25, 1910).
