From 2009 to 2012, Julie Smithserved as the director of European and NATO policy at the United States Department of Defense and then as the deputy national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden from 2012 to 2013.
In 2016, The Intercept called Smith a "rising star in the Democratic foreign policy establishment" akin to neocon and warmonger Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland's husband.
In January 2016, Smith signed Hillary Clinton's anti-Bernie Sanders letter, bashing his desire to normalize ties with Iran. The letter was part of Clinton's broad smear campaign against Sanders, then her Democratic presidential rival.
Testifying before the Senate in February 2017, Smith accused Russia of continuously undermining US interests at home and abroad and peddled the "Trump-Russia collusion" hoax.
Between 2014 and 2018, Smith worked in the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) funded by major US defense contractors.
She also worked at consultancy firm WestExec Advisors, founded by Antony Blinken and Michele A. Flournoy in 2017, that is suspected of secret lobbying on behalf of US military corporations. Over a dozen WestExec alums joined the Biden administration, triggering concerns "about the potential for groupthink, conflicts of interest, (…) legalized corruption" and "monopolization of foreign policymaking" by corporate interests, per The Intercept. According to the New York Times, some of WestExec's clients – which the firm keeps on the hush-hush – got hefty contracts from the Pentagon.
In May 2020, Smith accused China of undermining US leadership by providing aid to Europe to fight the COVID-19 pandemic; in July 2020 she called to counter China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
In March 2022, Smith groundlessly accused Russia of using chemical and biological weapons amid Russia's revelations with regard to a network of Pentagon-funded secret bio-weapons labs in Ukraine.
In December 2022, she announced an effort to step up arms production by NATO member states amid the Ukraine conflict and strongly advocated enhancing NATO military presence in Europe "to ensure that Russia can never attack NATO" in December 2023.
"We do consider the Russian threat to the NATO alliance to be the preeminent threat that we’re grappling with," Smith told an online briefing on April 4, 2020.
At the same press briefing she stressed that NATO's engagements will not be limited to one region, expressing willingness to challenge Russia and China simultaneously and adding that "a lot of the security challenges we face today don’t have any geographic boundaries."
In October 2023, Smith asserted to the press that the US and NATO will continue to support Ukraine and Israel amid the latter's Gaza war.
Being a darling of the military-industrial complex, Smith is likely to follow in the footsteps of her predecessor, Victoria Nuland, and continue stoking tensions in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.