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Many people are trying to figure out who Kamala Harris will select as her vice-presidential nominee. Or, if they are not consumed by that question, they continue to be astounded — or worse — by the miscues and outright madnesses emanating from the mouths of Donald Trump and JD Vance, the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
But rather than obsessing over Harris’ choice for vice-president or even the latest Trumpian toads, I have been seeking a deeper understanding of Harris’ Weltanschauung for the foreign policy views she might act upon should she gain the White House.
While Harris’ views on domestic issues are relatively clear from her track record as a San Francisco prosecutor, California attorney-general, senator and now vice-president, her approaches to foreign affairs have largely been sublimated to President Joe Biden’s over the past 3½ years. In fact, as his vice-president, she has had much less freedom of action than when she was a senator. But now the nuances matter.
Thinking historically about the vice-presidency, until Al Gore’s two terms of office in the late 1990s, the position had little scope for independent action, save for the holders of that office carrying out their constitutionally mandated responsibilities. These were to serve as president of the Senate, cast tiebreaker votes in that chamber, and, as it is euphemistically phrased, inquire gently every morning as to the state of health of the president.
Two other traditional roles should also be noted: the president’s political attack dog and the president’s confidential adviser. For the latter, consider Lyndon Johnson’s role as chair of the National Aeronautics and Space Council in pressing forward with manned space flights in the early 1960s. But there is also the unfortunate example of Dick Cheney who served with George W Bush. (For those who have forgotten, Cheney was a prime advocate of those now-lamented Iraq and Afghan wars.)
Read more: Picking a vice-president — version two — the Democrats are about to strike back
Historically, the vice-presidency was held in low esteem. Franklin Roosevelt’s first vice-president, John Nance Garner, famously described the office as not being worth “a bucket of warm spit”. Popular films continue to regard the job with a mixture of disdain and humour — but not deep respect.
Most recently, though, with that multination prisoner exchange involving the US, Russia, Germany, Slovenia, Poland, Norway, Belarus and Turkey, the Biden administration and members of the Harris team have been burnishing Harris’ foreign policy credentials, noting her important role in those exchanges.
Generational shift
While Harris’ foreign policy engagement has been less than all-encompassing, beyond being the public point person for the politically fraught issue of immigration, with the recent prisoner exchange, her promoters have been pointing to her engagements with the German chancellor and Slovenian officials, in tandem with the hands-on efforts by the president, as key for the exchanges.
Not surprisingly, a candidate from an administration that is in office has the difficult task of embracing the record of the administration she is part of even as she must begin setting out her own individual vision.
Still, as Josh Rogin noted in The Washington Post, “Vice President Harris spent the past four years implementing the foreign policy of her boss, President Biden, with little room to diverge from his long-held beliefs. But she also used that time to build much-needed international experience, refining her views and beliefs in the process. Now, if she can define her own worldview before her opponents project one onto her, she has a chance to offer both continuity with the Biden administration and modulation where his policy has fallen short. In doing so, she might bolster her chances to win in November.”
To demonstrate this path, during the recent — and contentious — Washington visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Harris and Biden did meet with him, Harris chose not to preside over Netanyahu’s speech to a joint sitting of the two houses of the US Congress, something that would have been customary. Combined with recent comments about the ongoing disaster in Gaza, Harris has been signalling a degree of separation from the Biden administration.
One terrible test of this may well come if tensions (and actual military actions) between Israel and Iran (following the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran) or between Hezbollah and Israel increase further.
Rogin adds that the Netanyahu visit has now “presented Harris with her first foreign policy test after becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Internally, she has long advocated for more pressure on Netanyahu to agree to a cease-fire and improve the conditions for Palestinians in Gaza. The visit provided her a chance to differentiate herself from a Biden policy that many young voters, progressives, and Muslim and Arab Americans have found too conciliatory toward Israel and insufficiently supportive of Palestinians suffering on the ground.”
Harris herself has said about Gaza, “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent.”
Like so many other political campaign choices, Harris seems to be hoping Arab Americans and Muslim Americans, possibly a key voting cohort in a swing state such as Michigan, will be willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, hoping that if she wins, she will recalibrate the government’s Israel policy.
Tom Malinowski, a former congressman and State Department official, concludes, “Undoubtedly, she fits into the broad tradition of defence of international rules and norms and America at the centre of the multilateral system. That sets up Harris to build an administration that continues in that tradition but that seeks to differentiate herself.”
Thus, there are some grounds for thinking Harris may advance a somewhat different version of the Middle Eastern policy line than that of the incumbent president. In fact, four years earlier, while still a senator from California, she co-sponsored legislation to end US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. She said Washington should “fundamentally reevaluate” its relationship with the Saudis.
Moreover, in a recent speech in December in Dubai, Harris said Israel needed to do more to safeguard civilians in Gaza, the sharpest and highest-level criticism of Israel from the administration up to that point. Then, in her remarks at a Selma, Alabama, church, Harris called for an immediate ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages held by Hamas, describing the suffering of Palestinians as unacceptable.
In contrast to her president, her point of emphasis was first on the Palestinians and in a tone more impassioned than that of the president. “People in Gaza are starving,” she said. “The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act.”
Balancing the scales, she later added, “Israel has a right to defend itself. And President Joe Biden and I are unwavering in our commitment to Israel’s security.”
Regarding Harris’ tone, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, the left-of-centre American Jewish advocacy group, observed, “It’s a very big generational difference. She brings a perspective that is much more in line with where most of the Democratic Party and up-and-coming policymakers and officials are.” That generational shift mirrors what is beginning to be true.
Outward looking
Meanwhile, on Ukraine, Harris has been a strong supporter of the administration’s position regarding support for that nation in its resistance to Russia’s invasion. The first phone call she made to a foreign leader after she became the presumptive nominee was to Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff. Not surprisingly, Russian government propagandists are beginning to attack her, including the use of some rather odious racist and sexist tropes.
In her support for Ukraine, Harris offers a sharp contrast to Trump and Vance, with the latter calling for an end to aid for that country. On this issue, Harris is in line with the larger population, as polling shows a majority of Americans still support that aid. Here, too, an element of electoral politics may be apparent. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian American voters live in swing states, including Pennsylvania, a must-win state for Harris.
Back in February, in her speech at the Munich Security Conference, Harris previewed her attack line on the Trump ticket, even before she was the nominee. As she said then, “History has also shown us: if we only look inward, we cannot defeat threats from outside; isolation is not insulation. In fact, when America has isolated herself, threats have only grown.” Given Vance’s view on Ukraine’s travails, Harris’ speech stands in sharp contrast to the Trump ticket.
As the presidential campaign proceeds through the summer and autumn, Harris’ comments on Asian issues may also gain further attention. During trips to East Asia, in meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Philippines’ President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, China’s President Xi Jinping and Taiwan’s leader, Lai Ching-te, Harris has spoken out against Chinese aggressive actions and China’s efforts to use economic coercion as a policy lever.
Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, argues Harris’ meetings have represented an important element of the Biden Indo-Pacific strategy. “She was a very early advocate and sculptor of the strategy and then she put in the miles to make it happen,” said Emmanuel.
Earlier, too, while still a senator, she sponsored legislation on behalf of the Uyghur Muslims and Hong Kong protesters. As vice-president, she insists she has regularly raised human rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and press freedom with foreign leaders, although such concerns have mostly been behind the scenes.
Here again, polling shows Americans favour a foreign policy that is values-based as well as tough on China. As a result, her views seem consistent with the beliefs of a majority of voters. In an interview in Jakarta, Indonesia, last September, Harris told reporters her foreign policy views were grounded in her career as a prosecutor, underscoring a belief in the fundamental importance of the rule of law — but in tandem with pragmatism on complicated issues.
She said, “Because my background as a prosecutor includes that I was a trial lawyer and a corporate litigator, I learned that you have to listen to people. And you have to understand that you get your case as it is. You don’t make it up. We cannot have any credibility if we don’t have some level of profound and sincere interest and therefore knowledge of what is happening in other countries.”
Unanswered questions
Still, as The Washington Post noted, “Biden has an extensive foreign policy record from his decades as a senator, vice president and president, and Trump has his own record from serving four years as commander in chief.
“Harris’ lack of a clear record on foreign policy issues — and no definitive doctrine — is a marked difference and potentially opens a front in the battle over voters’ national security concerns in the 2024 campaign. One senior aide to the vice president said that instead of having a foreign policy doctrine, the vice president is focused on future challenges like artificial intelligence, climate change and global competition in space.”
When she was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she participated in the committee’s closed-door investigation into Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 election. The experience served as a crash course in foreign policy, Russian espionage tactics, the potential vulnerabilities of the US’s democracy and the workings of the US intelligence community.
“It shaped her worldview in terms of the primacy of defending democracy at home and abroad, as well as the importance of multilateralism and alliances,” says Halie Soifer, Harris’ national security adviser when she was in the Senate.
Read more: Harris Expands Push to Compete With Trump in Swing States
During the Biden administration, some current and former officials said they believed her sometimes distrust of Biden’s inner national security circle’s attitudes towards her were based on the possibility those aides might leak her comments if she expressed dissent.
While there is no public clarity about whether her series of lunch meetings with Secretary of State Antony Blinken have continued, Blinken says of Harris that she has been a “very strong, very effective and deeply respected voice for our country around the world”.
One major stumbling block for Harris to show mastery in foreign policy has been the thankless task of addressing the root causes of the waves of migrants at the US’s southern border. Her effectiveness in that role is something Trump is trying to make a key issue in the campaign, labelling her role as the “border czar” a failure.
While her supporters call this criticism unfair, given the prominence of immigration and border control as a concern of voters, the charge may well have real potency in the criticism of her foreign policy chops in the current administration.
An unanswered question, according to analysts, about Harris’ views is whether she agrees with Biden’s promise to defend Taiwan if it comes under attack, or if she would continue with the more vague stance preferred by previous presidents.
It is similarly unclear whether Harris favours expanding export controls to block China’s access to advanced US technology or if she would ease some tariffs hurting industries in the US. Biden has refused to further lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US weapons to allow it to strike deeper into Russia and Harris’ position on that is unclear. Similarly, there’s no clarity about how Harris would position the US were Israel prepared to strike Iran’s nuclear programme.
Looking ahead to a Harris presidency, British think tank Chatham House’s Heather Hurlburt says, “Harris represents significant generational change. She embraces the globalised outlook one might expect of a daughter of immigrants who spent part of her childhood in Canada. She will take office with a seasoned team around her. And other than Biden, Americans must go all the way back to George HW Bush in 1989 to find a president who would take office with more foreign affairs experience than her.
“Harris speaks and writes frequently about her immigrant parents…. Harris shares this experience not just with former president Barack Obama but with a large and growing share of the US population. As of 2019, more than one in ten US citizens — and a quarter of American children — have at least one immigrant parent.”
Meanwhile, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Jim Lindsay notes Harris will also inherit Biden’s challenge of supporting deep economic engagement in the Asia-Pacific region while keeping faith with domestic organised labour and activists who are deeply sceptical of traditional free trade approaches there — a view she validated by opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
A second Council of Foreign Relations analyst, Linda Robinson, says critiques of Harris’ role on immigration issues ignore the fact that: “The vice president led a $5 billion increase in private investment and bilateral aid to address root causes of crime, poverty, and unemployment that propel migration and set up offices in origin countries to allow asylum seekers to apply there rather than attempt the life-threatening journey through jungles alone or with coyotes who prey on the vulnerable. In the course of this work, Harris met with the heads of Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras and led the U.S. delegation at the 2022 Summit of the Americas.”
Of course, by the time she takes office, if she wins, any number of international relations questions may have sharply different contours — not least in the Middle East’s complex tangle of conflicts and with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. By that time, Harris will be very busy selecting her foreign policy team and confronting these issues. There will be no time-outs while she gets organised.
One final thought is that should Trump win, we can expect a continuation and an intensification of the main outlines of the chaotic foreign policy the world lived through during the previous Trump administration. That is not something to look forward to, despite Trump’s boasts he is so strong and so competent that foreign policy issues simply melt away in his very presence. DM
