WASHINGTON: Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to stick largely to Joe Biden's foreign policy playbook on key issues such as Ukraine, China and Iran, but could strike a tougher tone with Israel over the Gaza war if she replaces the president at the top of the Democratic Party. He ran for the US November election and won.
In a clear race for the nomination after Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed him on Sunday, Harris will bring work experience, personal relationships with world leaders, and a sense of global affairs gained during his Senate tenure. Biden's second-in-command.
But he would also have a big risk running against Republican candidate Donald Trump — a troubling situation on the U.S.-Mexico border that has eluded Biden and become a top campaign issue. Harris was tasked early in his tenure with addressing the root causes of high illegal immigration, and Republicans have sought to make him the face of the problem.
In terms of global priorities, analysts said, a Harris presidency would be similar to a second Biden administration.
“She can be a very energetic player but one thing you shouldn't expect is any immediate major change in the substance of Biden's foreign policy,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator in Democratic and Republican administrations.
Harris has signaled, for example, that she will not be swayed by Biden's strong support for NATO and will continue to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia. This contrasts with former President Trump's pledge to fundamentally change the US relationship with the alliance and the doubts he has raised about future arms supplies to Kiev.
Taking a course in China?
A lawyer by training and former California attorney general, Harris struggled to find his footing in the first half of Biden's tenure, not helped by being quickly saddled with a key part of a complex immigration portfolio amid record crossings at the US-Mexico border. .
It followed a failed 2020 presidential campaign that was widely considered weak.
If she becomes the nominee, Democrats hope that Harris will be more effective in communicating her foreign policy goals.
In the second half of Biden's presidency, Harris — the country's first black and Asian American vice president — has raised his profile on issues ranging from China and Russia to Gaza and become a familiar figure to many world leaders.
At this year's Munich Security Conference, she criticized Russia for its attack on Ukraine and vowed to respect an “iron-clad” US for NATO's Article 5 requirement for mutual self-defense.
On China, Harris has long positioned himself in Washington's bipartisan mainstream, particularly in Asia, where the U.S. needs to counter China's influence. Analysts say he will maintain Biden's stance of confronting Beijing when necessary and also seek areas of cooperation.
Harris has made several trips aimed at fostering ties to the economically dynamic region, including joining in for Biden at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Jakarta in September. During the visit, Harris accused China of trying to coerce its smaller neighbors with its territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea.
Biden sent Harris on the trip to bolster alliances with Japan and South Korea, key allies who had reason to worry about Trump's commitment to their security.
“She's shown the region that she's excited to advance Biden's focus on the Indo-Pacific,” said Murray Hibbert, senior associate for the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
While he couldn't match the “diplomatic chops” Biden has developed over the decades, “she did well,” he added.
However, like his boss, Harris has occasionally been the victim of verbal abuse. On a visit to the demilitarized zone between South and North Korea in September 2022 to reaffirm Washington's support for Seoul, he mistakenly called the US “allied with the Republic of North Korea”, a statement later corrected by allies.
If Harris becomes his party's standard-bearer and can overcome Trump's lead in pre-election polls to win the White House, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be high on his agenda, especially if the Gaza war is still raging.
Although as vice president she echoed Biden in strongly supporting Israel's right to defend itself after a deadly cross-border attack by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, she has sometimes been somewhat more outspoken than the president in criticizing Israel's military approach.
In March, he criticized Israel, saying it was not doing enough to mitigate the “humanitarian disaster” during its ground offensive in the Palestinian enclave. Later that month, she denied the “consequences” if Israel launched a full-scale attack on the refugee-filled Rafah in southern Gaza.
Such language raises the possibility that Harris may take at least a tougher rhetorical line with Israel than Biden as president, analysts say.
While his 81-year-old boss has a long history with a succession of Israeli leaders and has even called himself a “Zionist,” Harris, 59, lacks his own personal ties to the country.
She maintains close ties with Democratic progressives, some of whom have pressed Biden to attach conditions to US arms shipments to Israel over concerns about high Palestinian civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict.
But analysts do not expect a major shift in US policy toward Israel, Washington's closest ally in the Middle East.
Haley Soifer, who served as Harris' national security adviser during the then-senator's first two years in Congress from 2017 to 2018, said Harris' support for Israel is as strong as Biden's. “There's really no daylight to be found”, she said.
Iran's nuclear threat
Harris can be expected to stand firm against Israel's regional archenemy, Iran, whose recent nuclear advances have drawn US condemnation.
Jonathan Panikoff, a former US government deputy national intelligence official for the Middle East, said the growing threat of the “weaponization” of Iran's nuclear program could be an early challenge for the Harris administration, especially if Tehran decides to test the new US leader.
After a series of failed attempts, Biden has shown little interest in returning to talks with Tehran about restarting the 2015 international nuclear deal, which Trump abandoned during his presidency.
Harris, as president, is unlikely to make any big overtures without serious signs that Iran is ready to make concessions.
Still, Panikoff, now at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, said: “There's every reason to believe the next president will have to deal with Iran. That's bound to be one of the biggest problems.”
