The world has changed since Kamala Harris ran for president in 2019. The US has withdrawn from Afghanistan (a decision she supported), war rages in Ukraine (as western funding and materiel commitments face domestic opposition in the United States and the EU), and tensions remain high in the Middle East as conflict continues in Israel/Palestine, catalysed by Hamas’ attack on 7 October.
But for all the attention paid to the US presidential contest (set to have its first caucus vote next week in Iowa), and its implications for American foreign policy, little has been paid to vice-president Harris’ foreign policy ambitions. Given how much power the White House has to pursue international aims through levers like the State Department and the United States Trade Representative (USTR), and her place as first in the line of succession should the 81-year-old President Biden win and leave office for whatever reason afterward, we should have clarity from Kamala.
Positioning Harris as a foreign policy leader is an odd move
Most vice-presidents harbour an ambition to become commander-in-chief and therefore tend to spend time in strategically important countries to extract policy wins and give themselves a presidential air. The then-vice-president Biden did when he visited Turkey and its President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, shortly after the attempted coup of 2016.
For various reasons, Harris has tended to focus on domestic issues. For much of her term, she has been tethered to a divided Senate in which she casts the deciding votes on Biden’s legislative agenda (she has the record for most tie-breaking votes of a vice-president). She’s also been active in debates surrounding abortion rights. Both have limited her ability to travel, build ties with other world leaders, and carve out a foreign-policy niche for herself.
That changed on 7 October. Biden flew to Tel Aviv in the days that followed, but the conflict has pushed him to bring forward his plans for Harris to play an increasingly prominent and international role ahead of the 2024 election. His team have started to brief out that he relies heavily on Harris for foreign policy advice, to establish her credibility with allies and partners and soften the ground for a potential transition from Biden to Harris. The calculation must be that, with President Biden so clearly in a state of mental decline, Harris needs to establish stronger relationships overseas ready for if she eventually moves into the White House.
Positioning Harris as a foreign policy leader is an odd move, however. Aside from her recent foray into foreign policy and diplomacy (she only visited the UK, one of the US’ most important allies, for the first time in November 2023), Harris has relatively little substantive international experience, aside from telling Latin American migrants not to come to the United States while visiting Guatemala in 2021, and speeches at Cop28 and the 2023 Munich Security Conference, where she formally accused Russia of crimes against humanity in Ukraine.
Harris’ sole Congressional international work was a brief stint on the Intelligence Select Committee (ISC), which oversees the work of the intelligence community. ISC members only serve temporarily and are chosen on a rotating basis from other committees; Harris gained the role through her work on the Judiciary Committee.
Given this relatively sparse background, it is curious to read some media outlets dutifully portraying Harris as a foreign policy guru. She hasn’t really taken a stance since the 2019 presidential election, when she positioned herself as ideologically aligned to President Biden on most issues, albeit more forward leaning on questions like the withdrawal from Afghanistan (some credit her as the deciding vote for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which others say gave Putin the confidence to invade Ukraine).
Harris withdrew from the race in December 2019, before her full platform could be fully defended, but of her 13 campaign issues, only one had to do with foreign policy and it was fairly standard for the time: anti-Trump, pro-two state solution in the Middle East, pro-sanctions against Russia, and pro-competition with China.
In normal times, a vice-president with limited foreign policy objectives and experience might be understandable and forgivable, but the world is more complicated and violent this time around. If President Biden ends up winning and handing over the reins to Harris, voters would have little clue about the new president’s foreign policy priorities.
One of the most striking things for me when I worked for the US State Department was the transition from Trump to President Biden. Biden and his team had a clear agenda and a deep understanding of how the US government machinery works. He came in with a plan, a list of appointees who he thought could deliver, and provided the internal incentives for implementation.
Should Harris come to power, she will know how the system works, too, but we will have no clear view of her foreign policy priorities. That is an oversight that ought to be corrected, given the strong possibility that she might become America’s first female commander-in-chief. Perhaps time for some clarity, Kamala?
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