Tougher tone on Israel, steady on Nato: How a Harris foreign policy could look

WASHINGTON – Vice-President Kamala Harris is expected to stick largely to Mr 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 ticket and wins the US November election.

As the apparent front runner for the nomination after Mr Biden dropped out of the race

and endorsed her on July 21, Ms Harris would bring on-the-job experience, personal ties forged with world leaders, and a sense of global affairs gained during a Senate term and as Mr Biden’s second-in-command.

But running against Republican candidate Donald Trump, she would also have a major vulnerability – a troubled situation at the US-Mexico border that has bedevilled Mr Biden and become a top campaign issue. Ms Harris was tasked at the start of Mr Biden’s term with addressing the root causes of high irregular migration, and Republicans have sought to make her the face of the problem.

On a range of global priorities, said analysts, a Harris presidency would resemble a second Biden administration.

“She may be a more energetic player but one thing you shouldn’t expect – any immediate big shifts in the substance of Biden’s foreign policy,” said Dr Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for Democratic and Republican administrations.

Ms Harris has signalled, for instance, that she would not deviate from Mr Biden’s staunch support for Nato and would continue backing Ukraine in its fight against Russia. This stands in sharp contrast to a pledge by former president Trump to fundamentally alter the US relationship with the alliance and the doubts he has raised about future weapons supplies to Kyiv.

Staying the course on China?

A lawyer by training and a former California attorney-general, Ms Harris struggled in the first half of Mr Biden’s term to find her footing, not helped by being saddled early on with a major part of the intractable immigration portfolio amid record crossings at the US-Mexico border.

This followed a failed 2020 presidential campaign that was widely considered lacklustre.

If she becomes the nominee, Democrats will be hoping Ms Harris will be more effective at communicating her foreign policy goals.

In the second half of Mr Biden’s presidency, Ms Harris – the country’s first black and Asian-American vice-president – has elevated her profile on issues ranging from China and Russia to Gaza and become a known quantity to many world leaders.

At the 2024 Munich Security Conference, she delivered a tough speech slamming Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and pledging “ironclad” US respect for Nato’s Article 5 requirement for mutual self-defence.

On China, Ms Harris has long positioned herself within Washington’s bipartisan mainstream on the need for the US to counter China’s influence, especially in Asia. She would likely maintain Mr Biden’s stance of confronting Beijing when necessary while also seeking areas of cooperation, analysts say.

Ms Harris has made several trips aimed at boosting relations in the economically dynamic region, including one to Jakarta in September to fill in for Mr Biden at an Asean summit. During the visit, Ms Harris accused China of trying to coerce smaller neighbours with its territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea.

Mr Biden also dispatched Ms Harris on travels to shore up alliances with Japan and South Korea, key allies that have had reason to worry about Trump’s commitment to their security.

“She demonstrated to the region that she was enthusiastic to promote the Biden focus on the Indo-Pacific,” said Mr Murray Hiebert, a senior associate of the South-east Asia Programme at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

While she could not match the “diplomatic chops” that Mr Biden had developed over decades, “she did fine”, he added.

However, like her boss, Ms Harris has been prone to the occasional verbal gaffe.

On a tour of the Demilitarised Zone between South and North Korea in September 2022 to reassert Washington’s support for Seoul, she mistakenly touted a US “alliance with the Republic of North Korea”, which aides later corrected.

If Ms Harris becomes her party’s standard-bearer and can overcome Trump’s lead in pre-election opinion polls to win the White House, the Israel-Palestinian conflict would rank high on her agenda, especially if the Gaza war is still raging.

Although, as vice-president, she has mostly echoed Mr Biden in firmly backing Israel’s right to defend itself after

Hamas militants carried out a deadly cross-border raid on Oct 7,

she has at times stepped out slightly ahead of the President in criticising Israel’s military approach.

In March, she bluntly criticised Israel, saying it was not doing enough to ease a “humanitarian catastrophe” during its ground offensive in the Palestinian enclave. Later that month, she did not rule out “consequences” for Israel if it launched a full-scale invasion of refugee-packed Rafah in southern Gaza.

Such language has raised the possibility that Ms Harris, as president, might take at least a stronger rhetorical line with Israel than Mr Biden, analysts say.

While her 81-year-old boss has a long history with a succession of Israeli leaders and has even called himself a “Zionist”, Ms Harris, 59, lacks his visceral personal connection to the country.

She maintains closer ties to Democratic progressives, some of whom have pressed Mr Biden to attach conditions to US weapons shipments to Israel out of concern for high Palestinian civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict.

But analysts do not expect there would be a big shift in US policy towards Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East.

Ms Halie Soifer, who served as national security adviser to Ms Harris during the then senator’s first two years in Congress, from 2017 to 2018, said Ms Harris’ support of Israel has been just as strong as Mr Biden’s.

“There really has been no daylight to be found (between the two),” she said.

Iran nuclear threat

Ms Harris could also be expected to hold firm against Israel’s regional arch-foe Iran, whose recent nuclear advances have drawn increased US condemnation.

Mr Jonathan Panikoff, formerly the US government’s deputy national intelligence officer for the Middle East, said the growing threat of “weaponisation” of Iran’s nuclear programme could be an early major challenge for a Harris administration, especially if Tehran decides to test the new US leader.

After a series of failed attempts, Mr Biden has shown little interest in returning to negotiations with Tehran over resuming the 2015 international nuclear agreement, which Trump abandoned during his presidency.

Ms Harris, as president, would be unlikely to make any major overtures without serious signs that Iran is ready to make concessions.

Even so, Mr 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. It’s bound to be one of the biggest problems.” REUTERS