Opinion | Harriss foreign policy doctrine is emerging and could help her win

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 world view 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.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington last week 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 — like dozens of other Democrats — did not attend Netanyahu’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress. She met with him Thursday in her office, after which she said Israel has a right to defend itself. But she also called for an end to the war and expressed “serious concern” about the scale of human suffering in Gaza. In tone, if not substance, she carefully crafted a position more critical of Israel than the president’s. “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent,” she said.

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Harris’s White House staff is still trying to figure out how she can run on the Biden administration’s foreign policy accomplishments, to which she contributed, while charting a case for how a Harris administration would be different. They aren’t there yet. Harris’s team is not planning any major foreign policy platform or addresses any time soon, her officials tell me.

But Harris shouldn’t shy away from these issues. She has an opportunity to draw a contrast not just with some of the more unpopular Biden policies but also with Donald Trump, Tom Malinowski, a former congressman and State Department official, told me.

“Undoubtedly, she fits into the broad tradition of defense of international rules and norms and America at the center of the multilateral system,” he said. “That sets up Harris to build an administration that continues in that tradition but that seeks to differentiate herself.”

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Arab Americans and Muslim Americans, key to swing states such as Michigan, might be more willing to give Harris the benefit of the doubt, hoping she would recalibrate an Israel policy they abhor. As a senator, Harris co-sponsored legislation to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen and said in 2020 that Washington should “fundamentally reevaluate” its relationship with Riyadh. This is a stance that progressives have been long pushing.

While carefully moving away from some of Biden’s Middle East policies, Harris has been doubling down on the administration’s support for Ukraine. Her first call to a foreign leader after becoming the prospective nominee was with Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Already, Russian government propagandists are attacking her, including in notably racist and sexist ways.

Harris’s Ukraine policy stands in contrast to that of Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, who is calling for ending U.S. aid. Polls show the majority of Americans support the U.S. aid program. There are tens of thousands of Ukrainian American voters in swing states including Pennsylvania. In a speech at the Munich Security Conference, in February, Harris previewed what an attack on the Trump ticket could look like.

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“History has also shown us: if we only look inward, we cannot defeat threats from outside; isolation is not insulation,” she said, indirectly referring to Vance, who was at the same event. “In fact, when America has isolated herself, threats have only grown.”

Harris’s public advocacy for supporting Ukraine is emblematic of her belief in defending the Western-led international order. And her departures from Biden’s Israel policy shows her willingness to break with conventional Washington wisdom when she disagrees with it. To make an even stronger case for foreign policy competence, she should tout her experience in Asia.

Harris has traveled to Asia four times as vice president, building relationships with several Asian leaders. On those trips, she has spoken out against Chinese aggression and economic coercion. The two foreign leaders she has spoken with most often are Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. She has also met with Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping and Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te.

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Rahm Emanuel, the ambassador to Japan, told me that Harris’s relationships with these leaders were an important part of the Biden administration’s 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,” Emanuel said.

On human rights, Harris sponsored legislation as a senator advocating on behalf of Uyghur Muslims and Hong Kong protesters. As vice president, she told me last year, she has consistently raised human rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights and press freedom with foreign leaders, although mostly behind the scenes. Polls show that Americans favor a foreign policy that is values-based and tough on China.

In an interview in Jakarta in September, Harris told me her foreign policy views are grounded in her years spent as a prosecutor, during which she came to believe in the fundamental importance of the rule of law but also in the need for pragmatism on complicated issues.

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“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,” she told me. “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.”

Her words and actions as vice president tell us that she would pursue an evolution rather than a revolution in U.S. foreign policy, seeking to preserve strong U.S. global leadership but with a dose of humility. That ethos could form the basis of a winning campaign message, as well as a solid foundation for a successful strategy.

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