Daniel
DePetris
President
Kamala could spell trouble for Israel – but good news for Ukraine
23 July
2024, 10:41am
US vice
president Kamala Harris has taken a firm stance on Israel's war on Hamas
(Getty)
In the two
days since Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid and endorsed vice president
Kamala Harris as the Democratic party nominee, much attention has been devoted
to the mechanics of Biden’s decision, which close advisers or family members
may have convinced him to pull out and how the entire episode will shake up the
race. But with Harris the strong favourite to become the Democratic’s
presidential nominee, it’s worth asking what president Harris could mean for
other countries, not least the United State’s allies – and enemies.
The VP is
tougher on Israel than Biden for the way it’s prosecuting its war on Hamas
Does Harris
have a foreign policy agenda, let alone a foreign policy philosophy? It’s a
difficult question to answer, because Harris is in many ways the opposite of
Joe Biden on the international stage. Biden has been around for a half-century,
has a huge rolodex of foreign leaders on his desk and fancies himself an
international relations aficionado. Harris, meanwhile, is a relative newcomer
on the national stage. She served one six-year term in the United States Senate
before running for president herself in the 2020 cycle (where she lost) and
joining the Biden ticket. Her work in the Senate focused on criminal justice
issues given her role on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Foreign policy or
national security played only a minor role. As vice president, she was tasked
with finding a way to decrease illegal migration from Central America to the
U.S.. And as a top cabinet member, Harris was privy to all the closely-held
national security conversations; she was reportedly the last person in the room
before Biden decided to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
For the most
part, foreign policy hasn’t taken up much of her time. Even so, there are
nuggets of information embedded in her voting record and policy speeches that
offer a few clues about where she stands on certain issues.
Broadly
speaking, Harris can’t be considered a liberal internationalist in the mould of
Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright and Samantha Power. She isn’t a
neoconservative like George W. Bush or a hard-power primacist like Dick Cheney.
Nor can she be called a realist like Brent Scowcroft or Henry Kissinger.
Harris,
frankly, is hard to pigeon-hole. Where she stands depends on which region of
the world we’re talking about.
Like her
boss, Biden, Harris isn’t all that enthusiastic about bringing the U.S. deeper
into the Middle East and views the use of U.S. military force warily. In 2018,
after Trump bombed Syrian military facilities in retaliation for the Syrian
government attacking civilians with chemical weapons, Harris questioned what
‘legal rationale’ the White House employed to justify U.S. action.
A year
later, when Trump tweeted that U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Syria (in
the end, they weren’t), Harris criticised Trump’s decision-making style without
necessarily opposing his call to pull out. She was a vocal supporter of the
Iran nuclear deal that temporarily capped Tehran’s enrichment work in exchange
for U.S. sanctions relief; argued that Trump’s killing of Iranian General
Qassem Soleimani in 2020 risked provoking another war in the Middle East; and
she sponsored legislation days after Soleimani’s assassination that prohibited
U.S. military force against Iran without congressional approval.
On the war
in Gaza, Harris has been out front on the urgent need for a ceasefire between
Israel and Hamas even before Biden formally floated a draft agreement in May.
Rhetorically at least, the VP is tougher on Israel than Biden is for the way
it’s prosecuting its war against Hamas. While she has been careful not to stray
from Biden’s policy of supporting Israel’s right to strike Hamas militarily,
there’s no question that the humanitarian calamity inside Gaza has had deep
impressions on her. During remarks this March, Harris was blunt: ‘People in
Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane and our common humanity compels
us to act.’
Harris even
suggested that the U.S. wasn’t ruling out consequences if Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a full-scale invasion of Rafah, which was
crammed with refugees.
On Ukraine,
Harris is a hawk. Her views are identical to Biden’s. She has met with
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky multiple times, and in each encounter
reiterated Washington’s full military, economic and diplomatic backing against
Russia. If she talks about the prospects of a negotiated settlement to the war,
Harris does so in a way that basically rules out a diplomatic process to that
end: only Ukraine’s maximalist terms and Zelensky’s so-called ‘just peace’ are
acceptable. Of course, Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s incentive to cooperate
in such a scheme are virtually nonexistent.
On China,
Harris is conventional. During international conferences and foreign trips to
Asian capitals, the vice president reiterates the standard line that could come
from any U.S. policymaker these days: China is a revisionist power seeking to
dominate its smaller neighbours, is violating the international rules-based
order and is deliberately making Washington’s goal of a free and open
Indo-Pacific harder to accomplish. She blasted China’s ‘bullying’ behaviour in
the South China Sea and reinforced that the U.S. will support Taiwan’s defence
needs. China is likely to view a hypothetical president Harris largely the same
way it views a hypothetical president Trump: as a loss either way.
Anyone
looking for a Kamala Harris foreign policy doctrine should stop wasting their
time. She simply hasn’t been immersed in the issues long enough to have one.
WRITTEN BY
Daniel
DePetris
Daniel
DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities, a syndicated foreign affairs
columnist at the Chicago Tribune and a foreign affairs writer for Newsweek.
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