The guessing game over Kamala Harris’s foreign policy

Is Vice President Kamala Harris a “human rights hawk,” who would use American power to promote democracy and freedom abroad? Or is she a “pragmatic internationalist” who would back gingerly away from American hegemony?

Is she poised to end an era of American hubris and restore humility to our foreign policy? Or does her forceful rhetoric on America’s role in the world reveal an “inner Reagan”?

Two months out from the presidential election, there’s rampant speculation about what a “Harris doctrine” for foreign policy could look like, but it often seems to reveal more about what the person doing the speculating wants (or doesn’t want) in the next president than any particular worldview articulated by Harris. 

It’s not that the vice president doesn’t have a track record to examine. While some coverage has portrayed her as something of a foreign-policy neophyte, she would come into office with more global experience than Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, or Donald Trump had.  

As vice president, she has met with dozens of world leaders, represented the US at global gatherings, and attended the president’s daily intelligence briefings. In her Democratic National Convention address, she touted the fact that she had been the one to brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on US intelligence about the looming Russian invasion in Munich just days before it occurred in 2022. 

The administration has also noted her role in the recent prisoner swap with Russia. She also was involved in US efforts to strengthen alliances in Southeast Asia, particularly with the Philippines. And though she was not the “border czar” she’s sometimes portrayed as in attack ads, she did lead the administration’s efforts to address the “root causes” of migration through aid to Central America. 

What’s harder to pin down is how she might differ from the Biden administration, which is what all the “Harris doctrine” speculation is trying to pin down. When it comes to that, the analysis often comes down to — to use the buzzword of the moment — vibes. 

Same message, new tone

In a recent Time feature on Harris’s record on Ukraine, Ukrainian officials acknowledged she had been engaged on the issue and showed sympathy for the country’s plight, but one official described it as feeling like “formal sympathy, following protocol.”

In a recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show podcast, the host speculated that as the child of immigrants with a more global perspective, Harris “does not have that identification” with Israel that Americans of Joe Biden’s generation do. But that’s not quite how Harris has described her own upbringing. In a 2017 speech to the right-leaning American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) she reminisced that as a child in the Bay Area, she collected donations for the Jewish National Fund to plant trees in Israel. In 2019, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency described her Senate record as “more AIPAC than J Street,” referring to the more left-leaning “pro peace” lobbying group.

When it comes to how Harris might differ, even subtly, from Biden, perhaps no issue, foreign or domestic, has gotten more attention than the war in Gaza. 

Halie Soifer, who worked as national security adviser to Harris in the Senate and is now the director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told Vox that when it comes to policy on Israel and Gaza, there is little daylight between the two. 

“I think the policy will not change,” she said. “What we have seen is some distinction when it comes to the way they speak about the conflict, with Vice President Harris not only reiterating her commitment to Israel and its security, but also expressing a larger degree of empathy with innocent Palestinian civilians.”

This was reflected in pointed remarks Harris made calling for a ceasefire at a civil rights commemoration in Selma, Alabama, in March (remarks that were reportedly watered down by administration officials) as well as in her convention speech. As my colleague Zack Beauchamp wrote, that speech did not differ particularly from Biden’s talking points but did, rhetorically at least, present “Palestinian aspirations for self-determination as the moral climax of her discussion of the issue.”

Slate’s Fred Kaplan reports that sources close to Harris say she “privately disagrees with [Biden’s] formulation of world politics as a contest between democracy and autocracy … and sees that as oversimplifying and even misleading, given the kinds of allies that we’re sometimes forced to choose.”  The Biden administration has been criticized by some observers for paying attention to the “global south” mainly in the context of competition with Russia and China.

Perhaps reflecting some desire to move beyond this framing, Harris remarked at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year that when visiting countries in Africa, she was constantly asked, “‘Are you here because of China?’ And my answer was, ‘No, we are here because of the people on the continent of Africa.’” 

Why campaign promises can’t tell us much about Harris’s real policies 

It’s also quite possible that Harris’s worldview and foreign policy rhetoric are simply evolving. The senator who, in 2020, said, “I unequivocally agree with the goal of reducing the defense budget and redirecting funding to communities in need” is now the vice president who vows to “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

Ultimately, campaign rhetoric will only tell you so much about how a president will conduct foreign policy. Some analysts have noted that, as a senator, Harris was in favor of cutting support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and called for “fundamentally reevaluating” the US-Saudi relationship as a candidate in 2020. But then again, Biden promised on the campaign trail to make Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman a “pariah” before putting cooperation with the country at the center of his Middle East policy. 

It’s not just that campaign talk is cheap, it’s that, as the noted international relations theorist Mike Tyson put it, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. 

George W. Bush came into office promising a “humble” foreign policy that eschewed nation-building crusades. 9/11 changed that. 

Obama first distinguished himself as an opponent of US militarism in the Middle East but will be remembered for expanding the US drone war, the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, and helping to overthrow the government of Libya. 

Biden’s foreign policy legacy will be determined in large part by his response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the October 7 attacks. 

“Foreign policy priorities, in every administration, are largely dictated by events,” Soifer said. 

If there is a “Harris doctrine,” we’ll learn what it is only if we see her as president.