What might a Harris foreign policy look like?

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The writer is chief executive of the New America think-tank and an FT contributing editor

All US presidential candidates have to try to prove that they are tough enough to take charge of the world’s greatest military arsenal, serve as commander-in-chief of the world’s most widely deployed forces and defend the American people wherever they may be. Recall Hillary Clinton’s ad in 2008, when she was running against Barack Obama. It showed a picture of sleeping children with the voiceover: “It’s 3am . . . a phone is ringing in the White House . . . Your vote will decide who answers that call; whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.”

Vice-president Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, faces the task with additional challenges. Clinton could reasonably argue that she was more experienced than Obama, but she also knew, as every woman candidate for an office involving national security or domestic affairs knows, that she had to balance being tough with being human, warm enough to meet enduring expectations that women show a maternal side. Even former German chancellor Angela Merkel, a sober and no-nonsense presence, found favour with her voters as “Mutti Merkel”, or Mummy Merkel.

Harris is already facing challenges for her laugh, of all things, part of a Republican attack that will attempt to portray her as fundamentally non-serious and which currently seems to be backfiring.

Beyond all this nonsense, however, remains the very real question of what a Harris foreign policy would actually look like?

Efforts to find space between Harris and President Joe Biden, most notably on Israel/Gaza, yield differences of tone rather than substance.

Harris’s life experience and her top foreign policy staff offer a better guide. First, she is plenty tough. She was a prosecutor, bringing cases against criminals with the aim of sending them to jail. That steeliness has emerged both in her questioning at Senate hearings and in repeated appearances at the Munich Security Conference. In 2023 she used her speech to accuse Russia, in graphic detail, of crimes against humanity; this year she detailed the ways in which “Putin’s war has already been an utter failure for Russia.”

Interestingly, perhaps due to the need for prosecutors to focus on victims as well as perpetrators, Harris talks about human suffering as well as state interests. After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she made a statement about the “dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety” in Gaza, and declared: “I will not be silent.” Her empathy is not ideological, however; she also said that she “stands with” the families of the Israeli hostages. 

Machiavelli told his prince to harden his heart in foreign affairs, distinguishing between the morality of action necessary to secure an entire people and individual morality. Harris, like Biden, appears determined not to harden her heart.

Harris is a strong internationalist, emphasising that US “global leadership is to the direct benefit of the American people”. Yet her primary focus on domestic issues throughout her career, as well as her experience of the impact of climate change in California and engagement with the migrant crisis during her vice-presidency, should all incline her towards an integrated view of global threats.

Rebecca Lissner, Harris’s deputy national security adviser, oversaw the Biden administration’s 2022 National Security Strategy, the first to acknowledge the equal gravity and menace of transnational and geopolitical threats to the US.

Lissner’s boss Philip Gordon connects this emphasis to Harris’ desire to look forward, observing: “The vice-president often asks how things we do today will affect the United States and the world five, 10 or 20 years into the future. That’s why you’ve seen her focus so much on issues such as AI, space, climate and empowering women and girls. and on dynamic, growing parts of the world like south-east Asia and Africa.”

Finally, both Biden and Harris take justifiable pride in the ways the US has built up its standing abroad by strengthening its infrastructure and technological prowess at home.

From first-hand experience, however, Harris is more likely to be aware of the ways in which racial, ethnic and political divisions weaken the country. Her mantra is less likely to be “foreign policy for the middle class” than a version of “peace through strength”, where strength flows from many sources, including fair and equal treatment for all Americans. Call it a new mix of might and right.