The next-generation foreign policy of Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris spent nearly four years working alongside a U.S. president for whom foreign policy is a passion bordering on political religion — one rooted in Cold War memories and a largely unchallenged U.S. global dominance. Her government, she said, has “built and sustained alliances” that made the U.S. the most “powerful and prosperous” country on Earth — “alliances that have prevented wars, defended freedom, and maintained stability from Europe to the Indo-Pacific.” She added a shout-out to advancing “rules and norms for outer space” and “to empower women around the globe.” She has met with President Xi Jinping of China, mended fences with France’s Emmanuel Macron after a diplomatic blowup over a submarine contract, reassured Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine over continued supply of weapons and helped persuade NATO countries to welcome Sweden and Finland to their ranks. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who attended the Munich meetings with Harris, said he has seen her “command a room full of world leaders.” “And what I’ve observed is someone who asks time and again penetrating questions, who cuts to the chase and is intensely focused on the interests of the American people and making sure that our foreign policy is doing everything it can to advance those interests,” he said in July shortly after Biden dropped out of the presidential race. Matthew Duss, a global affairs expert at the Center for International Policy, said Gordon and Lissner are likely to help Harris move foreign policy away from Biden’s Cold War prism of “America and the good guys versus the bad guys.” “There’s an opportunity for her to diminish that kind of tension,” Duss said in an interview.