United States | Kammander-in-chief?

How to decode Kamala Harris’s foreign policy

Expect tougher words on Israel, and continuity on Russia and China

Families of Israeli hostages gather at the National Mall in Washington on July 23rd 2024
Photograph: Reuters
|Washington, DC

KAMALA HARRIS’S first show on the world stage as the Democrats’ presumptive new presidential nominee is a disappearing act: on July 24th she absented herself from an address by Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to a joint meeting of Congress. As vice-president, and president of the Senate, Ms Harris would normally have overseen the event alongside Mike Johnson, speaker of the House. Instead she attended a previously scheduled event in Indianapolis to talk to Zeta Phi Beta, a historically black sorority. Republicans, who have come to embrace Israel with ardour, denounced her no-show as “outrageous”.

Whatever her reasons, it marks a generational transition. Mr Biden is probably the last Democratic president to call himself a “Zionist”. He is of a generation that remembers the first 30 years of Israel’s existence, as an underdog democracy fighting for survival against Arab enemies, notes Ivo Daalder of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a think-tank. “Kamala Harris’s formative view is the last 30 years—of Israel as the dominant power in the Middle East that keeps Palestinians under occupation.”

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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Kammander-in-chief”

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