Inside Kamala Harris’ yearslong crash course in foreign diplomacy

Washington (CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris has met more than 150 world leaders since becoming vice president. But a July sit-down with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt different.

Coming days after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and as Democrats were coalescing around her candidacy, perhaps no other sit-down would garner as much attention or carry as much weight.

“We have a lot to talk about,” she said, before dismissing reporters — the exact same words Biden used to begin his own meeting. But Harris’ were delivered in a manner that said something entirely different.

The moment, which amounted to Harris’s debut on the world stage as the Democratic standard-bearer, captured the complicated dynamics that have colored her foreign policy ambitions, and offered a preview of the type of statesmanship she would pursue as president.

By virtue of her position as vice president to a commander in chief whose “first love” was foreign policy, according to his aides, Harris had little room over the past three-and-a-half years to stake out her own distinct doctrine or worldview.

Instead, she has hewn closely to the views of her boss, even as she’s become more involved over time in the US response to various roiling global conflicts. In meetings and on trips abroad, she’s acted as a clean-up artist and bearer of bad news on behalf of Biden, traditional roles for a vice president.

Republicans, led by Donald Trump, have argued Harris sat alongside Biden as the world went up in flames. They point to her assertion, made during an interview on CNN, that she was the last person in the room as Biden was deciding to go ahead with his planned US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which ended in chaos and deadly violence.

Harris said in the interview that she was comfortable with Biden’s decision and praised the president’s “courage” in making it. On the campaign trail, she’s argued that Trump’s “chaotic actions” as president led to “catastrophic consequences” in Afghanistan.

Harris herself has shown little daylight between herself and her boss. Asked directly during an August CNN interview – twice – whether she would be doing anything differently than the current president on the Middle East, Harris offered few specifics beyond pointing to a long-negotiated hostage and ceasefire deal.

“No,” she told Dana Bash. “I – we have to get a deal done. Dana, we have to get a deal done.”

Yet for all the close ties between Biden and Harris on the world stage, there are some signs she would not act entirely as a carbon copy of her former boss’s approach. As vice president, she has been a booster for important allies that Biden did not have time to lavish his full attention upon. And she has been a louder voice for causes that haven’t always received the full spotlight of the presidency — in particular the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel

Harris’ unusual step of delivering remarks following her July meeting with Netanyahu was a move she would not likely have made were Biden still running for a second term. White House officials made a concerted decision to allow her short statement to stand as the only substantive comment following Netanyahu’s visit.

While reiterating her steadfast support for Israel – as she had done every time the issue arose over the previous 10 months – she also struck an urgent tone on the plight of the Palestinians.

“We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering,” Harris said outside her ceremonial office, next door to the White House, “and I will not be silent.”

Senior White House officials – even as they insisted that there was no daylight between the president and vice president when it comes to Middle East policy – have more readily acknowledged over the last year that their respective tones when discussing the Israel-Hamas war were, in fact, distinct.

“They have different styles, is the reality, when it comes to expressing themselves,” one senior Biden adviser said earlier this year on how the president and Harris tended to publicly discuss the ongoing conflict.

As a result, the vice president’s public statements criticizing Israel’s handling of the Gaza conflict and lamenting the plight of Palestinian civilians had, more than once since the onset of the war, raised questions about whether Harris was on a different page from Biden.

Harris herself has been sensitive to that scrutiny. As one senior Democrat close to the vice president put it, Harris “understands that there’s a perception that she is left of (Biden) on Israel.”

Privately, this Democrat said, the vice president has insisted that she believes it is possible to be both “strongly pro-Israel” and capable of articulating the belief that “this fight is not with the Palestinian people.”

Last December, the vice president also traveled to the Middle East to attend a climate summit – and juggled multiple high stakes meetings and calls with Arab leaders amid heightening tensions, marking her foray into wartime diplomacy and forcefully sending a message of restraint.

As the Israel-Hamas war has unfolded, Harris has displayed a genuine desire to take the pulse of the Arab American community in the US, sources familiar with her engagements said.

Harris has made phone calls to Arab American leaders in the US to understand their perspective and to listen to their criticism of the Biden administration’s policy approach to the conflict, explained two sources. Some have been shocked to receive a call from the vice president, they said.

A Harris aide said that as vice president, she has “strongly condemned Hamas’ brutal terrorist attack on October 7, denounced atrocious acts of sexual violence, advocated relentlessly to bring the hostages home, and worked to ensure Israel remains a secure, democratic and Jewish state.”

Learning on the job

Harris did not enter the job with vast experience on the world stage. Both her advisers and foreign officials she’s interacted with say Harris managed to take what was essentially a supporting role and turn it into a crash course in foreign diplomacy. One former senior adviser described the vice president taking home massive briefing books and often peppering staffers with questions as she was briefed on multiple foreign policy issues.

She began, some said, rather scripted and uncertain but emerged within her first year in office a more confident voice. In meetings, she can appear alternatively warm – searching for commonalities over food or family – and steely, as she holds a firm line on US policy.

Harris advisers argue nothing could have better prepared her to step onto the global stage, should she to win the election in November, than her time as vice president.

They point to her travels abroad, meetings with world leaders and the time that she has spent with Biden navigating a number of major foreign policy crises – including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza – as giving her a certain gravitas that she did not have when she was first seeking the presidency in 2020.

Harris has visited 21 countries in her current role, according to an aide, and met with more than 150 world leaders — including China’s President Xi Jinping, with whom Biden has long sought to cultivate more stable ties.

“There’s no better preparation to be president of the United States than what the vice president has done over the past three-and-a-half years,” a senior administration official said.

Still, Harris has not always been the first phone call for foreign leaders or officials looking to get a line into the White House. Others on Biden’s team, including his secretary of state and national security adviser, have been seen as more central to American decision making, according to diplomats.

As she heads toward November’s election on a swell of Democratic momentum, some foreign governments are looking to know her better.

In the run-up to this month’s United Nations General Assembly, the yearly marathon of diplomacy that brings a parade of foreign leaders to New York, dozens of countries have been reaching out in hopes of setting up a meeting with Harris, multiple US officials said. Some countries have even offered to accommodate or change their schedules to lock in a meeting with her.

Harris currently does not plan to travel up to New York for the assembly, a source familiar with the plans said. As she has done in previous years, it’s possible she will take time to meet with foreign leaders who are visiting the US for the UN gathering in Washington, DC.

US diplomats said it would be to her benefit to sit down with world leaders, but they also understand her team is deciding whether she can afford to be off the campaign trail.

“Every second she is not in Michigan or Pennsylvania is a loss. It is a cost-benefit analysis,” said one US official.

Among those who have worked most closely with Harris on foreign policy matters over the past three-and-a-half years and seen as the vice president’s foreign policy brain trust are Phil Gordon, her national security adviser; Rebecca Lissner, her principal deputy national security adviser; and Dean Lieberman, her deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.

One stalwart of the Biden national security brain trust – with whom Harris held periodic lunch meetings to discuss foreign affairs – suggested this week he would not stay on for a potential Harris presidency.

“All I’m looking at right now is the balance of this administration, in January,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the conclusion of a news conference in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. “And I can tell you, from having spent some time over the last week on bit of a break with my kids, I will relish having a lot more time with them.”

When asked where the vice president’s foreign policy views may ultimately differ from Biden’s, her advisers insist that so long as she is in her current job, they would decline to address what they see as “hypothetical policy questions.”

“She remains the vice president of the United States and stands by the Biden-Harris administration policies,” Lieberman said. That is certainly the case, he added, when it comes to the vice president’s views on the Israel-Hamas war.

Ukraine

A month after Russia invaded Ukraine, Harris was dispatched to NATO’s eastern flank on a reassurance mission – one that also came with some sensitive diplomatic smoothing-over. Moments before she took off for Poland, a rift had emerged between Warsaw and Washington over the transfer of fighter jets to Ukraine.

Aboard Air Force Two, Harris took a phone call from Biden, making sure she was up to speed on the matter. In meetings with leaders, both in Poland and a later stop in Romania, Harris sought both to assert American support for Ukraine and its NATO allies while avoiding any public spat.

For a foreign policy novice with aspirations for higher office, the war in Ukraine was a rigorous introduction to wartime diplomacy.

Days before the 2022 invasion by Russia, Harris met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference and discussed with him the latest American intelligence about what might be coming. She has met with Zelensky six times in total since the war began.

“The Zelensky meeting was a pivotal moment in her journey of leading on foreign policy,” said Nancy McEldowney, who served as national security advisor to Harris from 2021 to early 2022.

“In that meeting, we conducted an unprecedented exchange of detailed intelligence,” McEldowney recalled of the hourslong meeting. “We laid out all of the information, and then talked about what it meant and talked about how the Ukrainians could respond.”

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference the following year in 2023, Harris said Russia had committed crimes against humanity.

Still, while Harris attended the Munich forum as the top Biden administration official twice and met with Zelensky each time, the Ukrainians were frustrated both times when they learned that she was being sent instead of Biden, sources said. In their view, there was no evidence that Harris was – at either time – deeply involved in US policymaking when it came to the war.

During Harris’s meeting with the Ukrainians at Munich in 2024, one private message she delivered was that the US urged the Ukrainians to stop hitting Russian energy inside of Russia, sources said. This was not the first time the Ukrainians had heard the message from US officials, but Harris delivered the message empathically and they were not thrilled, sources said.

Today, Ukrainian officials don’t know exactly what to expect from a Harris presidency if she wins the election.

“They don’t see her as solid as Biden when it comes to supporting Ukraine. Their best bet is that she will uphold that status quo of US support,” said one source close to the Ukrainians.

“Vice President Harris has been a strong proponent of enduring US support for Ukraine and has repeatedly expressed an unwavering commitment to support the people of Ukraine as they defend themselves against Russia’s brutal aggression. She has vowed to continue to support Ukraine and impose costs on Russia,” an aide to the vice president said.

Personal touch

As the US sought to repair the relationship with France after the rollout of a submarine deal that didn’t include the old European ally, the Biden administration sent a number of high-ranking officials to Paris: Blinken, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and then climate envoy John Kerry. The Biden administration then decided to send Harris as the final visitor, which a European official described as a very successful crescendo.

Harris spent four days in the country and developed a “good personal relationship” with French President Emmanuel Macron, the official said.

“At the time she was perceived to not have much experience, but she gave off a really good impression,” the official said. “She displayed what is rare in high-level politicians: She took her time.”

Indeed, unlike Biden – who rarely departed from his schedule of meetings to take in any culture during his trips abroad – Harris made time for a quintessentially Parisian pursuit: Shopping.

Stopping at the E. Dehillerin, the famous cookware shop on Rue Coquilliere near the Louvre, Harris declared she needed some pots for her Thanksgiving meal.

Pointing to the racks of copper ware, she inquired – in French – whether they had a smaller model: “Comme ça, mais plus petit?”

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