How US foreign policy could produce better results

Pax Kamalana. With wars raging in Lebanon, Gaza and Ukraine, it is easy to paint pessimistic scenarios for the world. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned last week about a “powder keg that risks engulfing the world”, shortly before Israel killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

But there is also a more optimistic scenario where the United States works with allies and partners to solve common problems. Kamala Harris might just do that if she becomes president.

Nobody knows for sure what the U.S. vice president would do if she wins November’s presidential election. In her current role, she has toed President Joe Biden’s line on international relations. Since she unexpectedly became the Democratic nominee in July, she has said little about how she would handle foreign affairs, focusing mainly on domestic issues.

What is more, even if Harris beats the Republican nominee Donald Trump, she will need the support of U.S. Congress. That matters because much of what she might want to do, such as providing arms to Ukraine and helping emerging economies transition to greener forms of energy, requires hard cash.

Events can also upend carefully laid plans. When Biden entered the White House three years ago, he did not expect Russia to invade Ukraine or Hamas to attack Israel, triggering wars that have consumed much of his time in office. Even so, based on what Harris and some of her advisers have said, it’s possible to sketch out a best-case scenario for what her strategy would look like.

Winning the long game

Her main goals will probably be the same as Biden’s. These include winning the “competition” with China and stopping Russian aggression. She is also likely to continue one of his key means for achieving these ends: strengthening the United States’ alliances and partnerships, which had frayed when Trump was president.

Biden has invested in NATO, put more effort into the Group of Seven club of advanced democracies and reinforced a string of partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region. But he has not always listened to what his allies say on Ukraine and the Middle East. A former G7 foreign minister describes him as “stubborn”.

The hope for those allies is that Harris would be more open to hearing their views. One reason for thinking she might be is because, unlike Biden, she has not spent decades crafting her foreign policy positions.

Another is because competing with China, which is supporting Russia’s war machine, requires a long-term approach. In 2020 Philip Gordon, now Harris’ national security adviser, published a book called “Losing the Long Game”. He argued that Washington should concentrate in the Middle East on the deterrence and containment strategy that helped win the Cold War against the Soviet Union, rather than pursuing regime change, with often catastrophic consequences.

That approach also seems the best way to handle China and Russia. But to carry it out, the United States will need the support of key Western allies as well as ad hoc partnerships with powerful emerging markets such as India, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. The more it consults its allies, the more likely they are to stay solid for the long haul.

To be fair to Biden, the president has listened to his G7 allies’ views on China. When they expressed concern that the world was heading toward a new Cold War that would damage everybody’s prosperity, he agreed that countries should “de-risk” their exposure to the People’s Republic, not decouple from it. Washington and Beijing seem for now to be trying to manage their differences through diplomacy.

But many allies have been exasperated by Biden’s strong support for Israel. The perception that the United States has double standards has lost it support in the so-called Global South.

While Harris’ reaction to Nasrallah’s killing was similar to Biden’s, in July she struck a tougher tone than the president on the need to end suffering in Gaza. Whether that would translate into a different policy if she became president is hard to say. But anything she did that suggested the United States was applying international law more even-handedly could help her position with allies.

Friends in deed

Treating friends more fairly in economic policy would also help. This has been one of Biden’s weaknesses. His landmark climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), offered protectionist subsidies and tax breaks that infuriated allies, especially in Europe.

It is true that the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has championed “friendshoring”, a plan to spread manufacturing around partner countries according to their comparative advantage to reduce the United States’ dependence on Chinese products such as solar panels. But Biden himself seems more enthusiastic about “reshoring” production to the U.S.

There’s little prospect of Harris returning to a traditional free-trade agenda. Both Democrats and Republicans are focused on protecting manufacturing jobs at home and preventing China from overtaking the United States in key technologies.

Hung Tran, of the Atlantic Council think-tank, says Harris’ emphasis will be on keeping jobs at home. But Caroline Atkinson, a former deputy national security advisor for international economics under President Barack Obama, is more optimistic. She says that Biden “lives and breathes sympathy for protectionism of traditional industry.” The vice president, by contrast, has called out Trump’s tariffs as costly for the American middle class and made a speech last week in which she emphasised pragmatism and declared she was a “capitalist”.

Brian Deese, an economic advisor to Harris, argues that one of Washington’s top foreign policy priorities should be to build economic relationships with key emerging market allies, with whom Beijing has been making headway. He is advocating a “clean energy Marshall Plan” to help those countries fast-track their transition from fossil fuels. Deese also says that one of the lessons from the IRA, which he helped craft, is not to inadvertently cause friction with allies and partners.

Much will depend on who Harris chooses for key cabinet roles such as treasury secretary and secretary of state if she becomes president. “Personnel is policy,” says Doug Rediker, a former Obama-Biden administration official.

Even if Harris wins, she will face many domestic and international constraints. However, there is a best-case scenario where she elevates Biden’s grand strategy to the next level.