President Joe Biden had the advantage of decadeslong private relationships with world leaders as he sought to revive U.S. credibility on the worldwide stage.
Vice President Kamala Harris, if elected president, would enter the White Home with a fraction of Biden’s expertise – elevating questions on how she would navigate all of the diplomatic and geopolitical challenges that will instantly confront her. The following president must bounce into points starting from a tense relationship with China, to the conflict in Ukraine, to a powder keg within the Center East.
However Harris isn’t coming in chilly. As vice chairman, she has engaged with extra international leaders than is likely to be anticipated of a one-term U.S. senator and former California lawyer normal and prosecutor.
POLITICO reviewed greater than 100 of Harris’ publicly obtainable calls and conferences with world leaders as vice chairman and located interactions starting from intensive discussions with members of the Israeli authorities to a gathering with Chinese language chief Xi Jinping.
A take a look at who Harris talks to, and the way typically, offers a window into her current strengths in international coverage — and the place she could have some chilly calls to make.
Harris has most frequently dealt with calls and conferences with leaders in Asia and the Center East, and has spoken with a restricted cross-section of European, Latin American and African heads of state. Her name logs lack any engagement with sophisticated U.S. allies and companions comparable to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Hungary, and he or she has but to satisfy with Russian chief Vladimir Putin.
However she has deep ties with Israeli leaders, and her assembly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu throughout his go to this week is not going to be their first encounter.
She has additionally spoken regularly with the leaders of Japan, Mexico, Jordan and the Philippines. And Harris could be no stranger to Kyiv. She’s had a number of conferences with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Harris nonetheless has lots of people to persuade that she’s constructed up a strong international coverage resume.
“It’s been laborious to trace her affect from the surface,” mentioned John Hannah, who labored as a international coverage aide in each Democratic and Republican administrations and served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s nationwide safety adviser.
“It’s attainable that Vice President Harris has performed a equally influential position over the previous three and a half years — but when she has, it’s definitely been one among Washington’s best-kept secrets and techniques,” mentioned Hannah, who’s now a senior fellow on the Jewish Institute for Nationwide Safety of America.
However Nationwide Safety Council spokesperson John Kirby mentioned Harris has been core to the Biden administration’s worldwide technique.
“She brings her personal gravity to those discussions and to those relationships,” mentioned Kirby. He additionally mentioned that Harris and Biden have labored collectively to ship a “unified message” to allies and adversaries alike.
Asia on speed-dial
A few of Harris’ closest ties are with Indo-Pacific heads of state, and with Israeli and Ukrainian management.
Harris stepped in for Biden at summits with Asian and Pacific island heads of state, and he or she additionally traveled to the area following Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 go to to Taiwan, which noticed tensions flare between Washington and Beijing. The White Home defined that the aim of the go to was to point out the U.S. was not “intimidated” by Chinese language saber-rattling on the time.
A White Home official, who like others was granted anonymity to debate Harris’ position in delicate international coverage choices, mentioned the vice chairman is seen contained in the White Home as an “integral participant within the Biden-Harris administration’s China coverage”
Whereas she’s met with all of the leaders of Washington’s treaty allies within the Indo-Pacific, she’s had essentially the most interactions with Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Since Marcos took workplace within the Philippines, Harris has met with him six occasions, and the 2 have developed “an in depth private relationship,” with him, per the official. She has additionally met together with his vice chairman, Sara Duterte, and visited Palawan, a Philippines island within the South China Sea.
In the meantime, Harris has met with Kishida 5 occasions since he turned prime minister and hosted a luncheon alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken throughout Kishida’s April state go to. She additionally led the official U.S. delegation to the September 2022 funeral of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
That relationship-building with Tokyo and Manila, the official added, helped carry Japan and the Philippines nearer on efforts to fight China within the Indo-Pacific.
She has additionally met or spoken with the leaders of Vietnam, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore and South Korea during the last three years.
A number of contacts in Israel
Amongst Center Jap nations, Harris has the closest connections with Israeli leaders. She’s met with and spoken with a litany of high-ranking Israeli officers, together with former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, opposition chief Benny Gantz and Netanyahu since taking workplace.
Harris additionally sits in on Biden’s calls with Israeli officers, and he or she’s both been on the road or sitting within the room throughout Biden’s calls with Netanyahu, the White Home mentioned.
However her closest relationship is with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, the ceremonial chief of Israel. They met when she was a senator and he was then-opposition chief. Herzog gave her an intensive tour of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, throughout that journey, the place he confirmed Harris the constructing’s artwork and sat along with her within the gallery. In keeping with Halie Soifer, who served as Harris’ nationwide safety adviser on the time, the 2 hit it off immediately.
“There was an instantaneous rapport with Herzog,” mentioned Soifer, who now serves as chief govt of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “I do know that they solid a connection that day, and that they’ve constructed upon that now that she’s within the White Home, and he clearly is president.”
Harris has spoken to Herzog repeatedly following the Oct. 7 Hamas assaults on Israel. They’ve held 5 calls since October, and he or she met with him in particular person on the Munich Safety Convention this yr.
By way of Israel’s neighbors, Harris has met and spoken with the leaders of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Egypt, amongst different Center Jap nations.
Chats with Zelenskyy
Harris has met with Zelenskyy six occasions. She met with him on the eve of Russia’s invasion at Munich and “shared our newest intelligence and strategized with Zelenskyy on how Ukraine ought to put together for the upcoming invasion,” per the White Home official.
Harris was the final official to satisfy with Zelenskyy earlier than Russia invaded in February 2022.
Ukraine is losing no time in deepening its ties to Harris’ internal circle. Zelenskyy’s high adviser Andriy Yermak spoke on the cellphone along with her nationwide safety adviser Phil Gordon on Tuesday. The 2 mentioned situations on Ukraine’s frontlines, Kyiv’s want for higher air defenses and the state of the peace course of.
Restricted engagement with adversaries and frenemies
Harris has solely held one dialog with China’s Xi on the sidelines of the APEC summit in November 2022. And she or he hasn’t had any interactions with Russia’s Putin — although that’s partially because of the deteriorating nature of U.S.-Russia relations.
Nonetheless, that places her at odds with a few of her latest predecessors within the vice chairman position, who did have some interactions with U.S. adversaries. Vice President Mike Pence met with each Putin and Xi on the 2018 ASEAN summit and then-Vice President Biden met with Putin and Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao throughout President Barack Obama’s first time period.
She has additionally not met with the leaders of extra tenuous U.S. allies and companions, together with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
The dearth of engagement with Saudi Arabia is notable, given Harris’ criticism of Riyadh when she was a senator over Saudi Arabia’s position within the Yemeni civil conflict and the homicide of journalist and Washington Put up columnist Jamal Khashoggi. And it comes because the Biden administration continues to pursue an elusive deal on the normalization of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel as a part of its broader aims to stabilize the Center East.
Buddies nearer to residence
Harris maintains working ties with leaders within the Western Hemisphere principally according to her position because the administration’s level particular person on fixing the basis causes of migration. She has had a number of conferences and cellphone calls with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and he or she has spoken with the presidents of Guatemala, Costa Rica and Honduras on migration challenges.
Harris and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have had three official one-on-one conferences throughout her time in workplace, to not point out calls and different encounters on the world stage. They met on their respective journeys to Poland simply weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Trudeau was the primary name Harris made to a international chief as vice chairman in 2021, the place the 2 mentioned Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. China had detained the 2 on the time, following Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, an govt on the Chinese language telecom tech agency Huawei.
However Harris has not spoken with a single chief from South America, per the listing of publicly obtainable readouts of her calls. That features Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a key participant within the peace course of for the Ukraine conflict and democracy in Venezuela. In contrast, Biden has spoken with Lula a number of occasions over the previous few years, and nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan has on a number of events spoken together with his Brazilian counterpart.
One other notable absence — calls or conferences with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, though El Salvador stays one of many largest focal factors for the area’s migration challenges.
Navigating Europe
Zelenskyy isn’t the one European ally Harris has met with. She’s met and spoken with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellors Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz, European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen, British Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak and the leaders of lots of NATO’s japanese members. The calls and conferences date again to her first weeks as vice chairman.
However Harris has not held calls or met with some key European leaders, together with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who more and more is flexing her muscle groups inside the European Union as a key interlocutor on Ukraine support. And European allies haven’t exactly warmed to Harris.
Whereas a number of European leaders have publicly praised Harris, some European officers criticized her for giving extremely scripted speeches with little spontaneity at main boards. British officers, in the meantime, complained to the White House that Harris upstaged them at a convention on synthetic intelligence in the UK final yr.
Isabel Schnabel, an govt board member of the European Central Financial institution, was caught on a scorching mic in February criticizing the vice chairman as “invisible” and predicting that she would by no means win if she ran for president sooner or later. The European Central Financial institution has mentioned that Schnabel “by no means feedback in public on political occasions.”
However another European officers mentioned that in non-public she has come off as charismatic and engaged — even when they’re nonetheless attending to know her.
“There may be an argument that the EU ought to have made extra of an effort to domesticate relations with Harris, given Biden’s age,” mentioned one senior EU official. “However however, she didn’t precisely make that straightforward. It wasn’t straightforward to search out events to satisfy Harris.”
Outreach to Africa
The Biden administration has struggled to reply to the rise of China in Africa and shore up partnerships on the continent. An anticipated Biden journey to Africa throughout his first time period has fallen into limbo, and Biden has held fewer conferences and calls with African heads of state than anticipated.
A portion of the administration’s outreach to the continent has fallen to Harris, who’s the highest-ranking administration official to go to Africa. Throughout a March and April 2023 tour of the continent, she met the presidents of Tanzania, Zambia and Ghana.
Outdoors of her go to to the continent, Harris met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Washington, internet hosting him for breakfast on the Naval Observatory in September 2022. She additionally spoke on the cellphone with Nigerian President Bola Tinubu on the top of Niger’s post-coup faceoff with the Financial Neighborhood of West African States in July 2023.
Biden had pledged to go to Africa in the course of the 2022 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, however that trip promise was amended for February 2025, after the November elections. And lots of on the continent noticed Harris’ trip as a precursor to a Biden visit.
The delays have prompted disappointment and frustration amongst African leaders and the enterprise group, who hoped Biden would restore a pattern of American presidents visiting the continent. Obama, George W. Bush and Invoice Clinton all visited Africa; Trump broke the streak.
Requested for remark, the White Home confused that Harris’ go to was not presupposed to be an alternative to Biden and that she doubtless would have traveled to Africa regardless.
Nonetheless, African leaders have been left nonetheless desirous to see Biden make a follow-up journey to reveal U.S. dedication to the continent.
“We’re hoping that President Biden can even be right here to revive that trajectory,” Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo mentioned at a joint occasion with Harris in March 2023.
Miles J. Herszenhorn and Kyle Duggan contributed to this report.
