Inside Kamala Harris’ yearslong crash course in foreign diplomacy

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.

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.