VOX: Kamala Harris’s foreign policy, explained
By Alex Ward
Harris, then, would staunchly bolster Biden’s global vision while in the White House. “In general, she is an internationalist,” said Halie Soifer, Harris’s national security adviser in the Senate from January 2017 to May 2018. “She would be a champion for rebuilding those alliances, partnerships, and America’s credibility in the world.”…
Harris would be fully on board with that agenda, people who worked with her said. “The issue of human rights is incredibly important to her,” said Soifer, the senator’s former national security adviser…
Soifer, the former national security adviser who is now the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told me that Harris’s views on Israel “go beyond just the security relationship, of which she’s very supportive.”
She pointed me to Harris’s November 2017 trip to Israel. Soifer was with the senator and watched Harris try to improve ties between California and Israel’s technology sectors. What most struck Harris, Soifer said, was how Israeli companies had made strides in conserving water, an issue California has struggled with and that the senator is deeply interested in…
Soifer said that trip, and Harris’s decision to meet with Netanyahu despite the criticism, is a testament to the senator’s fearlessness on the world stage. “She’s truly a leader and does what she thinks is right and is not persuaded by what other people think,” she told me. Still, Harris will have to walk a fine line between maintaining the US-Israel relationship and keeping certain Democratic activists happy by pushing back on Netanyahu’s anti-Palestinian policies.