Tougher tone on Israel, steady on NATO: how a Harris foreign policy could look

US Vice President Kamala Harris listens during a roundtable discussion at the NAACP National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, US, July 18, 2022. (REUTERS/File)
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Updated 22 July 2024
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Tougher tone on Israel, steady on NATO: how a Harris foreign policy could look

  • Harris would bring on-the-job experience, personal ties forged with world leaders, and sense of global affairs gained during Senate term
  • Harris has signaled she would not deviate from Biden’s staunch support for NATO alliance and would continue backing Ukraine

WASHINGTON: Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to stick largely to Joe Biden’s foreign policy playbook on key issues such as Ukraine, China and Iran but could strike a tougher tone with Israel over the Gaza war if she replaces the president at the top of the Democratic ticket and wins the US November election.
As the apparent frontrunner for the nomination after Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her on Sunday, Harris would bring on-the-job experience, personal ties forged with world leaders, and a sense of global affairs gained during a Senate term and as Biden’s second-in-command.
But running against Republican candidate Donald Trump she would also have a major vulnerability — a troubled situation at the US-Mexico border that has bedeviled Biden and become a top campaign issue. Harris was tasked at the start of his term with addressing the root causes of high irregular migration, and Republicans have sought to make her the face of the problem.
On a range of global priorities, said analysts, a Harris presidency would resemble a second Biden administration.
“She may be a more energetic player but one thing you shouldn’t expect – any immediate big shifts in the substance of Biden’s foreign policy,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for Democratic and Republican administrations.
Harris has signaled, for instance, that she would not deviate from Biden’s staunch support for NATO and would continue backing Ukraine in its fight against Russia. That stands in sharp contrast to a pledge by former president Trump to fundamentally alter the US relationship with the alliance and the doubts he has raised about future weapons supplies to Kyiv.

STAYING THE COURSE ON CHINA?
A lawyer by training and a former California attorney general, Harris struggled in the first half of Biden’s term to find her footing, not helped by being saddled early on with a major part of the intractable immigration portfolio amid record crossings at the US-Mexico border.
That followed a failed 2020 presidential campaign that was widely considered lackluster.
If she becomes the nominee, Democrats will be hoping Harris will be more effective at communicating her foreign policy goals.
In the second half of Biden’s presidency, Harris — the country’s first Black and Asian American vice president — has elevated her profile on issues ranging from China and Russia to Gaza and become a known quantity to many world leaders.
At this year’s Munich Security Conference she delivered a tough speech slamming Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and pledging “ironclad” US respect for NATO’s Article 5 requirement for mutual self-defense.
On China, Harris has long positioned herself within Washington’s bipartisan mainstream on the need for the US to counter China’s influence, especially in Asia. She would likely maintain Biden’s stance of confronting Beijing when necessary while also seeking areas of cooperation, analysts say.
Harris has made several trips aimed at boosting relations in the economically dynamic region, including one to Jakarta in September to fill in for Biden at a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). During the visit, Harris accused China of trying to coerce smaller neighbors with its territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea.
Biden also dispatched Harris on travels to shore up alliances with Japan and South Korea, key allies who have had reason to worry about Trump’s commitment to their security.
“She demonstrated to the region that she was enthusiastic to promote the Biden focus on the Indo-Pacific,” said Murray Hiebert, a senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.
While she could not match the “diplomatic chops” Biden had developed over decades, “she did fine,” he added.
However, like her boss, Harris has been prone to the occasional verbal gaffe. On a tour of the Demilitarized Zone between South and North Korea in September 2022 to reassert Washington’s support for Seoul, she mistakenly touted a US “alliance with the Republic of North Korea,” which aides later corrected.
If Harris becomes her party’s standard-bearer and can overcome Trump’s lead in pre-election opinion polls to win the White House, the Israel-Palestinian conflict would rank high on her agenda, especially if the Gaza war is still raging.
Although as vice president she has mostly echoed Biden in firmly backing Israel’s right to defend itself after Hamas militants carried out a deadly cross-border raid on Oct. 7, she has at times stepped out slightly ahead of the president in criticizing Israel’s military approach.
In March, she bluntly criticized Israel, saying it was not doing enough to ease a “humanitarian catastrophe” during its ground offensive in the Palestinian enclave. Later that month, she did not rule out “consequences” for Israel if it launched a full-scale invasion of refugee-packed Rafah in southern Gaza.
Such language has raised the possibility that Harris, as president, might take at least a stronger rhetorical line with Israel than Biden, analysts say.
While her 81-year-old boss has a long history with a succession of Israeli leaders and has even called himself a “Zionist,” Harris, 59, lacks his visceral personal connection to the country.
She maintains closer ties to Democratic progressives, some of whom have pressed Biden to attach conditions to US weapons shipments to Israel out of concern for high Palestinian civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict.
But analysts do not expect there would be a big shift in US policy toward Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East.
Halie Soifer, who served as national security adviser to Harris during the then-senator’s first two years in Congress, from 2017 to 2018, said Harris’ support of Israel has been just as strong as Biden’s. “There really has been no daylight to be found” between the two, she said.
IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT
Harris could also be expected to hold firm against Israel’s regional arch-foe, Iran, whose recent nuclear advances have drawn increased US condemnation.
Jonathan Panikoff, formerly the US government’s deputy national intelligence officer for the Middle East, said the growing threat of “weaponization” of Iran’s nuclear program could be an early major challenge for a Harris administration, especially if Tehran decides to test the new US leader.
After a series of failed attempts, Biden has shown little interest in returning to negotiations with Tehran over resuming the 2015 international nuclear agreement, which Trump abandoned during his presidency.
Harris, as president, would be unlikely to make any major overtures without serious signs that Iran is ready to make concessions.
Even so, Panikoff, now at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, said: “There’s every reason to believe the next president will have to deal with Iran. It’s bound to be one of the biggest problems.”


Oil tanker in Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ adrift off German coast

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Oil tanker in Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ adrift off German coast

BERLIN: Germany charged that a heavily loaded tanker adrift off its northern coast Friday was part of the “shadow fleet” Moscow uses to avoid sanctions on its oil exports.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock criticized Russia’s use of “dilapidated oil tankers” and labelled it a threat to European security.
She spoke after the 274-meter-long Eventin, carrying almost 100,000 tons of oil, was reported adrift and “unable to manoeuver” in the Baltic Sea.
An emergency tug intercepted the Eventin in waters off the island of Ruegen to stabilize the ship, which was carrying around “99,000 tons of oil.”
No oil leaks were detected by several surveillance aircraft overflights, but two more tug boats were on their way to the ship, the command said in a later statement.
A four-person team of emergency towing specialists would soon be winched onto the deck from a federal police helicopter to coordinate the operation, it added.
The sea was rough with 2.5-meter-high (8 feet) waves and strengthening wind gusts, the command also said, adding that no decision had yet been taken on whether and when to tow the ship to a port.
Although the tanker was navigating under the Panamanian flag, the German foreign ministry linked it to Russia’s sanctions-busting “shadow fleet.”
Baerbock said said that “by ruthlessly deploying a fleet of rusty tankers, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is not only circumventing the sanctions, but is also willingly accepting that tourism on the Baltic Sea will come to a standstill” in the event of an accident.
Following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Western countries have hit Russia’s oil industry with an embargo and banned the provision of services to ships carrying oil by sea.
In response, Russia has relied on tankers with opaque ownership or without proper insurance to continue lucrative oil exports.
The number of ships in the “shadow fleet” has exploded since the start of the war in Ukraine, according to US think tank the Atlantic Council.
In addition to direct action against Russia’s oil industry, Western countries have moved to sanction individual ships thought to be in the shadow fleet.
The European Union has so far sanctioned over 70 ships thought to be ferrying Russian oil.
The United States and Britain on Friday moved to impose restrictions on some further 180 ships in the shadow fleet.

Trump gets no-penalty sentence in his hush money case, while calling it ‘despicable’

Updated 28 min 36 sec ago
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Trump gets no-penalty sentence in his hush money case, while calling it ‘despicable’

NEW YORK: President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday to no punishment in his historic hush money case, a judgment that lets him return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term or a fine.
With Trump appearing by video from his Florida estate, the sentence quietly capped an extraordinary trial rife with moments unthinkable in the US only a few years ago.
It was the first criminal prosecution and first conviction of a former US president and major presidential candidate. The New York case became the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will. And the sentencing came 10 days before his inauguration for his second term.
In roughly six minutes of remarks to the court, a calm but insistent Trump called the case “a weaponization of government” and “an embarrassment to New York.” He maintained that he did not commit any crime.
“It’s been a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and, obviously, that didn’t work,” the Republican president-elect said by video, with US flags in the background. Beside him at his Mar-a-Lago property was defense lawyer Todd Blanche, whom Trump has tapped to serve as the second-highest ranking Justice Department official in his incoming administration.
After the roughly half-hour proceeding, Trump said in a post on his social media network that the hearing had been a “despicable charade.” He reiterated that he would appeal his conviction.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan could have sentenced the 78-year-old to up to four years in prison. Instead, Merchan chose a sentence that sidestepped thorny constitutional issues by effectively ending the case but assured that Trump will become the first president to take office with a felony conviction on his record.
Trump’s no-penalty sentence, called an unconditional discharge, is rare for felony convictions. The judge said that he had to respect Trump’s upcoming legal protections as president, while also giving due consideration to the jury’s decision.
“Despite the extraordinary breadth of those protections, one power they do not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict,” said Merchan, who had indicated ahead of time that he planned the no-penalty sentence.
As Merchan pronounced the sentence, Trump sat upright, lips pursed, frowning slightly. He tilted his head to the side as the judge wished him “godspeed in your second term in office.”
Before the hearing, a handful of Trump supporters and critics gathered outside. One group held a banner that read, “Trump is guilty.” The other held one that said, “Stop partisan conspiracy” and “Stop political witch hunt.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, is a Democrat.
The norm-smashing case saw the former and incoming president charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, put on trial for almost two months and convicted by a jury on every count. Yet the legal detour — and sordid details aired in court of a plot to bury affair allegations — didn’t hurt him with voters, who elected him in November to a second term.
“The American voters got a chance to see and decide for themselves whether this was the kind of case that should’ve been brought. And they decided,” Blanche said Friday.
Prosecutors said that they supported a no-penalty sentence, but they chided Trump’s attacks on the legal system throughout the case.
“The once and future president of the United States has engaged in a coordinated campaign to undermine its legitimacy,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said.
Afterward, Trump was expected to return to the business of planning for his new administration. He was set later Friday to host conservative House Republicans as they gathered to discuss GOP priorities.
The specific charges in the hush money case were about checks and ledgers. But the underlying accusations were seamy and deeply entangled with Trump’s political rise.
Trump was charged with fudging his business’ records to veil a $130,000 payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She was paid, late in Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter she maintains the two had a decade earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them and that he did nothing wrong.
Prosecutors said Daniels was paid off — through Trump’s personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen — as part of a wider effort to keep voters from hearing about Trump’s alleged extramarital escapades.
Trump denies the alleged encounters occurred. His lawyers said he wanted to squelch the stories to protect his family, not his campaign. And while prosecutors said Cohen’s reimbursements for paying Daniels were deceptively logged as legal expenses, Trump says that’s simply what they were.
Trump’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to forestall a trial, and later to get the conviction overturned, the case dismissed or at least the sentencing postponed.
Trump attorneys have leaned heavily into assertions of presidential immunity from prosecution, and they got a boost in July from a Supreme Court decision that affords former commanders-in-chief considerable immunity.
Trump was a private citizen and presidential candidate when Daniels was paid in 2016. He was president when the reimbursements to Cohen were made and recorded the following year.
Merchan, a Democrat, repeatedly postponed the sentencing, initially set for July. But last week, he set Friday’s date, citing a need for “finality.”
Trump’s lawyers then launched a flurry of last-minute efforts to block the sentencing. Their last hope vanished Thursday night with a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that declined to delay the sentencing.
Meanwhile, the other criminal cases that once loomed over Trump have ended or stalled ahead of trial.
After Trump’s election, special counsel Jack Smith closed out the federal prosecutions over Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. A state-level Georgia election interference case is locked in uncertainty after prosecutorFaniWillis was removed from it.


Serbia to talk with Putin after US sanctions target energy company

Updated 10 January 2025
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Serbia to talk with Putin after US sanctions target energy company

  • Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS), majority-owned by Russia’s Gazprom Neft and its parent company, Gazprom, is the only supplier of gas to Serbia
  • NIS was among the raft of companies hit by the latest round of US sanctions targeting the Kremlin on Friday

BELGRADE: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Friday he would hold talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin after Washington announced sweeping sanctions against a range of energy companies, including a Serbian firm.
Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS), majority-owned by Russia’s Gazprom Neft and its parent company, Gazprom, is the only supplier of gas to Serbia and the majority owner of both gas pipelines that transport gas from Russia to households and industries in Serbia.
NIS was among the raft of companies hit by the latest round of US sanctions targeting the Kremlin on Friday.
Following the announcement, Vucic told a news conference he would speak with Putin “first over the phone, and then explore other ways of communication.”
Vucic said he would also be holding talks with US and Chinese representatives soon.
“We will respond responsibly, seriously, and diligently, and although we will act carefully, we will not rush into making wrong decisions,” Vucic added.
“We will ask the incoming administration to reconsider this decision once more and see if we can obtain some allowances regarding the decisions that have already been made.”
Serbia has maintained a close relationship with Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine and refuses to impose sanctions, unlike the EU which it hopes to join.
Vucic had stated earlier that if sanctions were implemented, it would be a severe blow to Serbia, which heavily relies on Russian gas and is currently negotiating a new contract, as the current one expires in March 2025.
Gazprom Neft owns 50 percent of NIS, Gazprom 6.15 percent and 29.9 percent is owned by the Republic of Serbia, according to NIS’s website.
Friday’s announcement comes just 10 days before US President Biden is due to step down, and puts President-elect Donald Trump in an awkward position, given his stated desire to end the Ukraine war on day one of his presidency.


Venezuela’s Maduro sworn in for third term as US raises reward for his capture

Updated 10 January 2025
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Venezuela’s Maduro sworn in for third term as US raises reward for his capture

  • Venezuela’s opposition says ballot box-level tallies show a landslide win for its former candidate Edmundo Gonzalez
  • The outgoing Biden administration increased its reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Maduro on drug trafficking charges to $25m

CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose nearly 12 years in office have been marked by deep economic and social crisis, was sworn in for a third term on Friday, despite a six-month-long election dispute, international calls for him to stand aside and an increase in the US reward offered for his capture.
Maduro, president since 2013, was declared the winner of July’s election by both Venezuela’s electoral authority and top court, though detailed tallies confirming his victory have never been published.
Venezuela’s opposition says ballot box-level tallies show a landslide win for its former candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who is recognized as president-elect by several countries including the United States. International election observers said the vote was not democratic.
The months since the election have seen Gonzalez’s flight to Spain in September, his ally Maria Corina Machado going into hiding in Venezuela, and the detentions of high-profile opposition figures and protesters.
In the latest in a series of punitive steps, the outgoing Biden administration increased its reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Maduro on drug trafficking charges to $25 million, from a previous $15 million.
It also issued a $25 million reward for Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and a $15 million reward for Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, as well as new sanctions against eight other officials including the head of state oil company PDVSA Hector Obregon.
The US indicted Maduro and others on narcotics and corruption charges, among others, in 2020. Maduro has rejected the accusations.
The US move coincided with sanctions by Britain and the European Union each targeting 15 officials, including members of the National Electoral Council and the security forces, and Canadian sanctions targeting 14 current and former officials.
The Maduro government has always rejected all sanctions, saying they are illegitimate measures that amount to an “economic war” designed to cripple Venezuela.
“The outgoing government of the United States doesn’t know how to take revenge on us,” Maduro said during his inauguration speech, without directly mentioning sanctions.
The Venezuelan communications ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the sanctions.
Maduro and his allies have cheered what they say is the country’s resilience despite the measures, though they have historically blamed some economic hardships and shortages on sanctions.

OPPOSITION TO SPEAK
Gonzalez, who has been on a whistle-stop tour of the Americas this week, has said he will return to Venezuela to take up the mantle of president, but has given no details.
The government, which has accused the opposition of fomenting fascist plots against it, has said Gonzalez will be arrested if he returns and offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture.
Opposition leaders Gonzalez and Machado are each expected to speak later on Friday.
Both are being investigated by the attorney general’s office for alleged conspiracy, but only Gonzalez has a public warrant out for his arrest.
Machado’s first public appearance since August at an anti-government march in Caracas on Thursday was marred by a brief detention.
Her Vente Venezuela political movement said guns were fired and Machado was knocked off the motorcycle on which she was leaving the event. She was then held and forced to film several videos, it said.
One video shared on social media and by government officials showed her sitting on a curb and recounting losing her wallet.
The government scoffed at the incident and denied any involvement.
Some 42 people have been detained for political reasons since Tuesday, judicial NGO Foro Penal said.
Maduro was sworn in at the national assembly in Caracas and said he was taking his oath in the name of sixteenth-century Indigenous leader Guaicaipuro and late President Hugo Chavez, his mentor, among others.
“May this new presidential term be a period of peace, of prosperity, of equality and the new democracy,” Maduro said, adding he would convene a commission dedicated to constitutional reform.
“This act is possible because Venezuela is peaceful, in full exercise of its national sovereignty, of its popular sovereignty, of its national independence,” Maduro said.
Some 2,000 invitees from 125 countries attended the inauguration, according to the government.
Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, staunch allies of Maduro, attended as did Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament.
ECONOMIC TROUBLES
Venezuela closed its borders and airspace to Colombia for 72 hours starting at 0500 local time (1000 GMT), the foreign ministry in Bogota said in a statement, adding the border on the Colombian side would remain open.
The opposition, non-governmental organizations and international bodies such as the United Nations have for years decried increasing repression of opposition political parties, activists and independent media in Venezuela.
US President-elect Donald Trump has said the country is being run by a dictator.
Meanwhile the government has repeatedly accused the opposition of plotting with foreign governments and agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency to commit acts of sabotage and terrorism.
The government said this week it had detained seven “mercenaries,” including a high-ranking FBI official and a US military official.
Venezuela’s economy has experienced a prolonged crisis marked by triple-digit inflation and the exodus of more than 7 million migrants seeking better opportunities abroad.
Many of Machado’s supporters, among them retired Venezuelans who would like to see their children and grandchildren return to the country, say jobs, inflation and unreliable public services are among their top concerns.
The government, meanwhile, has employed orthodox methods to try to tamp down inflation, to some success. Maduro said this month that the economy grew 9 percent last year.
About 2,000 people were arrested at protests following the election. The government said this week it has released 1,515 of them. Gonzalez, 75, said his son-in-law was kidnapped on Tuesday while taking his children to school.


Sweden grants lowest ever number of residence permits to asylum seekers in 2024

Updated 10 January 2025
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Sweden grants lowest ever number of residence permits to asylum seekers in 2024

  • “I think it will need to continue to decrease,” Migration Minister Johan Forssell told a news conference
  • The number of people in Sweden, who were born abroad has doubled in the past two decades to about a fifth of its 10.5-milion population

STOCKHOLM: Sweden granted the lowest number of residence permits to asylum seekers and their relatives on record in 2024, a boost for the right-wing government which pledged on Friday to keep bringing the number down further.
Sweden’s minority government and its backers, the far-right and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, won the 2022 election on a promise to keep reducing immigration and gang crime, which they say are linked.
Since then it has introduced and proposed several measures to make Sweden less attractive to immigrants, such as making it harder to become a citizen and gain residence permits, less generous rules for bringing family members to Sweden and slashed the number of UNHCR quota immigrants accepted.
According to Swedish Migration Agency data 6,250 asylum seekers and their relatives were given residency permits in 2024, down 42 percent compared to when the government came into power and the lowest number since comparable records began in 1985.
“I think it will need to continue to decrease,” Migration Minister Johan Forssell told a news conference. “We now have a historically low asylum rate, but that should be put in relation to a number of years when it has been at very high levels.”
The number of people in Sweden, who were born abroad has doubled in the past two decades to about a fifth of its 10.5-milion population.
The country recorded a peak of just over 86,000 granted asylum related residency permits in 2016, the year after the migration crisis when 163,000 people sought asylum in Sweden, the highest number per capita in the EU.
Since then Sweden has reversed generous immigration policies, fueled by the rise of the Sweden Democrats, which first made it in to parliament in 2010 but in the last election won 20.5 percent of the vote to become the second-biggest party.
The policies have drawn harsh criticism from human rights groups, which say that the government is falsely making immigrants responsible for Sweden’s problems and risking eroding civil rights and protections.
The government is actively encouraging immigrants to return to their home countries and has earmarked 3 billion Swedish crowns ($269.18 million) for repatriation grants. Starting next year immigrants to Sweden can get 350,000 Swedish crowns to return, up from the current 10,000 crowns.