If she beats Trump, how might Kamala Harris handle two raging wars?
Vice-President Harris was among the first in the Biden administration to call for a ceasefire in Gaza
U.S. President Joe Biden’s fate may have been sealed when, in front of dozens of world leaders at the NATO 75th anniversary meeting, he introduced Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin.” There was an audible gasp in the room.
Biden immediately corrected himself after conflating the arch-enemies, but it may have been too late to recover from another slip-up.
The President has since announced he is not running for re-election and tossed his support behind Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Now the 59-yr-old Harris is all but assured the job of running for the Democrats against Republican nominee Donald Trump in the November U.S. election.
Harris will be the first black woman presidential nominee. She has family ties to many diaspora communities; her mother is Indian, her father is Jamaican, and she is married to a Jewish man. She even lived in Canada during her teens and has family in Montreal.
Where does she stand on two major wars?
Journalists are re-examining her record on two conflicts where the U.S. is the leading weapons supplier: the Russian-Ukraine war in Eastern Europe and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
If Harris should beat Trump, will U.S. policy change on these two major conflicts, and other foreign policy matters?
Israel-Hamas
Like Joe Biden and all other U.S. political leaders, Kamala Harris is a staunch supporter of Israel. But, she has been more outspoken than most about its conduct of the war, and the plight of Palestinians.
In a high-profile speech in March, she became the first person in the Biden administration to call for an immediate ceasefire.
“Harris,” writes the Israeli left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, “has been widely viewed as the Biden administration's so-called ‘bad cop’ on Israel in recent months, as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to ignore the White House's pleas for improved attention to civilian harm in Gaza.”

Harris did not attend Netanyahu's address to Congress during his visit to Washington this week, a conspicuous departure from tradition according to CNBC.
In a separate meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, she warned him that, “It is time for this war to end and end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity, and self-determination," Harris told reporters after the meeting.
Her most in-depth comments on the war were made to Rolling Stone magazine:
She said, “Well, first of all, this issue is one that must be discussed with an appreciation and respect for the nuances and the context and the complexity. Part of my concern is that there’s been an appetite for a presentation of this issue as though it’s binary. It’s either one thing or the other. Let’s have a full conversation. On Oct. 7, 1,200 people were slaughtered, many of them young people attending a concert. Think Burning Man. Women were horribly raped. I’ve seen this in different places around the world, rape being used as a tool of war. Let’s understand that Israel, when that happened, has and had a right to defend itself. We would. And let’s understand that how it does so matters.”
“There are many truths that exist at the same time,” she added. “Far too many innocent Palestinian civilians have been killed. We are looking at famine conditions. Aid must get in. And hostages must be freed. And we need a two-state solution. And we need to have a cease-fire to get to a place where we can start building toward a two-state solution. And Palestinians are entitled to security and dignity and self-determination. And Israelis are entitled to security and safety. And we must fight what we have seen as a rise of antisemitism around the world. And we must fight Islamophobia. And people are living in fear.”
Russia-Ukraine
There is unlikely to be much change in U.S. backing of Ukraine to liberate its territory occupied by Russia.
In June, she met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Summit on Peace in Ukraine in Switzerland. “Russia’s aggression is not only an attack on the lives and the freedom of the people of Ukraine, it is not only an attack on global food security and energy supplies,” she said at the summit’s opening plenary as reported by Al Jazeera.
But some analysts are saying there is a growing realization in Europe that over time, supporting Ukraine will increasingly fall on their shoulders.
“Most Europeans realize that Ukraine is increasingly going to be their burden,” Sudha David-Wilp, director of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund, told the Associated Press. “Everyone is trying to get ready for all the possible outcomes.”
Although many in the party quickly endorsed Vice President Harris as the nominee-apparent — as Biden did — Democrats still must make a formal nomination at the convention from August 19 to August 22.
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