Kamala Harris had a thin foreign policy record before becoming Vice President in 2021. However, during her time as Vice President, she has had meaningful interactions with the UN system from which we can draw some important inferences about her views on the UN and how she might approach it as president.
Now that she is likely to be the Democratic nominee for president, we thought it would be useful to examine Kamala Harris’ views on the United Nations, how they are similar to or different from President Biden’s, and what particular areas of the UN system she seems uniquely poised to invigorate.
In this special episode of To Save Us From Hell we take a deep dive into Kamala Harris’ views and approach to the UN as vice president.
Here is an excerpt:
Transcript edited for clarity
Anjali Dayal: What’s distinct about the moment that we live in is that almost everybody in U.S. politics used to be sort of a reflexive liberal internationalist. And now it’s just the purview of the Democratic Party — and maybe Mitt Romney. And so that sort of division means that we have to pay a little more attention to the subtle variations in politics here.
What we know about Harris’s record vis-à-vis the UN is basically that she did the first big pandemic-era outing of the Biden administration to the UN. On March 16th, 2021, she addressed the Commission on the Status of Women. And she gave a speech tying democratic flourishing to women’s equality. She gave a speech where she said “the status of women is the status of democracy.”
Mark Leon Goldberg: That was the quote I picked from that speech as well.
Anjali Dayal: Oh, look at that!
Mark Leon Goldberg: Yeah. It’s a good quote!.
Anjali Dayal: It is a good quote.
Mark Leon Goldberg: And look, it’s important to remember that context-in-time. This was the first big foray that the Biden administration made to the United Nations. It was just a couple months after taking office. And it was the very first time that a U.S. Vice President addressed the Commission on the Status of Women. And look, there’s a female U.S. ambassador to the UN that could have done it, but the fact that they decided to elevate this to the Office of the Vice President was I think significant, and I think demonstrative of how the Biden-Harris administration wanted to show that they are back — that they are willing multilateralists and that they will go along with the UN. And they will not be the wrench in the machine that the Trump administration was. And it was significant that it was Harris herself who made that foray.
Anjali Dayal: It’s significant. Also, especially we were just talking earlier about how this the Commission on the Status of Women is the second biggest annual event at the UN, after UNGA. Even so, this is a comparatively small theater for a U.S. vice president, right? The State Department feed of the speech had 84 people watching in real time. (I’m guessing at least 30 of them are paying up subscribers who are listening to this right now!) It’s not like an enormous community or an enormous stage. So, putting the vice president on that stage, I think, accords with the idea that this is an important role for the Biden administration, but also that this is a space where Vice President Harris might have an outsize impact.
And we see, I think, a little of that in her other efforts. She’s been the key ambassador of the Biden administration to a number of important communities that are yes, the backbone of the Democratic voting base, but also important UN constituencies.
Full transcript and podcast episode available here.