U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will bring continuity to American foreign policy in Asia — including on support for the alliance with Japan and countering China — if the front-runner to replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee wins November’s presidential election.
Harris, 59, is widely expected to clinch the Democratic nomination after Biden bowed out of the presidential race on Sunday and endorsed her.
She brings to the table nearly four years as a U.S. senator and more than three as vice president, during which she built ties with allied leaders in Asia and gained valuable experience on issues such as Beijing’s moves in the disputed South China Sea and Washington’s push for a united front with Tokyo and Seoul in response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
While the prospect of a return to the White House by her Republican rival Donald Trump has unnerved some in Asia after his at-times-chaotic stint in office, Harris’ last three years in the spotlight are expected to help assuage any concerns in Tokyo and other allied capitals after Biden’s sudden announcement.
“Observers in Japan rarely have this much information about the next president,” said Jennifer Lind, a professor at Dartmouth College and an expert on East Asian politics. “The U.S. will either elect Kamala Harris, who can be expected to continue in Biden’s foreign policy, or Donald Trump, who has already been president. Japan is already quite familiar with their different approaches.”
Japan, which employed a successful strategy to offset Trump’s worst diplomatic impulses during his presidency, has less to worry about if the former president is reelected. It has already boosted defense spending and made dramatic security policy shifts long urged by Washington, issues that could help placate Trump.
Harris, meanwhile, would represent a clear continuation of Biden’s policies in Asia — an approach that has taken the U.S.-Japan alliance, in particular, to what observers say is its highest point ever.
“Harris has stepped in for Biden and toured the region in the past and reiterated consistent messaging on Japan, China, the Korean Peninsula and Southeast Asia,” Chris Hughes, a professor of international politics and Japanese studies at the University of Warwick said, adding that she would likely prioritize good ties with allies and partners while also seeking to avoid overly antagonizing China.
“Tokyo will be less concerned about Harris’ policy positions, as these promise continuity with Biden, and more about her relatively limited experience … in diplomatic affairs,” he said.
Beyond policy, Harris has also ingratiated herself with Japanese political heavyweights, representing the U.S. government at the funeral of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in 2022. The move was seen as helping to build up her own personal ties to the country.
Harris has also touted the importance of alliances, a stark contrast with Trump, who is known to view them as tools for achieving his goals.
Japan had traditionally been seen as favoring Republican candidates, seeing them as tougher on security and defense issues, but Hughes said that Trump’s presidency challenged that view, creating an environment that welcomed Biden’s focus on alliances as partnerships rather than taking a transactional approach.
“If she were to win the White House and prove to be a strong leader, then Tokyo’s policymakers would probably breathe a sigh of relief,” he said.
But even if voters were to reelect Trump, Japan would still find itself in a position far more amenable to other U.S. allies.
“Japan knows that its leaders handled Trump very effectively last time,” Lind said, calling Tokyo the United States’ “most important ally” in its security competition with China.
As for continuity with Biden on his tough China policies — which expanded on the hard-line approach of Trump — Ian Chong, an associate professor and expert on international relations in the Indo-Pacific region at the National University of Singapore, said, “there is little indication that (a Harris) administration will diverge much from the Biden administration’s current direction of travel.”
The vice president has largely repeated the Biden mantra on China policy, stressing the need to “maintain open lines of communication to responsibly manage the competition” between Washington and Beijing.
This policy “is about ensuring that we are protecting American interests, and that we are a leader in terms of the rules of the road, as opposed to following others’ rules,” Harris said in an interview with CBS last September, days after her third visit to Asia as vice president for meetings with regional leaders.
But Harris has also demonstrated that she is able to confront what may be the most intractable issue between the two superpowers — Taiwan — with a deft touch that has often seemed to elude Biden.
Speaking from the deck of a U.S. Navy destroyer stationed in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, during a visit to Japan in 2022, she outlined the administration’s stance that China is “undermining key elements of the international rules-based order,” while noting that the U.S. would “continue to support Taiwan’s self-defense, consistent with our longstanding policy” of maintaining “unofficial” ties.
Biden has repeatedly said the U.S. would defend Taiwan if it were invaded by China, which claims the democratic island as a renegade province — remarks that appeared to buck decades of American policy and were later walked back by the White House.
In terms of building ties in the region, Chong noted that Harris has already met various Asian leaders, including Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, when he was vice president in 2022. Lai — who Beijing views as a dangerous separatist — was elected president in January and took office in May.
Harris would also be expected to surround herself with officials well-versed on Taiwan policy and lean heavily on their recommendations, according to Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
Trump, on the other hand, has a reputation for ignoring key advisers, he added. During his time in office, the former president repeatedly sought “deals” with rival nations that often would appear to have benefited the U.S. at the expense of its allies and partners.
“Japanese security experts are concerned about the possibility of the United States and China growing too close (under a second Trump administration),” Watanabe said, noting what he said were unfounded fears that Trump could attempt to cut a deal with Chinese leader Xi Jinping over the fate of Taiwan.
A Harris administration would also inherit a Korean Peninsula policy that has boosted ties with Seoul and helped warm the once-frozen relationship between Japan and South Korea, while effectively leaving communication with nuclear-armed North Korea in limbo.
The vice president visited the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas in September 2022, reiterating the United States’ “ironclad” commitment to defending allied South Korea while working toward ”the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
Harris would also diverge from Trump in that she would almost certainly not use the threat of withdrawing some of the 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea as a bargaining chip to get Seoul to cough up more cash for its defense.
Harris meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as Trump did three times, would also be hard to imagine.
Instead, she would likely follow Biden’s trajectory, despite North Korea’s repeated missile launches. Though the issue of Moscow’s closer military relations with Pyongyang over Russia’s war in Ukraine — not to mention the possibility of a seventh North Korean nuclear test — could prompt an even harder-line U.S. policy toward the North. Harris has said Pyongyang has made a “huge mistake” by allegedly supplying Moscow with arms.
Ultimately, experts say U.S. allies and partners should worry less about “what ifs” and more about broader trends that could impact their relationships with Washington.
These trends include a shift in the global balance of power, from a world in which the U.S. dominates as the sole great power, to a bipolar world in which the United States must compete with another superpower, China.
“This creates a more dangerous world, and one in which the U.S. must rely more on its allies,” Dartmouth College’s Lind said. “This is magnified by another trend: unsustainable levels of U.S. debt. This will make it increasingly untenable for a U.S. president — whoever it is — to continue subsidizing the defense spending of wealthy allies around the world.
“These trends will likely lead to a transformation of U.S. foreign policy in coming years — regardless of who is president.”
Source: Japan Times
