United States

The Kamala Harris bandwagon continues to gather momentum. Going into this week’s Democratic National Convention “The Economist” poll tracker put her three points ahead nationally. The convention dividend should add another two to three points easily.

Kamala’s rapid rise, however, has less to do with her policies and more to do with vibes. Her main attributes are that she is younger than Joe Biden, pro-abortion and anti-Trump, which, for the Democrats, is more than enough.

In her 40-minute conference speech a few foreign policy hints slipped out. On the Middle East she supports Israel while sympathising and empathising with the Palestinians. On NATO she is pro-Alliance. As for Ukraine, she is anti-Putin and on China Kamala Harris remains a bit of a mystery.

Ms Harris’s recent speech in Philadelphia on Kamalanomics failed to impress the professionals. Her plans to end price gouging with federal regulations; raise child tax credits by $4,000 and hand-out $25,000 to first time home buyers, was derided by most economists as inflationary left-of-centre crowd-pleasing populism. It was not, however, as Trump claimed, communism.

Former prosecutor Kamala Harris is, however, proving adept at deflecting criticism; coming up with resonating slogans and landing punches. Two placards keep popping up at her rallies: “Freedom” and “We Will Not Go Back.”

The first encompasses a broad swathe of issues to include reproductive rights, racism, misogyny, health care, for the elderly, the electoral process, the rule of law, the constitution and democracy itself. All of which either have been, or are perceived to be, threatened by Donald Trump and his Republican acolytes.

“We Will Not Go Back” refers to the belief that Republicans want to turn the social clock back to the 1950s – perhaps even further – when Jim Crow ruled in the South and a woman’s place was in the home.

Trump is the master of the personal insult. Vice President Harris has fostered a unique method for countering them. She ignores them. Then she turns the debate on her opponent’s weaknesses. Project 2025, for instance, is a major embarrassment for the ex-president. He has repeatedly disavowed it. But Kamala Harris refuses to let it go.

Finally, there is the fact that Kamala Harris ticks almost every diversity box there is. She is a female, part-Asian, part-African all-American. Yet she rarely mentions her gender or mixed-race background. Perhaps it is time for Martin Luther King Jr’s dream. The dream that the day will come when a person will be judged not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.

China and the United States

China appreciates Donald Trump. It is too much they say they like him. His threatened tariffs and bellicose rhetoric would undoubtedly put a strain on Sino-American relations.

But at the same time, the ex-president has shown little inclination to defend Taiwan and Trump’s transactional diplomacy could simplify relations. Most of all, Donald J. Trump is a known quantity.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is an unwelcome mystery.

For a start, Beijing is unhappy with the end of the battle of the geriatrics that a Trump-Biden race represented. The Chinese have their own problems with a perceived gerontocracy and Kamala Harris presents an unflattering contrast with 71-year-old Xi Jinping. Since Ms Harris emerged as the Democratic nominee, all hints of a Biden-Xi comparison have been erased from the Chinese internet.

Then there is the problem of racism and misogyny. At least America’s problem as portrayed by the Chinese Communist Party. In May Beijing published a report on human rights in America which said racism is getting worse and gender discrimination is “rampant”. Kamala Harris – in case you missed it – is female and of mixed Asian-African heritage.

It is expected that Kamala Harris’s China policy will largely be a re-run of Joe Biden’s. She will likely leave in place the tariffs imposed by her mentor and continue the commitment to defend Taiwan and attack China’s human rights record.

The choice of Tim Walz as Harris’s running-mate adds an interesting wrinkle to Sino-American relations in a possible Harris administration. He taught in China and has visited the country dozens of times. In contrast, Ms Harris has made only the rare visit to Asia.

This indicates that Walz may break with vice-presidential tradition and have a role to play as the administration’s point man on China. Republicans are ready for it. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives have already launched an investigation into Walz’s “longstanding and cosy relationship with China”.  Unfortunately for the conservatives they are unlikely to find skeleton’s in Walz’s Chinese wardrobe. His time in and out of Congress has been marked by repeated attack on Beijing’s human rights record, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by China’s state-controlled media.

Trump, on the other hand, is more concerned with trading rights than human rights. So, all things considered, Xi Jinping is likely to prefer Trump over Harris.

India

Last month Moscow. This week Kyiv. What is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi up to?

The simple answer is that he is following India’s traditional policy of non-alignment. But the reality is more complex and reveals the growing importance of India on the world diplomatic stage and a transition from the past to the future.

The Kyiv visit was made to balance Modi’s trip to Moscow in July. That trip was a PR disaster for Modi because he wrapped himself in a bear hug with Vladimir Putin just eight hours after Russian missiles killed 37 children and injured 170 others in a Kyiv children’s hospital.

Modi tried to minimise the damage by quickly issuing a statement of sympathy for the Ukrainian families involved. But it didn’t work. Most of the Western governments criticised him and Volodomyr Zelensky declared: “It is a huge disappointment…to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day.”

Modi’s visit to Kyiv was first and foremost meant to balance the diplomatic scales and keep India on the non-aligned path. But there is more to it than that.

India has been gradually moving away from its historic close ties with Russia since the 1990s. At the height of the Cold War 70 percent of its weapons were supplied by the Soviet Union. Moscow is still the major provider, but it is down to 50 percent with the US, Israel and France supplying the other half.

Delhi is concerned about several things. At the top of the list is the bromance between Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping. India may be non-aligned but its chief nemesis is China and the relationship between the Russian and Chinese leaders makes Modi uneasy.

Then there is the fact that the US is India’s biggest trading partner – $75.8 billion in exports in 2023. This compares to a paltry $4 billion that it sold to Russia. In economic terms, Indian diplomats say that their country’s future lies with America, Europe and the Gulf States, in that order.

As India climbs up the economic order, trade balances will play an increasing role in their political decisions. But at the same time it must transition from past relationships to future. That could explain why Modi continues to defy Western sanctions to be the largest purchaser of Russia’s seaborne crude oil – $2.7 billion last month alone.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain". To subscribe to his email alerts on world affairs click here.