US vice-president Kamala Harris has warned US voters that embracing isolationism and anti-democratic dictatorship in November’s presidential election would be “dangerous, destabilising and shortsighted”.
In pointed remarks to the Munich Security Conference, she said voters would decide in nine months “whether it is in America’s interest to continue to work in lockstep with our allies and partners or go it alone”.
The US politician argued that leaving the postwar international rules-based order would undermine global security and prosperity, and demolish a status quo that had made the US “the most powerful and prosperous country in the world”.
This approach was based on strategic interest and not charity, she said, and it secured US domestic security jobs and exports. “To put all that at risk,” she said, “would be foolish.”
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Without mentioning Donald Trump my name, or his attack on “delinquent” Nato members, Ms Harris noted that the number of alliance members meeting spending goals in the last four years had doubled.
Renewing US commitment to Ukraine in her speech, the vice-president noted that the conflict had cost Russia 300,000 lives – more than its decade-long war in Afghanistan. But failure by Ukraine’s western allies to deliver promised weapons and resources to Kyiv “would be a gift to Vladimir Putin”.
Ahead of his Munich appearance, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy secured a €1.1 billion military aid package in Berlin, including 36 howitzers, 120,000 rounds of artillery ammunition and two more air-defence systems.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz described a new bilateral security accord with Ukraine as a “historic step”, with Mr Zelenskiy planning to sign another with president Emmanuel Macron of France.
This year’s conference is also overshadowed by tensions around the Israel-Gaza conflict. UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said the Hamas attack on Israel was “unconscionable”, as was the collective punishment on civilians in Gaza where the humanitarian response was “now on life support”.
“The situation in Gaza is an appalling indictment of the deadlock in global relations,” he said. “The level of death and destruction is shocking in itself. The war is also spilling over borders across the region and affecting global trade.”
Relatives of Israeli hostages met with world leaders in Munich, as did the country’s foreign minister Israel Katz. Questioned by summit participants on where 1.4 million displaced Palestinian refugees in Rafah should go ahead of Israel’s planned offensive there, Mr Katz suggested Gaza’s second city Khan Younis.
He said Israel had “no intention to deport any Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip” and did not want to rule the territory after its war with Hamas ends. Instead Israel was anxious to find a plan for Palestinian refugees that did not harm Egypt’s interests. “We will co-ordinate with Egypt,” he said, adding that “Israel will have to deal with Rafah because we can’t just leave Hamas there”.
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