檀香山——在新加坡，在一次外交政策演讲和一次关于供应链问题的圆桌会议之间，副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯停下来闻闻花香。
具体来说，她查看了该国以她的名字命名的兰花——一种叫做帕皮利奥南达·卡玛拉·哈里斯的浅棕色杂交兰花——这是前总统巴拉克·奥巴马和时任副总统乔·拜登在过去访问该国期间获得的外交荣誉。
“哦，这太不可思议了，”周二，她在海湾边的新加坡标志性花园郁郁葱葱的花田房里短暂游览时惊叹道。
对于哈里斯来说，这是一个短暂的——也是罕见的——常态化的时刻，因为他的外交之旅充满了不寻常的情况。
哈里斯为期一周的新加坡和越南之行自始至终都受到阿富汗危机的影响。关于美国混乱撤军的问题占据了她在新加坡的头几天，在喀布尔机场外造成13名美国人死亡的袭击导致她在回家的路上取消了对加州的计划访问。
中间，哈里斯推迟了几个小时前往越南，因为担心那里的美国外交官可能会受到健康攻击。
此行本身是在全球大流行的背景下进行的，哈里斯被她与领导人外交会议的精心设计的舞台艺术以及少量圆桌会议和演讲所包围。
但这些危机实际上可能促成了分析人士所说的这次旅行的整体成功。
“受到对河内和其他地方正在发生的事情的担忧的打击，他们保持了相当稳定，”在奥巴马时期担任美国驻越南大使的泰德·奥西乌斯说。
“他们向我们的合作伙伴传递了关键信息，展示了关系的连续性和未来，因为他们有稳定的神经，即使面临这些挑战，他们也继续旅行。”
在从阿富汗撤军的过程中，哈里斯此行的首要任务之一是向美国盟友保证，美国可以相信袖手旁观会履行承诺。奥西乌斯说，越南人现在“知道我们足够信任彼此，即使在动荡、不寻常的时期，我们也能继续前进。”
面对许多关于阿富汗的问题，哈里斯总体上展现出了比她第一次出访危地马拉和墨西哥时更有纪律性的信息。在那里，她招致了民主党人的批评，因为她警告移民不要来美国，也招致了共和党人的批评，因为他们对她决定不访问美国南部边境的问题不屑一顾。
在新加坡和越南，哈里斯重申了政府的观点，即疏散工作是白宫的“最高优先事项”，并避免陷入对哪里出了问题的相互指责。
民主党策略师乔尔·佩恩说:“没有什么需要清理的，这显然不同于危地马拉和墨西哥之行。
即便如此，共和党人还是抓住机会追求哈里斯——既是对她可能的政治未来的认可，因为如果拜登选择不参加2024年的竞选，她可能会成为拜登的接班人，也是试图利用她在美国选民中普遍存在的分裂形象。
共和党反对派研究小组“美国崛起”的副执行主任克里斯·马汀在推特上说，“卡玛拉·哈里斯作为副总统接触的每一项任务都惨败”，包括她最近安抚美国盟友的努力。
但佩恩表示，哈里斯在最近的旅行中表现出了更加优雅和专注的态度。
“我的感觉是，副总统的团队试图纠正一点，简化信息，简化任务，”他说。
关于对抗中国——哈里斯此行中最棘手的外交问题——这位副总统在谴责她所说的中国在南中国海的“欺凌”方面取得了平衡，同时也为美国与新加坡和越南的关系提出了更具建设性的愿景。
尽管她的访问为美国及其东南亚盟友之间的合作提供了许多新的机会，但它缺乏典型外交之旅的一个主要试金石:与当地人民的接触。
当拜登以副总统身份访问新加坡时，他在一个熙熙攘攘的小贩摊位前停下来吃了一顿午餐。当奥巴马访问越南时，在一家小面馆与安东尼·鲍代恩共进晚餐和啤酒后，他遇到了一群欢呼的越南人，他还与越南年轻人打拳击。
随着冠状病毒大流行再次席卷东南亚大部分地区，哈里斯和她的随行人员基本上被限制在酒店房间里。抵达新越两国后，整个代表团都接受了新冠肺炎检测，并不得不在酒店房间隔离，直到结果出来。
在越南，该国是该地区疫苗接种率最低的国家之一，最近几周的感染率创下新高，当哈里斯的车队赶往她的活动现场时，河内的街道出奇地空无一人。哈里斯没有在越南街头即兴表演，而是与男女同性恋、双性恋、变性者和气候变化活动家举行了一个小型圆桌会议。
曾担任奥巴马首席副新闻秘书的埃里克·舒尔茨(Eric Schultz)表示:“就像我们必须在国内重塑政治竞选的样子一样——公务旅行现在也面临着同样的剧变。
“建立文化关系是人与人之间的事。当你把它从等式中去掉时，它就变得更难了。”
战略与国际研究中心东南亚高级研究员格雷戈里·波林(Gregory Poling)表示，尽管大流行使哈里斯的行程变得复杂，但它也创造了展示美国对该地区承诺的机会。事实上，哈里斯在越南部署了美国的疫苗外交，她宣布额外运送100万剂冠状病毒疫苗和77个冰箱来帮助储存疫苗。
他说:“这限制了参与的次数，限制了你与民间社会和其他人的接触，让你更难去首都以外的地方旅行——但这也有助于强化一个信息，即他们真的在投资那里的关系。
Harris holds steady on Southeast Asia trip as crises loom
HONOLULU -- In Singapore, in between a foreign policy speech and a roundtable talk about supply chain issues, Vice President Kamala Harris stopped to smell the flowers.
Specifically, she checked out an orchid that the country named after her — a light fuschia hybrid named Papilionanda Kamala Harris — a diplomatic honor also bestowed on former President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden during past visits to the country.
“Oh, this is extraordinary,” she marveled as she took a brief tour of the lush Flower Field room of Singapore’s iconic Gardens By the Bay on Tuesday.
It was a brief — and rare — moment of normalcy for Harris during a diplomatic trip chock full of extraordinary circumstances.
Harris’ weeklong trip to Singapore and Vietnam was shadowed from start to finish by the crisis in Afghanistan. Questions about the messy U.S. withdrawal dominated her first few days in Singapore and the attack that killed 13 Americans outside the Kabul airport caused her to nix a planned visit to California on her way home.
In the middle, Harris delayed by a few hours her travel to Vietnam because of concern about potential health attacks against U.S. diplomats there.
And the trip itself played out against the backdrop of a global pandemic that kept Harris hemmed in by the carefully choreographed stagecraft of her diplomatic meetings with leaders and a smattering of roundtables and speeches.
But those very crises may in fact have contributed to what analysts say was the overall success of the trip.
“Buffeted by these concerns about things that were happening both in Hanoi and elsewhere, they held pretty steady,” said Ted Osius, who served as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam under Obama.
“They delivered key messages to our partners and showed both continuity and a future for the relationships, by the fact that they had steady nerves and they continued with the trip, even despite these challenges.”
Amid the withdrawal from Afghanistan, one of Harris’ top tasks for the trip was to reassure U.S. allies that America can be trusted to stand by its commitments. Osius said the Vietnamese now “know that we trust each other enough to be able to carry on, even in turbulent, unusual times.”
Facing numerous questions about Afghanistan, Harris overall exhibited a more disciplined message than she did during her first foreign trip, to Guatemala and Mexico. There, she drew criticism from Democrats for warning migrants not to come to the U.S., and from Republicans for dismissing questions about her decision not to visit the U.S. southern border.
In Singapore, and again in Vietnam, Harris repeated administration talking points about the evacuation effort being the White House’s “highest priority” and avoided getting bogged down in recriminations over what went wrong.
“There wasn’t really anything to clean up, which obviously differentiates from that Guatemala and Mexico trip,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne.
Even so, Republicans took the opportunity to go after Harris — both a nod toward her possible political future, as the presumptive sucessor to Biden if he chooses not to run in 2024, and an attempt to take advantage of her generally divisive profile among U.S. voters.
Chris Martin, deputy executive director of GOP opposition research group America Rising, said on Twitter that “every assignment Kamala Harris has touched as VP has failed miserably,” including her latest efforts to reassure U.S. allies.
But Payne said Harris had showed a more polished and focused approach on her latest trip.
“My sense is that the vice president’s team has attempted to course correct a bit and simplify the message and simplify the task,” he said.
On confronting China — the trickiest diplomatic issue for Harris during the trip — the vice president struck a balance in delivering a rebuke of what she called China’s “bullying” in the South China Sea while also offering a more constructive vision for the U.S. relationship with Singapore and Vietnam.
While her visit offered up a number of new opportunities for cooperation between the U.S. and its Southeast Asian allies, it lacked one major touchstone of the typical diplomatic trip: engagement with local people.
When Biden visited Singapore as vice president, he stopped by a bustling hawker stall for a limeade. When Obama visited Vietnam, he was met with throngs of cheering Vietnamese after sharing a meal and a beer with Anthony Bourdain in a tiny noodle shop, and he beatboxed with Vietnamese youth.
With the coronavirus pandemic surging again across much of Southeast Asia, Harris and her entourage were largely confined to their hotel rooms. Upon arriving in both Singapore and Vietnam, the entire delegation received COVID-19 tests and had to quarantine in their hotel rooms until the results came through.
In Vietnam, a country with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the region and record high infections in recent weeks, the streets of Hanoi were eerily empty as Harris’ motorcade sped to her events. Instead of a spontaneous moment on the streets of Vietnam, Harris held a small roundtable with LGBTQ and climate change activists.
“Just like we had to reinvent domestically what a political campaign looks like — official travel is now subject to that same upheaval,” said Eric Schultz, who served as principal deputy press secretary for Obama.
“Building cultural relationships is person to person. When you take that out of the equation, it just becomes harder.”
Gregory Poling, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that while the pandemic complicated Harris’ trip, it also created opportunities to show the U.S. commitment to the region. Indeed, Harris deployed America’s vaccine diplomacy in Vietnam, where she announced the delivery of an additional 1 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine and 77 freezers to help store doses.
“It limits the number of engagements, it limits your engagement with civil society and others, it makes it harder to travel outside the capital — but it also helps reinforce the message that they are really investing in relationships there,” he said.
