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Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic frontrunner — despite garnering zero votes from the electorate, a failed 2020 presidential bid and difficulties articulating what policy decisions, if any, marked her vice presidency.
But the 47th president will be tasked with navigating a slate of global quagmires involving China, Russia, Iran and Israel-Palestine. So how would Harris’s foreign policy stand up against Trump’s?
The VP’s first foreign policy moves since becoming the likely nominee have been characterized more by her absences rather than actions.
She was missing from Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Wednesday — an event typically convened by the vice president. Instead, Harrris addressed a historically Black sorority event in Indiana.
Harris also failed to outline any foreign policy objectives in her first campaign rally in the battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday, instead paying homage to her octogenarian boss, while vowing to prosecute Trump’s criminal record. It was a sharp contrast to Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, where he vowed to “end every single international crisis that the current administration had created,” including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, adding that when he was president “Iran was broke [and] had no money. Now Iran has $250 billion.”
A lawyer by training, Harris’s foreign policy portfolio is razor thin, marked by record illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border during her tenure as Biden’s unofficial “border czar.”
If Harris were to win the 2024 election, she would mostly stick to Biden’s foreign policy playbook on Iran, China and Russia, while striking a less sympathetic approach toward Israel to appease her party’s progressive bloc. Also dictating Harris’s foreign policy agenda would be her chief foreign policy adviser, Philip Gordon, a former Obama State Department official who helped negotiate Iran’s conciliatory nuclear deal back in 2015.
As with Ukraine, Trump promises, perhaps quixotically, an immediate end to the war in Gaza — even as he never says “ceasefire.” Israeli-Saudi normalization would also be high up among Trump’s Middle East objectives, considering the Abraham Accords represented the crowning foreign policy achievement of his first term.
Harris, however, while supportive of Israel’s right to self-defense, has forged a Gaza policy far different than either Biden or Trump. Her priority appears to be a ceasefire; a belief that ending Israel’s war with Hamas — though not necessarily ending Hamas itself — paves the best pathway for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.
Harris had been the “loudest voice within the Biden administration talking about the need for a ceasefire…[and] humanizing the Palestinians,” said Josh Paul, a former State Department official, who resigned last October over Biden’s continued support for Israel.
Nowhere would Trump and Harris diverge more than on addressing Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. A Harris administration, notes Jason Brodsky of the United Against Nuclear Iran watchdog, would focus on perpetuating a Biden-esque policy of concessionary soft diplomacy while attempting to revive a nuclear deal.
But the Biden-Harris administration failed to deter Tehran from wreaking regional chaos. Last fall Harris repeated Biden’s one-word message of “Don’t” to Iran’s leaders about the regime’s involvement in the Israel-Gaza conflict. But months later, the Islamic Republic launched an unprecedented missile and drone barrage against Israel. Today, an emboldened Iran is also mere weeks away from obtaining nuclear weaponry.
Trump, on the other hand, would reset America’s eroded deterrence with Tehran, paving a much-needed reset by projecting uncompromising strength to bring about an end to the Islamic Republic’s 45-year regime.
“A second term for Trump would witness a return of the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign on Tehran,” Brodsky added, referring to Trump’s more than 1,500 sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic or associates — more than any administration in US history.
Like Biden, Harris backs Ukraine in its war against Russia, saying earlier this year that “Ukraine needs our support . . . we must give it.” Harris is also unlikely to deviate from Biden’s pro-NATO stance, describing the alliance this month as “the single greatest, most effective defensive alliance in the history of the world.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, signaled his opposition to the US issuing “blank checks” to help Kyiv fight Putin. For Trump, the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine six months later. Putin is apt to remain undeterred, even roused, by a Harris White House possibly even more reticent to censure Moscow.
Rather than offer Ukraine blind support like Harris, Trump might strong-arm an end to the war in Ukraine, possibly even pressuring Kyiv to consider the unthinkable and relinquish territory to Moscow. A Trump return to the White House would also see greater demands on NATO allies to spend a higher percentage of their GDP — reportedly as high as 3% — on defense.
Europe should prepare for a Trump presidency by demonstrably shouldering an increasing share of defense spending, Tim Willasey-Wilsey, a visiting professor of war studies at King’s College, London, told The Post. “This would allow Trump truthfully to tell the American people that his policies have begun to reduce America’s overseas expenditure on unpopular wars.”
On China, Harris is likely to toe the bipartisan line on curbing Beijing’s geopolitical ascendancy, especially as it threatens Taiwanese sovereignty, while seeking out areas of cooperation. A Trump 2.0 White House, conversely, would likely ramp up trade and economic hostilities between the world’s two largest economies by re-imposing tariffs on Chinese imports and restoring his flagship protectionist “America First” policy.
This is the type of aggressive diplomacy Trump long ago mastered. Harris — not so much; or at least not that we’ve seen so far.
Jonathan Harounoff is the author of the forthcoming book “Unveiled: Inside Iran’s #WomenLifeFreedom Revolt.”