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If elected president in November, Vice President Kamala Harris would enter office with a foreign policy record defined by her tenure as a senator during Donald Trump’s presidency, and her time as the No. 2 to one of the most experienced presidents on international issues in American history.
In most areas, Harris would likely continue many of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy objectives. A Harris administration would probably offer strong support for Ukraine’s war effort, and continue initiatives to deepen alliances in Asia and the Pacific in the face of China’s geopolitical ascendance. And she would likely still see the U.S. provide robust support to Israel and other allies in the Middle East.
But regarding Israel’s war on Hamas, Harris has sounded more sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians, a stance that could mollify Arab-American voters and others who are troubled by Biden’s support for Israel’s war effort in Gaza.
Lily Greenberg Call, who quit as special assistant to the chief of staff at the Interior Department after a year over her opposition to Biden’s unwavering support for the Israeli war strategy, says her personal experience working for the vice president as Iowa caucus organizer for her primary campaign gives her hope.
“Harris must listen to the majority of American voters and use all of the administration’s leverage — including by halting offensive weapons transfers — to push for a lasting cease-fire and hostage exchange,” she said shortly after Biden dropped his bid for reelection on Sunday. “I’ve worked for Kamala, and I know she’ll do the right thing.”
As senator, Harris voiced less hawkish sentiments than Biden on U.S. military presence in the Middle East, and some of her tough stances, including toward Saudi Arabia, India and Turkey, may also complicate her interactions with allies in the Middle East and Asia.
Before becoming a senator, Harris spent most of her career as a law enforcement official. She came into the vice presidency with relatively little foreign policy experience, which left her dependent on her advisers, who are largely traditionalists, according to Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon and NATO official.
“She doesn’t really have a background in defense or foreign policy, so she’s really dependent on [her advisers] where she has to take part,” he said. “The important part is — I don’t think she jumps into defense or foreign policy issues very often.”
Nevertheless, her record as a senator and vice president — which was thrown into the spotlight on Sunday when Biden dropped out of the race and named her as his pick — offers a window into how a Harris administration could approach top geopolitical challenges differently and how her inner circle would seek to complement her deficiencies.
Harris has stepped in as a surrogate for the president at world gatherings. She attended the 2023 ASEAN summit in Biden’s place. Importantly for European allies, Harris stood in for Biden at the annual Munich Security Conference in 2022, when she voiced support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russia prepared to invade — and again in 2023 as they fought on the battlefield.
“If Biden wasn’t going to go … I think they saw this as an opportunity to give her face time with European leaders and also help educate her on that aspect of foreign policy: Europe and NATO,” Townsend said. “There were pluses for her to go and lead the delegation. I think the idea was broadening her experience in international affairs and pulling her out of the California [perspective] where she was.”
Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee who has endorsed an open convention to pick Biden’s successor, said Harris’ representing Biden in Munich proves she’s ready for the world stage.
“Frankly, she has been stress-tested,” Smith said in an interview during the Republican National Convention. “She has been the lead spokesperson for the administration at the Munich Security Conference making the case for our role in Ukraine and NATO and in the world, and she’s been really strong.”
Her time under Biden has also been a plus, advocates say.
“She has had four years of both learning from President Biden, who has some of the strongest foreign policy chops we’ve ever had in a president, and has increasingly been taking the lead in representing the United States across the world,” said a former administration official who was granted anonymity to speak freely about Harris’ foreign policy record.
Here’s what you need to know about her foreign policy:
Her time as a senator
During her four years in the Senate, Harris was a member of the Senate Intelligence and Homeland Security committees, gaining plaudits from her then-Senate colleagues for her “whip-smart” approach to the sensitive committees’ work. Harris also took multiple international trips as a senator, visiting Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan and Israel in 2017 and 2018.
Like most Democrats, Harris voted to confirm retired Gen. Jim Mattis as Trump’s first defense secretary and grant him an exemption to a federal law barring a retired military officer from serving as secretary of defense for seven years. She voted against Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel’s nominations to serve as directors of the Central Intelligence Agency. She also opposed the nominations of Rex Tillerson and later Pompeo for Secretary of State and the nomination of Mark Esper as Trump’s defense secretary.
Top advisers
As vice president, Harris’ national security adviser is Philip Gordon, who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations. He was originally Harris’ deputy national security adviser and replaced Nancy McEldowney, a Clinton National Security Council alum. Gordon is a Europe expert who also has extensive Middle East experience.
Harris’ deputy national security adviser is Rebecca Lissner, a former planning official at the National Security Council, where she oversaw the creation of the administration’s National Security Strategy.
In contrast with Trump and running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Harris’ top national security staffers are “traditionalists” and “internationalists.”
“Their views, I think, would fit well with a Bill Clinton or Obama presidency. They are straight-arrow, traditional foreign policy folks,” Townsend said. “These are products of the post-World War II rules-based international order.”
Russia and Ukraine
Like Biden, Harris has been a strong backer of Ukraine in its defense against Russia and is expected to mostly continue his policies. In June, Harris represented the U.S. at the Summit for Peace in Ukraine, where she had her sixth meeting with Zelenskyy. She has voiced strong support for transatlantic cooperation on supporting Kyiv.
Harris said in an interview with NBC News this year that Ukraine can continue to count on support from Washington as the war drags on. “Ukraine needs our support,” Harris said. “And we must give it.”
At this year’s Munich Security Conference, Harris also reiterated the Biden administration’s pledge of supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”
She has also been a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin, blaming him for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death this year. And she has criticized Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians as “crimes against humanity” and pledged to hold authorities in Moscow accountable.
“To all those who have perpetrated these crimes, and to their superiors who are complicit in those crimes, you will be held to account,” Harris said in 2023 at Munich.
More recently, Harris has criticized Trump on the campaign trail for his previous comments claiming that he would pull the U.S. out of NATO.
“Donald Trump has embraced Putin,” Harris said at a July 11 campaign event in North Carolina. “It’s not just happening today. It’s been happening, as he, Trump, threatened to abandon NATO and encouraged Putin to invade our Allies.”
The Middle East
On the issue of Israel, Harris voiced support for a two-state solution as a senator and backed the Abraham Accords. As vice president, Harris privately expressed that the Biden administration needed to take a stronger stance against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the civilian death toll mounted in Israel’s war against Hamas.
Publicly, Harris emerged as one of the earliest high-profile leaders in the administration to call for an immediate temporary cease-fire in March. She delivered the sharpest rebuke against Israel’s handling of aid flows into the Gaza Strip at the time by a senior leader and described the conflict as a “humanitarian catastrophe” for innocent civilians.
Tariq Habash, who was a Biden policy adviser in the Education Department before resigning over the administration’s Israel policy, said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that Harris would be more willing to consider policy changes that center Palestinian human rights and curb Israel’s continued actions in Gaza and elsewhere.
Josh Paul, a former State Department official involved with transferring arms to American allies, said that Harris seems less “fixed and intransigent” than Biden does on Israel policy.
Still, he acknowledged, there’s only so much any U.S. president can do to change policy toward Israel in the short term.
“I have cautious and limited optimism — but also a deep sense of relief that the Democratic party will not be nominating for the presidency of the United States a man who has made us all complicit in so much and such unnecessary harm,” Paul said.
Harris supported the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action deal with Iran to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program. And she condemned a January 2020 military strike against top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and co-sponsored unsuccessful legislation to block further military actions against Iranian leaders and targets.
On Saudi Arabia, Harris joined progressives on legislation restricting arms sales and military assistance to Riyadh due to its role in the Yemeni civil war and the killing of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
And Harris supported legislation to commemorate the Armenian genocide, which has been a source of tension between fellow NATO member Turkey and Armenia for a century.
Asia
Harris would likely continue the Biden administration’s tough policy on China if elected president.
As a senator, she criticized Trump’s approach to Beijing, telling Vice President Mike Pence during the vice presidential debate in 2020 that Trump “lost that trade war” and that his tariffs hurt the American economy without rebalancing the U.S.-China relationship. But like other administration officials, Harris has advocated for “de-risking” from Beijing, a policy that encourages reducing the extent to which Western economies depend on China.
“It’s not about pulling out, but it 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 year.
Harris has also been outspoken on sensitive issues roiling the U.S.-China relationship. She regularly worked on legislation as a senator promoting human rights in Hong Kong. Trump signed into law a bipartisan bill she introduced with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) promoting human rights in Hong Kong and sanctioning Hong Kong officials implicated in “undermining fundamental freedoms and autonomy” in the territory. A year later Harris’ co-sponsorship of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act helped make it law in 2020 and empowered the U.S. government to impose sanctions against “foreign individuals and entities responsible for human rights abuses” in Xinjiang.
A Harris administration would likely continue unofficial support for the self-governing island, especially in the wake of increasing Chinese military threats. In September 2022, she said “we will continue to support Taiwan’s self-defense, consistent with our long-standing policy.”
Since becoming vice president, Harris has spoken with both Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te. Harris met briefly with Xi on the margins of the APEC Leaders Retreat in 2022 where she urged him to “maintain open lines of communication to responsibly manage the competition between our countries,” she said on social media. Harris met Lai at the inauguration of Honduras’ President Xiomara Castro in that same year prior to Lai’s successful bid for Taiwan’s presidency in January.
Harris criticized China’s ongoing harassment of Philippine vessels in Manila’s waters in the South China Sea during a visit to the Philippines in 2022. During that trip, Harris visited an island adjacent to the waters where China’s Coast Guard regularly menaces Philippine supply missions to its military outpost on the Second Thomas Shoal and decried Beijing’s “intimidation and coercion” in the region.
But Biden’s decision to step aside likely won’t change Beijing’s public messaging on the election. “They want to avoid playing themselves into the narrative of this election to the maximum extent possible,” said Ryan Hass, former director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council, now director of the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings. Beijing doesn’t see any advantage in either a GOP or Democratic presidential win in November. “They see the policy approaches of both parties as problematic for their interests and objectives,” Hass said.
Aside from China, Harris kept a close eye on East Asia as a senator, regularly introducing or co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation promoting human rights in Myanmar.
Harris opposed Trump’s charm offensive toward North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and criticized the Trump administration for not doing enough to rein in the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear threats.
Harris, whose mother was Indian, also regularly criticized the Indian government as a senator and met with members of the Kashmiri diaspora. Ties between Harris and the government of Narendra Modi seemingly have smoothed over, with Modi praising Harris during a 2023 state visit to Washington.
Connor O’Brien, Nahal Toosi and Joseph Gedeon contributed to this report.
