SUBSCRIBER+ EXCLUSIVE REPORTING - In the tumultuous and often unpredictable 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, this much is clear: the next occupant of the White House will find an inbox loaded with global security challenges. The new president will face wars in Europe and the Middle East (assuming they are still ongoing); an increasingly fraught relationship with China and the possibility of conflict over Taiwan; and a powerful new coalition of adversaries that some have labeled an “axis of authoritarians” – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – working to counter the U.S. and the West.
A recent report issued by the congressionally-mandated Commission on the National Defense Strategy found that the U.S. is facing “the most challenging global environment with the most severe ramifications since the end of the Cold War.”
“We haven’t seen anything like this in our lifetime,” said General Jack Keane, a Cipher Brief expert and former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, who served on the commission.
“It’s really attributed to China, Russia, Iran and North Korea coming together, cooperating, collaborating and actually coordinating,” Keane said. “And they are becoming increasingly assertive and aggressive.”
Last month, The Cipher Brief reviewed a range of foreign-policy positions held by the Republican Party standard bearers Donald Trump and J.D. Vance – an assessment based on public statements, campaign pronouncements, and the record of the first Trump Administration. Now, with the Democratic National Convention concluded, we do the same for a potential Kamala Harris-Tim Walz administration.
Like most American vice presidents, Kamala Harris has hewed close to the president’s view on major global issues, though she has certainly had enough experience to develop views and positions of her own. As vice president, Harris has made 17 trips to other countries and met with more than 150 world leaders. As she accepted the nomination of her party Thursday, Harris touted that experience and vowed that "as commander-in-chief, I will ensure that America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world."
It was one of many pledges in a speech that was unusual - by the standard of convention speeches - for the number of statements about global security and foreign policy. And while there may be small differences between a Harris and Biden foreign policy, the real divides are apparent when one examines the world views of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
A boost for Ukraine
Perhaps the clearest distinction between the two campaigns involves the Russian war against Ukraine. Vice President Harris – like President Biden – is a staunch supporter of American military aid to the Ukrainian resistance, which has amounted to $55.4 billion since the February 2022 invasion.
In her convention speech Thursday, Harris referenced her February 2022 meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Europe, just five days before Russia’s full-scale invasion, at which she was tasked with presenting intelligence indicating a Russian assault was imminent. Zelensky and his aides had doubted reports of a Russian invasion; the U.S. assessment moved him to prepare for war.
“It was a combination of really incontrovertible evidence and a senior leader speaking with passion and conviction, but also real empathy,” said Nancy McEldowney, Harris’ national security advisor at the time. “I think it was quite decisive in persuading him.”
Trump and Vance have criticized American support for Ukraine, arguing that European nations should foot the bill and – in Vance’s case – that U.S. attention and aid should instead be directed towards Taiwan, given the possibility of Chinese aggression against the island.
Harris and Biden argue that defending Ukraine is a vital U.S. interest, that aid to Ukraine need not detract from support for Taiwan, and that Trump has damaged U.S. interests by coddling Russian President Vladimir Putin.
At the convention Thursday, Harris vowed to never "cozy up to dictators," who she said "are rooting for Trump" in the November vote. "In the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs," Harris said.
For the Ukrainians, a Harris-Walz victory would bring one measure of immediate relief: it would put to rest the Trump promise of a hastily-negotiated peace deal.
“If I were president, I’d be able to negotiate an end to this horrible and rapidly escalating war in 24 hours,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site last year. He repeated the claim in his June 27 debate with Biden.
That notion has been ridiculed by many experts, but it has also raised fears that Trump and Vance would “deliver Ukraine to Putin,” as a member of the German parliament put it. Any deal done on such a short time line would almost certainly involve ceding territory that Russian forces have captured since the 2022 invasion, and some fear it would require additional concessions to Putin.
At this year’s Munich Security Conference, Harris made the case for a fresh tranche of U.S. aid to Ukraine, and for a strong western stand against Putin and Russian aggression. Vance brought a different message to the Munich conference. “There are a lot of bad guys all over the world,” he said, “and I’m much more interested in some of the problems in East Asia right now than I am in Europe.”
Several Cipher Brief experts have argued that the U.S. can and should do both – provide robust support for Ukraine and deterrence against China.
“China is watching American resolve on supporting Ukraine very carefully,” former senior CIA Officer Paul Kolbe wrote in The Cipher Brief. “Xi (Jinping) knows that if America will not help Ukraine defend itself against Russia, that there is little chance it will leap to the defense of a much weaker Taiwan, 7600 miles away.”
NATO: A sigh of relief?
If Ukrainians would take solace from a Harris-Walz victory, they would have company among members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
NATO’s 75th-anniversary summit, held in Washington last month, featured both public celebration of the alliance and private hand-wringing over a potential Biden defeat. As the summit convened, Biden was faltering in the race against Trump, who has worn his disdain for NATO like a badge of honor.
“They have reason to worry” about a Trump victory, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor told The Cipher Brief during the summit, noting that Trump had declared NATO “obsolete” and threatened to withhold U.S. support or even quit the alliance.
“It’s not just Europeans. Americans are worried as well,” Taylor said. “There are concerns that the strong support for Ukraine and the strong support for NATO – and therefore the strong support for European security – could be challenged.”
Those concerns have been tempered by Harris’ rise in the polls and her support for NATO.
In 2022, as Russian troops marched into Ukraine and some NATO members wondered about Putin’s greater ambitions, Harris affirmed support for the alliance’s Article 5 guarantee – the promise that an attack on one member nation represents an attack on them all.
"America's commitment to Article 5 is ironclad,” she said. “This commitment is sacrosanct to me, to President Biden and to our entire nation."
At this year’s Munich Security Conference, Harris called NATO the “greatest military alliance the world has ever known.” And at the same gathering, she took aim at Trump for his "dangerous" relationship with Putin, and his suggestions that the U.S. abandon NATO. That, Harris said, would “weaken America and would undermine global stability and undermine global prosperity.”
China and Taiwan: No greater challenge
The Harris and Trump national security teams would agree on this much: The principal global challenges for the United States – wars in Europe and the Middle East notwithstanding – involve the strategic and economic competition with China.
Harris has blamed China for the theft of intellectual property and unfair subsidies for its exports. The Biden-Harris administration has argued that China’s growing influence and aggression represent the leading national security threats to the United States. And Harris has repeatedly vowed to support the defense of Taiwan and the freedom of international navigation in the South China Sea.
Substitute “Trump” for "Harris" in any of the above sentences – and you would get no argument from his campaign.
That said, there is daylight between the two campaigns’ approaches to those problems.
On Taiwan, a Harris administration would continue the long-term U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” – support for Taiwan’s defense, but without formal recognition of its independence from the mainland.
Beijing has claimed Taiwan as its territory since the People’s Republic of China was founded, and President Xi Jinping has been unequivocal that Taiwan must be reunited with the mainland – even if force is required to do so. The U.S. is committed by law to help Taiwan defend itself, but it has held fast to “strategic ambiguity” to avoid a blatant – and perhaps dangerous – challenge to China.
In 2022, Harris said the United States would “continue to support Taiwan’s self-defense, consistent with our long-standing policy." And the Biden administration has continued to support U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and American naval maneuvers to reinforce its support for the island.
The Trump team has sent mixed signals. Vance’s argument for lessening aid to Ukraine rests squarely on the assumption that American priorities must shift to deter Beijing. “We should make it as hard as possible for China to take Taiwan in the first place,” Vance told The New York Times in June. “We’re not doing that because we’re sending all the damn weapons to Ukraine and not Taiwan.”
Meanwhile, in a July interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump sent a far cooler message to Taipei.
“I think Taiwan should pay us for defense,” Trump said. Taiwan “stole” America’s semiconductor industry, he added, and he warned that it would be “very, very difficult” for the U.S. to come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of war. “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company.”
“These comments are another reason why the leadership in Beijing – much like that in Moscow – would prefer a Trump presidency,” Bates Gill, a senior Fellow with the National Bureau of Asian Research, told The Cipher Brief.
“Strategists in Taiwan have long had to deal with the prospects of abandonment, but these comments come at a particularly worrisome moment. Beijing will seize this opportunity to test the Trump administration’s commitments early on.”
Harris has also been involved in Biden Administration efforts to improve ties with regional allies including Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea – all aimed at building an anti-China coalition in the region.
In terms of U.S.-China economic competition, Harris has said the U.S. should “de-risk,” not decouple, from China. The Biden-Harris administration has kept $360 billion worth of Trump-era China tariffs in place, and added others. The administration has imposed restrictions on exports of high-tech products to China that it deems critical to national security – and before that, it passed legislation that subsidized U.S. domestic manufacturing of computer chips, electric vehicle parts, and other new technologies.
A second Trump administration would take a more dramatic approach. Trump has vowed to triple existing tariffs against China – a move that many economists believe would lead to a surge in inflation.
The Middle East: Threading a needle
Israel’s war in Gaza is the one global issue on which a Harris White House might break from Biden’s policies – albeit in subtle ways. Analysts say Harris is walking a fine line between robust support for Israel, a longtime U.S. ally, and concerns over the scale of suffering in Gaza — as these questions have led to tension and protests across the U.S.
That balancing act was clear in Harris' remarks to the convention Thursday. On the one hand, she gave a full-throated statement of support for Israel's right to defend itself, including a searing description of Hamas' terror last October; on the other, she offered a lament for the "devastating" suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and a plea for the "Palestinians' right to dignity, security and self-determination."
Harris also said that she and Biden were "working around the clock" for a cease-fire and the release of hostages still held in Gaza.
For the past several months, Harris has sought to find a middle ground, repeatedly backing Israel’s right to self-defense and U.S. military aid to Israel — since the October 7 Hamas raid, an outlay of more than $12 billion — while speaking out more regularly than Biden about the toll on Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.
“As Israel defends itself, it matters how,” she said in a December trip to Dubai. In March, Harris called for a cease-fire in the Gaza war, one month before Biden did. And she has regularly and forcefully decried the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, and urged leaders to do more to protect and feed its civilians.
“People in Gaza are starving,” she said in March. “The conditions are inhumane, and our common humanity compels us to act.” Last month, Harris said that “what has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating — the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies."
Other Harris comments have been firmly in line with administration positions: support for a two-state solution (which Netanyahu resists); a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority to govern a unified Gaza and West Bank; and calls for Israel to hold “extremist settlers” in the West Bank accountable for violence against Palestinians.
In her few weeks as a presidential candidate, she has faced scrutiny from both sides. Harris was criticized by pro-Israel groups for not attending Netanyahu’s recent address to Congress, while this week the Democratic Party was criticized for the absence of any Palestinian-American speakers at the convention.
“This has been an embarrassment for those of us who had faith in the Democratic party that we still had voices here,” said Layla Elabed, a leader of the Uncommitted National Movement..
As for Trump, he calls himself “the best friend Israel ever had,” but he has also been critical of Netanyahu’s prosecution of the Gaza war.
“Israel has to be very careful, because you’re losing a lot of the world, you’re losing a lot of support,” Trump told an Israeli newspaper in March. “You have to finish up (the war in Gaza), you have to get the job done. And you have to get on to peace.”
Biden and Harris might have said the same thing.
Iran: Center of attention
Iran hangs over virtually every crisis point in the modern Middle East — either directly or because of the roles played by its military proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and smaller groups inside Iraq.
On paper, Trump looks to be the more “anti-Iran” candidate, though the differences may be minimal.
As a senator, Harris supported the 2015 nuclear deal, which offered sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for international inspections and restrictions on the country’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
Trump pulled the U.S. from that deal in 2018, and when the Biden administration came to office, Harris and Biden worked to renegotiate the arrangement under new terms. The Biden administration also negotiated a deal with Iran in 2023 that led to the freedom of five Americans held prisoner in Iran.
Since then, however, Iran’s support for Hamas and its broader activities in the region have made animosity toward Iran a bipartisan issue in Washington. And in her convention speech, Harris made a point to say she would hold a hard line against Tehran.
"I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists," Harris said.
Cipher Brief expert and former U.S. Ambassador to Oman Gary Grappo said that recent Iranian behavior had narrowed the differences between the two parties in the U.S.
“I think the (Biden) administration has reached the point where they have basically exhausted their patience,” Grappo told The Cipher Brief. “The next attack against an American, particularly if it involves an American casualty, maybe even a death, we’re going to respond directly against Iran.”
A “less arrogant” America?
Beyond the specific global hot zones of the moment, some analysts have studied the views of Harris’ top advisers and suggested that a Harris presidency might bring a different idea of America’s place in the world.
In a piece for Foreign Policy, Michael Hirsh wrote that a Harris administration might mean “a less arrogant America” on the world stage, and an understanding that the U.S. either cannot or need not continue to act as a global hegemon.
Hirsh reviewed writings and public statements made by Harris’ national security advisor, Philip Gordon, and deputy national security advisor, Rebecca Lissner, and said they suggested a foreign policy that “dramatically lowers its ambitions.” Lissner has written a book, An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for 21st Century Order, in which she argues that the U.S. should downsize its role on the global stage and focus on policies that preserve core American interests.
Lissner and her co-author Mira Rapp-Hooper make a case for a foreign policy that continues to “insist upon the United States’ international leadership role, but departs from reliance on primacy as the cornerstone of a messianic liberal mission.”
Gordon’s 2020 book, Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East, was a critique of several U.S. foreign interventions – from the CIA-orchestrated ouster of Iranian President Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“The history of regime change in the post-World War II Middle East is a history of repeated patterns,” Gordon wrote, “in which policymakers underestimated the challenges of ousting a regime, overstated the threat faced by the United States, embraced the optimistic narratives of exiles or local actors with little power and vested interests, prematurely declared victory, failed to anticipate the chaos that would inevitably ensue after regime collapse, and ultimately found themselves bearing the costs…for many years or even decades to come.”
Hirsh sees in Lissner’s and Gordon’s writings “a discarding of ideological crusades,” and more emphasis on “bolstering cooperation on critical issues such as climate change, future pandemics, and artificial intelligence regulation.” He called it a “humbler approach” that might draw some support from Trump supporters as well.
“We are also clearly moving into some kind of a new anti-interventionist era wherein Washington’s default mode—regardless of who occupies the White House—will be to stay out of global conflicts wherever and however possible.”
That said, events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas terror attack against Israel have made it difficult for the U.S. to "stay out," and given the array of current global crises, it’s not at all certain that any U.S. administration will step far from the center of the global stage. As Hirsh writes, “there is no other major power that even comes close to approaching Washington’s global sway.”
Asked whether Harris embraces Gordon’s and Lissner’s views, an aide to the vice president would say only that Harris “is advised by a range of people with diverse views, and their previous writings reflect their personal views. Anyone looking to understand the vice president’s world view should look at what she has said and done on the world stage.”
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief.
