What a Kamala Harris candidacy – and administration – could mean for policy towards Europe

Deutsch

By Cordelia Buchanan Ponczek

She could be the next President of the United States – here is what Europeans need to know about her.

European countries have been watching the US election season unfold with increasing apprehension. So President Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday night to step aside and endorse his current Vice President, Kamala Harris, elicited reactions of surprise and curiosity. President Biden’s and Former President Donald Trump’s respective policies towards Europe are well-known and revered or feared; by contrast, the addition of Harris – a relative unknown by European standards – has added a new dimension of uncertainty to the US election.

Europeans do not yet properly know Harris, but this article will introduce her potential perspective on the relationship with Europe. Harris’s background gives some indication on how she might treat foreign policy and what European policymakers and leaders could expect, should she win the nomination and the presidency. Ultimately, because she has less experience in foreign policy, we can expect her to stick mostly to the path Biden has set, and to rely on the expertise of her advisors, who are well-known from the previous administrations of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

Harris, in brief

Kamala Harris is the first woman, Black woman, and Asian-American woman, to hold the position of vice president. Originally from California, Harris’s background is in law. She served as the district attorney of San Franciso and Attorney General of California before winning a seat in the US Senate in 2016; it was the same election that Donald Trump won.

Harris spent her term as a California senator in opposition to many Trump policies. She then ran in the Democratic primary for the 2020 election and, after dropping out, she was added to Biden’s ticket. During the successful 2020 campaign, Harris became known for her sharp vice-presidential debate with Trump’s running-mate, Mike Pence.

Legal Background

As district attorney, Harris ran a tough-on-crime campaign, especially critical of domestic violence plea-bargains, and pledged to help cut back on San Fransisco’s gun supply. Showing her leftist streak, she created a unit to handle environmental crimes and a unit to handle hate crimes against LGBT+ individuals. As California’s Attorney General, Harris took strong positions with Big Tech on privacy; a positive position on affirmative action; and chased large environmental crimes, like oil spills and emissions reporting.

While Harris followed the general Democratic party line on many issues, she has shown herself to be strong in the face of resistance from her own party: During her time as district attorney in San Fransisco, Harris took a strictly no-death-penalty stance. Several tough cases resulted in political pressure from long-term Democrats, including US Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, to pursue the death penalty, but Harris held firm.

Her pursuit of Big Tech, privacy laws, emissions and environmental laws might be places where a Harris foreign policy could find common ground with the European Union, though some say she might go easier on Big Tech than Biden. Generally, the European Union has been ahead of the United States on reeling in Big Tech, promoting privacy for users, and enacting pro-environmental legislation. It would be possible that Harris would return to some of her legal routes to enshrine high protection within the US legal system.

Time in the US Senate

Like Obama, Harris’s time and track-record in the US Senate is short. There are some small indicators of her policy initiatives from her time as a Senator during the Trump administration, but her time was largely spent in opposition to the Trump administration’s policies. She was known for her sharp – at times aggressive – questioning of witnesses and officials during hearings. Turning the proceedings to impeach Trump, Harris spoke to her belief of the integrity of the rule of law in the US justice system, asserting that no one was above the law. Harris voted to convict former President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Harris served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which means that she has experience receiving, processing, and acting on highly classified information not available to most other legislators or US citizens. She also served on the Homeland Security Committee, something else she shares in common with former President Barack Obama.

Some big topics that Harris contributed to were the DREAM Act, which was a way for undocumented immigration to become US citizens; and as a senator running for office she promised action on gun control. Along with Kirsten Gillibrand and Marco Rubio, Harris called for the Trump administration to investigate the persecution of Uyghurs in China.

Time as Vice President

Harris’s pre-VP experience is in law, not foreign policy or defense. During her time as vice-president, she has relied in large part on Biden’s lead as well as foreign policy advisors to chart her course. Onlookers could expect that to continue.

In several instances during Biden’s tenure in the White House, Harris has stepped in for him at overseas events, including the 2023 ASEAN summit, in Indonesia, where she commented on US policy of de-risking from China; she has previously met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Bangkok, at the 2022 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. In 2022, Harris also attended the Munich Security Conference, which was held after Russia invaded Ukraine. She represented Biden again at the 2024 Munich Security Conference and at the Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland in June. Similar to Biden, Harris showed her dedication to the Ukrainian cause. She also reinforced the importance of the US to have a global role – this is in sharp contrast to the isolationism coming from the Trump campaign, especially Trump’s VP pick, J. D. Vance.

Harris’s advisors

To help understand the possible foreign policy directions a Harris administration could take, and the impact on Europe, it is important for European onlookers to take note of Harris’s advisory staff.

Her chief national security advisor as VP has been Philip Gordon. Gordon is an expert on Europe, and previously served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. His portfolio tasks included business and political linkages between Europe and the United States, especially in Central and Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. (He was preceded and succeeded by two familiar names: Ambassador Daniel Fried and Victoria Nuland.)

After serving with Secretary Clinton, in the Obama administration, Gordon was a Special Assistant to the President and the White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf Region. He also served as the Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration. Initially, Gordon joined the Biden administration as a Deputy National Security Advisor, with Nancy McEldowney as National Security Advisor to the Vice President; when she stepped down in March 2022, Gordon took over as Harris’s new advisor. Gordon has extensive think thank and policy experience. He served at the Council on Foreign Relations, and has held positions at Brookings, IISS, the German DGAP, as well as INSEAD and SciencesPo in France. He has written extensively on the Middle East, NATO and Europe.

Nancy McEldowney, Harris’s former National Security Advisor, was a part of the US diplomatic service and director of the Foreign Service Institute, which educates and trains US diplomats. She served at US missions to Turkey and Azerbaijan, and was the US Ambassador to Bulgaria under the Bush and Obama administrations. She then took up a position as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs and then president of the National Defense University. Like Gordon, McEldowney also has experience on Europe from the Clinton administration: she was as Director of European Affairs on the White House National Security Council Staff. She has experience on US government engagement with NATO, Europe and the OSCE.

Harris’s vice-presidential advisors had robust background on European topics and in making linkages with the EU and NATO. The Biden administration has also kept the door open for European allies and has prioritized the importance of working together and offering security and continuity. There is unlikely to be a significant deviation from that were a Harris candidacy and administration come to pass.

Conclusion: Steady on

While it might not be Biden running anymore and while a European audience might feel consternation looking at the prospect of a relative unknown, the good news is that on Europe, as with many other things, Harris is unlikely to deviate too sharply from the approach of the Biden administration, which included rapprochement towards the European Union and support for NATO. Harris is likely to continue support for Ukraine, although the capacity, duration, and means depends to a large degree on results in the legislative branch. Harris’s legal background and experience on Big Tech and environmental law issues might offer opportunities to knit together closer policies on those topics.

As Europe looks to the US global engagement, it is likely that Harris will continue to see a role for US engagement abroad. She is likely to advocate continuing to build up support for countries in the Asia-Pacific. One place that she is likely to break with Biden is on Gaza – both as a point of electoral strategy and a personal preference. Harris has been more sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians – though it will be a foreign policy priority for Biden to close out a peace deal before he leaves office, in part to solidify his legacy and in part to save Harris from needing to start off her administration on that tough issue. Harris’s chief advisor, Gordon, also has a wealth of experience on the Middle East, so in addition to the relationship with Israel, there might be other developments.

If Harris secures the candidacy, a final thing for the European audience to watch is her pick of a running mate. Many of the top names are current governors of US states with little foreign policy experience, but Senator Mark Kelly, from Arizona, a former astronaut and naval aviator with experience in the Gulf War, might bring some foreign policy and defense gusto to the ticket.

There are large caveats throughout this entire article: if Harris secures the nomination (seeming more likely by the hour); depending on her vice president and advisors, and the biggest: IF Harris wins. But these are some ways for a European audience to begin to better understand Harris and track how her approach could develop in the coming weeks and months.

Cordelia Buchanan Ponczek is a Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) and a Clarendon Scholar and doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford.

Pictures: Harris at the Munich Security Conference: MSC/Kuhlmann [CC BY 3.0 DE], via Wikimedia Commons; portrait Cordelia Buchanan Ponczek: Finnish Institute of International Affairs [all rights reserved].