Vice President Harris’s Views on the War in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus
In the fight between autocrats and democrats in Europe, Harris firmly supports democrats. Trump does not.
For the past four years, it was, of course, President Biden, not Vice President Kamala Harris, who took the lead on defining and implementing foreign policy. Now that Vice President Harris has become the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party (de facto already; de jure soon), many Americans and Europeans are asking me what Harris thinks about Ukraine, Russia, and Europe more generally. Will U.S. policy change if she wins the presidential election in November?
My short answer is no. There may be some subtle changes between a Biden and Harris administration regarding the war in Gaza, attention to climate change, and greater engagement with Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In Europe in general and Ukraine in particular, continuity will outpace discontinuity. From my perspective, that’s a good sign. Though we don’t yet know what President Harris’s foreign policy toward Europe will be, we can make some assumptions from her past speeches and actions.
As I wrote earlier on Substack and elsewhere many times, President Biden has continuously demonstrated strong leadership of the free world, especially by uniting the West to confront Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and revitalizing NATO. Harris will continue that approach. In fact, she has been playing a role in implementing that policy.
On June 15 and 16 this year, VP Harris attended the Ukraine Peace Summit in Switzerland, organized by President Zelenskyy. The Summit convened 100 delegations, including key heads of state, such as French President Macron, German Chancellor Scholz, then Dutch Prime Minister Rutte, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida, as well as government representatives and leaders of eight international organizations. Not only did she attend, she also announced Washington’s new aid package of $1.5 billion to aid Ukraine with rebuilding infrastructure and humanitarian needs. Attendees were impressed by Harris’s knowledge of the issues and praised her diplomatic skills in engaging both the Ukrainian delegation and other participants. Her public remarks in support of Ukraine’s independence and democracy were strong and clear.
In opening remarks, right before a bilateral meeting with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the main event, Harris stated,
President Biden and my support for the people of Ukraine is unwavering. We support Ukraine not out of charity but because the people of Ukraine and their future is in our strategic interests. It is in our interest to uphold international rules and norms, such as sovereignty and territorial integrity and the international system we helped create following World War Two, which bolsters America’s security and prosperity. It is in the interest of the United States to defend democratic values and stand up to dictators. It is in our interest to stand with our friends, such as Ukraine.
Harris rightfully framed American support for Ukraine as a hard-headed, pragmatic means for advancing U.S. security interests. Russia’s armed forces must be stopped in Ukraine so that they don’t gain strength and momentum to threaten our NATO allies. Aid to Ukraine is a prudent way to avoid a direct conventional war between the United States and Russia. Harris gets this strategic imperative.
Regarding Russia, there are some good signs about Harris’s approach too. Vice President Harris has repeatedly and clearly spoken out against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his brutal crackdown at home. Right after the news of Alexey Navalny’s death broke at the Munich Security Council (more on this here), to which Harris was leading the American delegation, she stated if such news were confirmed, “this would be a further sign of Putin’s brutality. Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible.” In an important symbolic gesture, Harris also wrote a tribute to Yulia Navalnaya when Navalnaya was named one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2024, according to Time Magazine. Harris wrote: “Navalnaya has emerged not only as a symbol of democratic values, but as a courageous fighter for them. The United States stands with her—and all those fighting for freedom and democracy.”
Another good sign for Europe is that Phil Gordon serves as Harris’s National Security Advisor. I know Phil well. We worked closely together on the 2008 Obama presidential campaign in 2007-2008. On our foreign policy advisory team during the campaign, Phil was in charge of Europe, and I was in charge of Russia and the former Soviet Union. After Obama won that election, we both joined the Obama administration. Phil became the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, and I served first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Eurasia at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012) and then as U.S. Ambassador in Moscow (2012-2014). He then transitioned into a role on the National Security Council, working on the Middle East from 2013 to 2015. His last book, informed in part by this work on the Middle East at the White House, was Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East. Phil is an absolutely first-rate policymaker, diplomat, and colleague.
Since the very beginning of the Biden administration, Gordon has worked for Vice President Harris, first as her Deputy National Security Advisor and now as the National Security Advisor. Gordon has attended every single meeting that Harris has had with officials and civil society leaders from Europe. On his own, just recently, he met with the Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya at the White House and had a phone call with Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. From the very beginning, Gordon has been intimately involved in the formulation of the Biden administration policies towards Europe as a whole and Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus in particular.
Except for President Biden, no one in the entire Biden administration knows more about Europe than Gordon. (Secretary Blinken might know as much, but not more!) and while this essay is focused on Eastern Europe, where the fight between democrats and autocrats is acute right now, Phil knows the whole continent well, especially France. If Harris wins and Gordon becomes her National Security Advisor, Europe will be in good hands.
In the fight between democrats and autocrats in Europe, the differences between Vice President Harris and her team and Mr. Donald Trump and Mr. JD Vance are stark. Harris supports aid to Ukraine as a means to contain Russia’s imperial ambitions in Europe. Trump and Vance do not. In Russia, Harris supports the democrats, such as Yulia Navalnaya. Trump supports the autocrat, Vladimir Putin. (To the best of my knowledge, Trump never once met with a Russian civil society leader or said anything supportive about the fight for human rights and democracy in Russia). The same is true in Belarus. Harris and her team support the democratic forces. Trump has signaled complete indifference to human rights abuses and autocratic repression by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. On these issues, voters in November have a clear choice. I know who will be getting my vote!
Stay tuned. I will write more essays about other foreign policy issues in this presidential campaign in the coming weeks.
Although I do have a lot of serious criticisms of the Biden Administration's foreign policy decision-making (especially regarding failure to support our allies in Afghanistan and failure to support Ukraine with what it needs to win), it is heartening that under a Harris administration, there will be a strong degree of foreign policy continuity.
One can only imagine what former President Trump will do to our standing in the world if he is re-elected. Perhaps we can think less about that now, and more about what a Harris administration might do instead.
Okay, if Kamala Harris wins in November and retains Phil Gordon as her National Security Advisor, we might see a certain degree of continuity in policy. So far, so good. However, there has been widespread criticism, both within Ukraine and among international experts (such as yourself, if I am not mistaken), that the Biden administration's assistance policies have been described as: “Too little, too late,” as one of providing a drip-feed supply of weapons, as a policy of escalation management, or a policy aimed at preventing Ukraine from losing without ensuring its victory. These critiques highlight the approach of giving Ukraine enough support to be strong defensively on the battlefield but not necessarily enough to secure a decisive win. President Biden has mentioned that the U.S. aims to put Ukraine "in the strongest possible position to defend their nation," which some interpret as providing just enough support to maintain a stalemate.
Can Ukraine sustain itself under these policies? Where is the articulation of a policy that will lead to Ukrainian victory? Or even a definitive statement that the policy of the United States is to ensure Ukrainian victory? Might Phil Gordon, contrary to Jake Sullivan, be a National Security Advisor who would advise a President Harris to explicitly state that the policy of the United States is Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat? Would he advocate for U.S. assistance that fulfills this intent, including lifting restrictions to allow Ukraine to target Russian airfields, weapon depots, and bases deeper within Russia than currently permitted?