Kamala Harris’ background shows no particular exposure or affinity for Europe. Her professional background points to only occasional involvement with foreign affairs in general and Europe in particular. Since she became the Democratic presidential nominee three weeks ago, she has not held a single press conference or announced any detailed future policies. So, we don’t really know her personal plans for U.S. European policy. We are left with extrapolating from the choices of the Biden-Harris administration. The emerging policy possibilities would not be a boon for Europe.

Kamala was born on the Pacific coast of the United States to a mother from India and a father from Jamaica. She went to school in Canada and the United States. She then held various appointed and elected positions in the state of California, mainly focused on law enforcement.

She became a senator in 2017 at the age of fifty-two. Her committee memberships focused on domestic issues except for the Select Committee for Intelligence. She joined the Asian Pacific American, Black, and Women’s Issues Caucuses. 

As vice president, starting in 2021, she had two specific assignments, Border-Czar and AI-Czar. Both had foreign policy aspects to them but were not Europe-specific. Harris also attended the Munich Security Conference and gave speeches outlining the administration’s policies.

The best way to predict a Harris administration policy toward Europe is to extrapolate from the Biden-Harris policy actions.

From day one, the Biden administration announced that, in sharp contrast with the Trump administration, it would pursue cordial relations with America’s allies. But apparently, not always. European allies fumed when the Biden administration failed to properly consult them before the abrupt and calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan—European civilians, officials, and their local staff were left to scramble to evacuate. This is one of the few foreign affairs decisions in which Harris was proud to claim a vital role. In fact, she claimed that she was the last one in the room before President Biden decided to withdraw.

The top issue for Europe right now is the Ukraine war, and there is no indication that Vice President Harris disagreed at any time with President Biden’s policies. So, let’s review them. Biden did not deter Russia from starting the war—his comment that a Russian “minor incursion” into Ukraine may not require a U.S. response, as well as the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan, must have emboldened Putin. Once the war started, the Biden-Harris administration was hesitant to give Ukraine the weapons it needed to defend itself. The administration does not have a clear vision of its strategic objectives. Biden and Harris seem only inclined to “support” Ukraine in its war, a stark contrast to Trump's vision of a quick end to the fighting.

Another European priority is energy. In its eagerness to distance itself from Trump’s policies, one of the Biden-Harris administration’s first acts was lifting sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. President Trump had tried to stop the pipeline’s construction because it increased European dependence on Russian energy and undermined Polish and Ukrainian security. It was also an absurdity. The Europeans were asking the United States to defend the continent from Russia but, at the same time, were making Russia richer and stronger through energy imports. The Biden-Harris administration reversed itself less than a year later after Putin invaded Ukraine. But the signal of weakness and incoherence was well received by Moscow. Putin took the measure of the Biden-Harris administration, felt he could gamble with a war in Europe, and invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

This pattern of policies that signaled weakness continued with Iran. The Biden-Harris administration reversed the Trump policy of maximum pressure and stopped enforcing the Iran economic sanctions. Since the start of the Biden-Harris administration, Iran enjoyed a financial bonanza of $100 billion from newly permitted oil exports. Thus emboldened and enriched, Iran has been expanding its nuclear program. It has also armed and trained Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. The first two threaten European security by raising the risk of war in the neighboring Middle East, while the Houthis are a threat to global and European shipping. It did not help that the Biden-Harris administration reversed the Trump designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization in 2021, only to reinstate it in 2024.

Staying on energy policy, the Biden-Harris administration hurt Europe with an election-year decision to stop the construction of LNG export terminals in the United States—a concession to the environmental lobby. The administration would have also prevented LNG exports but was stopped by a federal judge. Buying gas from the United States helps Europe wean itself from dependence on Russia.

A further economic irritant was the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that rattled Europe. As President of the Senate, Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the IRA Act. The Biden-Harris administration criticized the Trump steel and aluminum tariffs on European countries, which elicited a European pushback. The administration suspended them but then came the shocker. The IRA gave $369 billion in government aid to the U.S. clean energy industry. The Europeans viewed these U.S. subsidies as a hostile “Buy American” trade action and responded with their own green deal subsidies.

And then there is China. A year ago, at a summit of Southeast Asian countries in Jakarta, Vice President Harris declared that “managing the relationship with China is not about decoupling.” The Biden-Harris administration and the European Union Commission agree on defining the relationship with China by the three “Cs”: cooperation, competition, and confrontation. As one of us has argued, they are one-third right: The China relationship is defined by a confrontation that cannot be avoided. Especially since China is supporting Russia in its war of aggression in Europe, the United States should instead lead on this era-defining issue and call for decoupling until China stops its malign actions. Former National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien does just that in a recent article.

Since we don’t have answers from press conferences or position papers, we can only guess what President Harris’ European policy would be. But we can say this: if she continues the Biden-Harris policies, neither Americans nor Europeans will be better off.

Dan Negrea served in the U.S. Department of State as a Senior Advisor in the Secretary’s Policy Planning Office and as the Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs. He is the co-author of We Win They Lose: Republican Foreign Policy and the New Cold War.

Stefano Graziosi is an essayist and a political analyst who writes for the Italian newspaper La Verità and the weekly magazine Panorama.

Image: Jo Bouroch / Shutterstock.com.