--- title: "How a Harris Presidency Would Reshape the World's Conflicts" description: "An American election is, among other things, a wager about the rest of the world. The winner does not inherit a clean slate; they inherit a planet already at war, and every campaign promise about restraint or resolve is immediately tested against conflicts that will not wait. When the question is how a President Kamala Harris would govern foreign policy, the stakes are unusually high, because the choices in front of her run from the hypothetical to the catastrophic.\n\nThe difficulty is that Harris arrives without a long, legible record on the hardest files. Australia's Lowy Institute called her \"largely a blank slate on China policy,\" and something similar could be said about much of her thinking on Gaza, Ukraine, and the wars almost nobody talks about. What we have instead are fragments: votes she cast as a senator, the role she played as vice president, lines from a campaign platform, and the assessments of analysts who have studied her closely.\n\nThis is an attempt to assemble those fragments into a picture. WarFronts looks at four of the most consequential conflicts a Harris administration would face — a potential war over Taiwan, the war in Gaza and the wider Middle East, the war in Ukraine, and the war in Sudan — and asks what her instincts, her record, and the experts suggest she would actually do. The thesis is simple: on most of these fronts, Harris would represent continuity and the center ground of American foreign policy, with Ukraine the one conflict where caution itself could prove disastrous.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- US defense circles have identified 2027 as the year of Xi Jinping's notional deadline for an invasion of Taiwan, making Beijing — not Moscow, Gaza, or Tehran — the likely defining foreign policy challenge of the next administration.\n- Harris has a Senate record of confronting Beijing on human rights, co-sponsoring bills sanctioning Hong Kong officials in 2019 and countering the persecution of the Uyghurs in 2020, yet analysts place her in the Democratic mainstream rather than among China hardliners.\n- On Gaza, a Harris administration is expected to bring a change in tone but not a substantive break from Biden-era policy; she has ruled out suspending weapons shipments, the one major piece of leverage Washington holds over Israel.\n- Ukraine is the conflict where delay is most dangerous: with Kyiv's manpower pool projected to run dry before Russia's, analysts argue a new president would have only weeks to decide whether she genuinely wants Ukraine to defeat Russia.\n- In Sudan, where an estimated 150,000 people have been killed and genocide may be underway in Darfur, Harris may focus on protecting civilians and could pressure the UAE — the Rapid Support Forces' main backer and a close US ally.\n\n## China Syndrome: The Defining Challenge\n\nThe number that hangs over the next administration is 2027 — the year US defense circles have identified as Xi Jinping's deadline for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Some China experts have told Defense News that the date's importance is overstated, but even the skeptics concede the underlying point: the biggest foreign policy challenge of the coming years is more likely to sit in Beijing than in Moscow, Gaza, or Tehran.\n\nThat makes Harris's thinking on China, Taiwan, and the wider Indo-Pacific the single most important thing to understand about her — and also the hardest, given the Lowy Institute's verdict that she is \"largely a blank slate.\" Still, a blank slate is not a void. Over her years as a senator and then vice president, Harris bumped up against Beijing repeatedly, and how she reacted offers a guide to how she might govern.\n\nFor those worried about the rise of the Middle Kingdom, her Senate record offers reassurance. Harris was one of 56 senators who co-sponsored a bill sanctioning officials in Hong Kong over the 2019 crackdown on peaceful protesters. In 2020, she co-sponsored a similar measure intended to counter China's persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. On human rights, at least, she has been willing to name Beijing's abuses directly.\n\nHer record as vice president gives the China hawks more to work with. A significant part of her platform involved her role in organizing freedom-of-navigation operations through the South China Sea. As the Council on Foreign Relations notes, she also played an active part in Biden's effort to knit America's East Asian allies — Japan and South Korea among them — into ever-closer alliances. On paper, that is a posture of containment.\n\n## Competitor, Not Enemy: Harris's China Instincts\n\nIt would be a mistake, however, to read these stances as evidence that Harris is a hardliner on China. Foreign Policy magazine argues that she essentially represents the Democratic Party consensus — which, in practice, makes her more moderate than Joe Biden ever was.\n\nThe contrast is sharpest on Taiwan. Biden repeatedly said US forces would defend the island in the event of a Chinese attack, a statement directly at odds with America's official policy of \"strategic ambiguity.\" Harris, by contrast, has stuck to the script. When asked, her frequent reply is that she supports \"Taiwan's ability to defend itself\" — a formulation far closer to the official line, and one that deliberately leaves the question of direct US intervention unanswered.\n\nThe same pattern holds on trade. Harris has accused China of \"stealing\" US intellectual property, yet she has also claimed that Washington lost the trade war that ignited under Trump. There is no suggestion she would scrap the Trump and Biden tariffs on Chinese goods, but her instincts seem to treat China as a competitor rather than an enemy. Foreign Policy characterizes her position as \"pursuing competition and cooperation simultaneously.\"\n\nWhether Beijing perceives that nuance is doubtful. Speaking to the Financial Times, Zhao Minghao — a professor at the Institute of International Studies and the Center for American Studies at Fudan University — was blunt: \"Trump and Kamala Harris are two bowls of poison for Beijing. Both see China as a competitor or even an adversary.\" From the Chinese vantage point, the subtle difference between the candidates may simply not register.\n\n## The Choices Harris Is Unlikely to Make\n\nIf the downward trend in US-China relations continues, the Lowy Institute argues, Harris would soon face some genuinely consequential choices. As the Institute frames it, \"A Harris administration can decide to invest in the US military-industrial base so that the United States can match Chinese shipbuilding rates, and it can boost defense spending to correct the tilt away from US dominance in Asia. A Harris administration can elect to leave European security to the Europeans so that the United States can concentrate its forces in Asia.\"\n\nThese are the radical options — a wholesale reorientation of American power toward the Pacific, paid for in part by stepping back from Europe. And the Institute's assessment is that Harris is unlikely to take them. Instead, it predicts she would build on her vice-presidential work to contain China incrementally: expanding US bases in the Philippines, deepening Asian alliances, and managing the rivalry rather than racing to reshape the entire force posture.\n\nDepending on one's worldview, that incrementalism may be no bad thing — particularly because conflict with China remains hypothetical. The wars in Europe and the Middle East, by contrast, are already happening, and already demonstrating their capacity for disaster.\n\n## Middle East Inferno: Tone Without a Break\n\nNo current war divides the Democratic coalition quite like Gaza. In the year of fighting since the horrors of October 7, the party has been split between its moderate wing's instinct to back Israel and its more radical base's demand to stand up for Palestinians. Under Biden, the result was staunch pro-Israel rhetoric paired with behind-the-scenes pressure on Netanyahu to prosecute the war less aggressively — an approach that managed to alienate almost everyone while having little visible effect on the conflict itself.\n\nThe question is whether Harris would do anything different. Those hoping for a clean break are likely to be disappointed. During her campaign, she largely repeated boilerplate talking points that could have come from any generic Democrat. Her campaign platform pledged that \"Vice President Harris will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself and she will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself,\" while also working to end the war \"such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.\"\n\nIf that reads as vague and light on specifics, it is partly by design. Harris aides briefed the New York Times that — with the conflict expected to look completely different within months — the campaign did not want to be tied to unworkable promises that events might quickly overtake.\n\n## Flashes of Sympathy, Limits of Policy\n\nStill, Harris has at times spoken about Gaza with greater force and detail than the campaign boilerplate suggested — enough to hint at a divergence from Biden, if not an outright break. After a July meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she declared: \"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.\" She added: \"We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.\"\n\nForeign Policy reported that these comments tracked with rumors that Harris had been privately pushing Biden to take a firmer stance on the civilian death toll. Nor was this the only such signal. The New York Times reported that at the Dubai climate conference in December 2023, she spent her time huddled with leaders of Arab nations, discussing Gaza.\n\nHow that sympathy translates into policy is far less clear. Her stated positions — an immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages, and a return to the two-state solution — look remotely achievable at best. Her plan for a \"revitalized\" Palestinian Authority to govern postwar Gaza strains credulity given how little authority the PA wields even in the West Bank. Her call to hold extremist settlers who target Palestinians to account is a smaller ask, but still hard to imagine implementing.\n\nThe deeper constraint is that Harris has ruled out the one real lever Washington holds over Israel: suspending weapons shipments. Instead she has pledged to continue American military aid, emphasizing Israel's right to defend itself. The reasonable expectation, then, is a Harris administration that changes the tone on Gaza while leaving the substance largely intact. Her own advisors told the Times that \"the empathy she has expressed [towards Palestinians] as vice president should not be confused with willingness to break from American foreign policy toward Israel.\"\n\nThe same continuity is likely on Iran. In her campaign, Harris pledged only to \"ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power\" — a line consistent with longstanding US policy. That, in the end, is the through-line of her pitch: she would occupy the center ground, pulling back where Biden grew too gung-ho on China or too cozy with Israel, and holding the line where the two parties already moved in lockstep, as on Iran.\n\n## Ukraine: Where Caution Becomes Catastrophe\n\nThere is one conflict where a \"steady as she goes\" approach is not available — where urgent decisions must be made quickly, and where caution itself invites disaster. That conflict is Ukraine.\n\nDiscussing the candidates before the election, the Lowy Institute wrote that on foreign policy \"the choice couldn't be starker.\" It called Trump \"the first president since the Second World War to denounce American global leadership,\" casting Harris as \"the last champion of American foreign policy exceptionalism, the final redoubt for those who believe that the United States has global interests which must, if necessary, be protected by a military force that is second to none.\" Harris's own promise to \"strengthen — not abdicate — our global leadership\" is, the Institute warned, likely to be sorely tested on day one by Ukraine.\n\nThat is also the view of retired Australian major-general Mick Ryan, who has written at length on the challenges Harris would face in Eastern Europe. His central thesis is that the Biden administration's strategy is not working — that the White House has no theory of victory in Ukraine beyond giving Kyiv just enough backing to stay in the fight and keep bleeding Russian forces. The Brookings Institute described the same dynamic as \"Biden's policy of providing Ukraine with enough support so that it does not lose, but not with the wherewithal to win.\"\n\nSuch a track, in Ryan's view, is unsustainable. \"A Harris administration will have little time to decide whether it really wants Ukraine to defeat Russia,\" he writes. \"Its decision will have profound consequences for the future of Ukraine and for America's stature and global influence.\"\n\n## The Arithmetic of Attrition\n\nThe urgency is grounded in battlefield arithmetic that most observers can see for themselves. Ukraine is now a war of attrition, with Russia absorbing spectacular casualties to grind out slow gains in the Donbas. Moscow is, for now, just about managing to replace those losses with new recruits each month. That practice is likely unsustainable even into next year — at least without an extremely unpopular mobilization — but Kyiv's own manpower pool is projected to run dry first, despite Ukraine suffering fewer battlefield losses. And that is before accounting for the weapons systems and ammunition on which Kyiv depends almost entirely on its Western allies.\n\nThe implication is stark: simply staying the course leads to eventual Ukrainian defeat. Dragging out the decision compounds the danger, because a long delay would let problems accumulate to the point that they can no longer be surmounted. Harris would therefore have to decide within her first few weeks whether she truly wants to back Ukraine to the hilt.\n\nThat decision carries hard trade-offs. As Ryan describes it, backing Ukraine fully \"will [...] require trade-offs in scarce military resources that might be required to confront China, a tougher approach on China's support for Russia, and a different strategy for dealing with Russian nuclear saber rattling. Russia will be sure to escalate its campaign of sabotage, misinformation, and general mischief around the world in the wake of such a decision.\" In plain terms, it would force Harris to weigh whether American resources are better spent preparing for a possible war with China or winning the current war with Russia.\n\n## NATO's Iron Commitment\n\nWhich way Harris would ultimately fall is genuinely difficult to predict. For those who want Ukraine to win, the encouraging quotes are easy to find: as a candidate she promised to \"stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies,\" and the Council on Foreign Relations notes she has argued that a failure to respond to Russian aggression \"would embolden other countries considering invasions.\"\n\nAgainst that, Ryan points out that when asked during the presidential debate whether she wanted Ukraine to win the war, Harris talked around the subject without ever saying yes or no. Her thinking in this area — as with so much — remains a mystery.\n\nWhere the ambiguity lifts is NATO itself. Whatever her Ukraine strategy, Harris is judged highly likely to remain committed to the alliance. Foreign Policy catalogs her warm words for it: calling America's commitment \"ironclad\" in 2022, describing the Article Five collective-defense clause as \"sacrosanct,\" and in 2024 calling NATO \"the greatest military alliance the world has ever known.\" That record suggests a Harris administration would not sit by if Russia attacked Poland or moved to annex the Baltic States — a sharp contrast with Trump, whose commitment to the alliance was always shaky and transactional at best.\n\n## The Sudan War: Hell on Earth\n\nThere is one final conflict that any new president would have to confront, and it is among both the largest and the least reported on Earth: the war in Sudan. An estimated 150,000 people are thought to have been killed, genocide may be underway in Darfur, and entire cities have been reduced to rubble. Yet it is largely absent from the front pages of mainstream outlets — and that neglect extended to the campaign trail, where neither Harris nor Trump spent many words on it.\n\nOn Harris's side, the silence may partly reflect Biden's own last-ditch effort to secure an African legacy by stopping the fighting. Analysts have not been optimistic. Speaking to Fox News, Sudan expert Cameron Hudson described \"an 11th hour attempt to put the situation on a better footing, not least because the humanitarian situation is so desperate,\" warning that \"there could be 2 million Sudanese dead from famine by the time he [Biden] leaves office.\" Should that come to pass, anything a successor did would amount to rearranging deck chairs on a Titanic that has already sunk.\n\nEven so, a new president would not be powerless. One plausible focus for Harris is reducing harm to civilians — specifically the women and girls who have reported brutal assaults and sexual degradation at the hands of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. In a series of remarks over the summer, Harris singled out Sudan — alongside the civil war in the eastern DRC and the collapse of law and order in Haiti — as places where sexual violence has exploded. \"Thanks to the leadership of our administration,\" she said, \"we have made it the policy of the United States to use all of our diplomatic, financial, and legal tools to punish those who commit sexual violence.\"\n\n## The UAE Question and the Limits of Leverage\n\nThat is not a detailed policy pledge, but it signals that Harris may take a real interest in protecting civilians in Sudan and elsewhere. Levying sanctions against individual, high-profile perpetrators — RSF leadership among them — would be well within her purview as president.\n\nThe harder question is what to do about those arming the catastrophe. Both sides in Sudan are supplied by outside actors. Some, like Iran and Russia, will not bend to American diplomatic pressure. But the RSF's main backer is one of Washington's closest allies: the United Arab Emirates. Investigations by the UN, the US State Department, and multiple media organizations have traced a flow of weapons from the UAE to RSF forces in Darfur — the same forces a recent UN report accused of large-scale sexual violence.\n\nThe Biden doctrine has been to keep the UAE close, even designating it a \"major defense partner.\" Sudan, however, may be one area where Harris is willing to upend long-standing policy and try to bring Abu Dhabi to heel. Foreign Policy judges her likely to take a hard line, possibly leveraging Abu Dhabi's desire to buy F-35 fighter jets and American drones — a deal first signed off by then-President Trump. \"Under Harris,\" the magazine writes, \"this deal may face further delays or stricter conditions, particularly given the UAE's involvement in conflicts in Yemen and Libya, and more recently, Sudan.\"\n\nWhether such pressure would change anything is uncertain. Abu Dhabi has told Reuters it does not plan to reopen negotiations over the jets any time soon. But Harris could still pressure the country simply by publicly calling out how its weapons are fueling a campaign of genocide.\n\n## The Wider Map and the Unknowable\n\nBeyond Sudan's borders lies a broader test: whether Harris can perform outreach to African nations drifting away from American influence. Both Biden and Trump failed to set foot in sub-Saharan Africa while in office, an absence that sent a signal to capitals across the continent. Meanwhile China's influence is growing, as is that of middle powers such as Turkey. Harris may hope to reverse the trend, but it could prove far harder than she imagines.\n\nThe list of conflicts could go on — Myanmar, the crisis in Haiti, the insurgency in the Sahel, Ecuador's internal armed conflict with its gangs. No survey can be exhaustive. What this analysis offers is a read on four of the most important: Gaza and the wider Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, and a potential war with China.\n\nThese are predictions, and some will inevitably prove wrong. It is equally certain that fate will throw curveballs no president is prepared for — perhaps, four years on, the conversation will be about some utterly unexpected clash between two countries nobody is watching today. The point is not to forecast the future precisely, but to map the terrain a new commander-in-chief would inherit. It is going to be a turbulent stretch for the next American president, in a world that is already on fire.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### How does Harris's stance on Taiwan differ from Biden's?\n\nBiden repeatedly said US forces would defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack, directly contradicting the official policy of \"strategic ambiguity.\" Harris has stuck closer to the official line, saying she supports \"Taiwan's ability to defend itself\" without committing to direct US intervention — a formulation that deliberately leaves the question of American troops unanswered.\n\n### Would a Harris administration break from Biden's policy on Gaza?\n\nAnalysts expect a change in tone rather than substance. Harris has expressed sympathy for Gaza's civilians and privately pushed Biden to take a firmer stance on the civilian death toll, but she ruled out suspending weapons shipments to Israel and pledged to continue American military aid while emphasizing Israel's right to defend itself. Her own advisers told the New York Times that her empathy toward Palestinians should not be confused with willingness to break from American foreign policy toward Israel.\n\n### Why is Ukraine considered the most urgent decision a new president would face?\n\nThe war is one of attrition and Kyiv's manpower pool is projected to run dry before Russia's, while Ukraine depends almost entirely on Western weapons and ammunition. Retired major-general Mick Ryan argues that a new president would have only weeks to decide whether she genuinely wants Ukraine to defeat Russia before accumulated problems become insurmountable, because the Biden strategy of providing enough support to avoid defeat but not enough to win is, in his view, ultimately unsustainable.\n\n### How committed is Harris to NATO?\n\nShe is judged highly likely to remain firmly committed. She called America's commitment \"ironclad\" in 2022, described Article Five as \"sacrosanct,\" and in 2024 called NATO \"the greatest military alliance the world has ever known.\" That record suggests she would not stand by if Russia attacked Poland or moved to annex the Baltic States — a sharp contrast with Trump, whose commitment to the alliance was always shaky and transactional.\n\n### What is the UAE's role in Sudan, and how might Harris respond?\n\nThe United Arab Emirates is the main backer of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Investigations by the UN, the US State Department, and media organizations have traced weapons flowing from the UAE to RSF forces in Darfur — forces a UN report accused of large-scale sexual violence. Foreign Policy judges Harris likely to take a hard line, possibly leveraging Abu Dhabi's desire to purchase F-35 fighter jets and American drones as conditions or delays tied to the UAE's conduct in Sudan.\n\n## Sources\n\n- Lowy Institute, national security: https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/2024-us-presidential-election/kamala-harris/article/harris-and-national-security/\n- Lowy Institute, China: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/kamala-harris-china-competition-antagonism-continued\n- Foreign Policy, hi-tech threats: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/23/kamala-harris-foreign-policy-generational-shift-us-election/\n- Council on Foreign Relations, China: https://www.cfr.org/election2024/candidate-tracker/kamala-harris#china\n- Mick Ryan, Ukraine: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/kamala-harris-ukraine-us-truly-committed-ukrainian-victory\n- Brookings, Ukraine: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-would-trump-and-harris-handle-the-russia-ukraine-war/\n- Council on Foreign Relations, Ukraine: https://www.cfr.org/election2024/candidate-tracker/kamala-harris#russia%E2%80%93ukraine\n- CFR, Israel and Gaza: https://www.cfr.org/election2024/candidate-tracker/kamala-harris#israel%2C-gaza%2C-and-the-middle-east\n- NY Times, Gaza: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/18/us/politics/harris-israel-gaza-war-biden-trump.html\n- CSIS, Cameron Hudson, Africa policy: https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-us-elections-could-mean-africa\n- Kamala Harris, remarks on sexual violence: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-vice-president-conflict-related-sexual-violence\n- Fox News, Sudan: https://www.foxnews.com/world/biden-harris-admin-accused-too-little-too-late-save-people-war-torn-famine-stricken-sudan\n- Foreign Policy, Harris and UAE: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/10/24/trump-harris-election-saudi-arabia-uae-mbs-mbz-iran-yemen-sudan/\n- Kamala Harris campaign website: https://kamalaharris.com/issues/\n- Washington Post, brief overview: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2023/presidential-candidates-2024-policies-issues/kamala-harris-foreign-policy/\n\n" url: https://warfronts.pub/article/harris-presidency-world-conflicts-china-ukraine-gaza-sudan.md canonical: https://warfronts.pub/article/harris-presidency-world-conflicts-china-ukraine-gaza-sudan datePublished: 2026-06-02 dateModified: 2026-06-02 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://warfronts.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Warfronts image: "https://media.warfronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/cFzpsOr854I/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: 2afeb20e278ccfbf73e26d2cd42e0e3ff987db4fe20d3211c9c84ddd25b69b00 tokens: 6410 summaryUrl: https://warfronts.pub/article/harris-presidency-world-conflicts-china-ukraine-gaza-sudan.md.summary.md --- An American election is, among other things, a wager about the rest of the world. The winner does not inherit a clean slate; they inherit a planet already at war, and every campaign promise about restraint or resolve is immediately tested against conflicts that will not wait. When the question is how a President Kamala Harris would govern foreign policy, the stakes are unusually high, because the choices in front of her run from the hypothetical to the catastrophic. The difficulty is that Harris arrives without a long, legible record on the hardest files. Australia's Lowy Institute called her "largely a blank slate on China policy," and something similar could be said about much of her thinking on Gaza, Ukraine, and the wars almost nobody talks about. What we have instead are fragments: votes she cast as a senator, the role she played as vice president, lines from a campaign platform, and the assessments of analysts who have studied her closely. This is an attempt to assemble those fragments into a picture. WarFronts looks at four of the most consequential conflicts a Harris administration would face — a potential war over Taiwan, the war in Gaza and the wider Middle East, the war in Ukraine, and the war in Sudan — and asks what her instincts, her record, and the experts suggest she would actually do. The thesis is simple: on most of these fronts, Harris would represent continuity and the center ground of American foreign policy, with Ukraine the one conflict where caution itself could prove disastrous. ## Key Takeaways - US defense circles have identified 2027 as the year of Xi Jinping's notional deadline for an invasion of Taiwan, making Beijing — not Moscow, Gaza, or Tehran — the likely defining foreign policy challenge of the next administration. - Harris has a Senate record of confronting Beijing on human rights, co-sponsoring bills sanctioning Hong Kong officials in 2019 and countering the persecution of the Uyghurs in 2020, yet analysts place her in the Democratic mainstream rather than among China hardliners. - On Gaza, a Harris administration is expected to bring a change in tone but not a substantive break from Biden-era policy; she has ruled out suspending weapons shipments, the one major piece of leverage Washington holds over Israel. - Ukraine is the conflict where delay is most dangerous: with Kyiv's manpower pool projected to run dry before Russia's, analysts argue a new president would have only weeks to decide whether she genuinely wants Ukraine to defeat Russia. - In Sudan, where an estimated 150,000 people have been killed and genocide may be underway in Darfur, Harris may focus on protecting civilians and could pressure the UAE — the Rapid Support Forces' main backer and a close US ally. ## China Syndrome: The Defining Challenge The number that hangs over the next administration is 2027 — the year US defense circles have identified as Xi Jinping's deadline for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Some China experts have told Defense News that the date's importance is overstated, but even the skeptics concede the underlying point: the biggest foreign policy challenge of the coming years is more likely to sit in Beijing than in Moscow, Gaza, or Tehran. That makes Harris's thinking on China, Taiwan, and the wider Indo-Pacific the single most important thing to understand about her — and also the hardest, given the Lowy Institute's verdict that she is "largely a blank slate." Still, a blank slate is not a void. Over her years as a senator and then vice president, Harris bumped up against Beijing repeatedly, and how she reacted offers a guide to how she might govern. For those worried about the rise of the Middle Kingdom, her Senate record offers reassurance. Harris was one of 56 senators who co-sponsored a bill sanctioning officials in Hong Kong over the 2019 crackdown on peaceful protesters. In 2020, she co-sponsored a similar measure intended to counter China's persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. On human rights, at least, she has been willing to name Beijing's abuses directly. Her record as vice president gives the China hawks more to work with. A significant part of her platform involved her role in organizing freedom-of-navigation operations through the South China Sea. As the Council on Foreign Relations notes, she also played an active part in Biden's effort to knit America's East Asian allies — Japan and South Korea among them — into ever-closer alliances. On paper, that is a posture of containment. ## Competitor, Not Enemy: Harris's China Instincts It would be a mistake, however, to read these stances as evidence that Harris is a hardliner on China. Foreign Policy magazine argues that she essentially represents the Democratic Party consensus — which, in practice, makes her more moderate than Joe Biden ever was. The contrast is sharpest on Taiwan. Biden repeatedly said US forces would defend the island in the event of a Chinese attack, a statement directly at odds with America's official policy of "strategic ambiguity." Harris, by contrast, has stuck to the script. When asked, her frequent reply is that she supports "Taiwan's ability to defend itself" — a formulation far closer to the official line, and one that deliberately leaves the question of direct US intervention unanswered. The same pattern holds on trade. Harris has accused China of "stealing" US intellectual property, yet she has also claimed that Washington lost the trade war that ignited under Trump. There is no suggestion she would scrap the Trump and Biden tariffs on Chinese goods, but her instincts seem to treat China as a competitor rather than an enemy. Foreign Policy characterizes her position as "pursuing competition and cooperation simultaneously." Whether Beijing perceives that nuance is doubtful. Speaking to the Financial Times, Zhao Minghao — a professor at the Institute of International Studies and the Center for American Studies at Fudan University — was blunt: "Trump and Kamala Harris are two bowls of poison for Beijing. Both see China as a competitor or even an adversary." From the Chinese vantage point, the subtle difference between the candidates may simply not register. ## The Choices Harris Is Unlikely to Make If the downward trend in US-China relations continues, the Lowy Institute argues, Harris would soon face some genuinely consequential choices. As the Institute frames it, "A Harris administration can decide to invest in the US military-industrial base so that the United States can match Chinese shipbuilding rates, and it can boost defense spending to correct the tilt away from US dominance in Asia. A Harris administration can elect to leave European security to the Europeans so that the United States can concentrate its forces in Asia." These are the radical options — a wholesale reorientation of American power toward the Pacific, paid for in part by stepping back from Europe. And the Institute's assessment is that Harris is unlikely to take them. Instead, it predicts she would build on her vice-presidential work to contain China incrementally: expanding US bases in the Philippines, deepening Asian alliances, and managing the rivalry rather than racing to reshape the entire force posture. Depending on one's worldview, that incrementalism may be no bad thing — particularly because conflict with China remains hypothetical. The wars in Europe and the Middle East, by contrast, are already happening, and already demonstrating their capacity for disaster. ## Middle East Inferno: Tone Without a Break No current war divides the Democratic coalition quite like Gaza. In the year of fighting since the horrors of October 7, the party has been split between its moderate wing's instinct to back Israel and its more radical base's demand to stand up for Palestinians. Under Biden, the result was staunch pro-Israel rhetoric paired with behind-the-scenes pressure on Netanyahu to prosecute the war less aggressively — an approach that managed to alienate almost everyone while having little visible effect on the conflict itself. The question is whether Harris would do anything different. Those hoping for a clean break are likely to be disappointed. During her campaign, she largely repeated boilerplate talking points that could have come from any generic Democrat. Her campaign platform pledged that "Vice President Harris will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself and she will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself," while also working to end the war "such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination." If that reads as vague and light on specifics, it is partly by design. Harris aides briefed the New York Times that — with the conflict expected to look completely different within months — the campaign did not want to be tied to unworkable promises that events might quickly overtake. ## Flashes of Sympathy, Limits of Policy Still, Harris has at times spoken about Gaza with greater force and detail than the campaign boilerplate suggested — enough to hint at a divergence from Biden, if not an outright break. After a July meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she declared: "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." She added: "We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent." Foreign Policy reported that these comments tracked with rumors that Harris had been privately pushing Biden to take a firmer stance on the civilian death toll. Nor was this the only such signal. The New York Times reported that at the Dubai climate conference in December 2023, she spent her time huddled with leaders of Arab nations, discussing Gaza. How that sympathy translates into policy is far less clear. Her stated positions — an immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages, and a return to the two-state solution — look remotely achievable at best. Her plan for a "revitalized" Palestinian Authority to govern postwar Gaza strains credulity given how little authority the PA wields even in the West Bank. Her call to hold extremist settlers who target Palestinians to account is a smaller ask, but still hard to imagine implementing. The deeper constraint is that Harris has ruled out the one real lever Washington holds over Israel: suspending weapons shipments. Instead she has pledged to continue American military aid, emphasizing Israel's right to defend itself. The reasonable expectation, then, is a Harris administration that changes the tone on Gaza while leaving the substance largely intact. Her own advisors told the Times that "the empathy she has expressed [towards Palestinians] as vice president should not be confused with willingness to break from American foreign policy toward Israel." The same continuity is likely on Iran. In her campaign, Harris pledged only to "ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power" — a line consistent with longstanding US policy. That, in the end, is the through-line of her pitch: she would occupy the center ground, pulling back where Biden grew too gung-ho on China or too cozy with Israel, and holding the line where the two parties already moved in lockstep, as on Iran. ## Ukraine: Where Caution Becomes Catastrophe There is one conflict where a "steady as she goes" approach is not available — where urgent decisions must be made quickly, and where caution itself invites disaster. That conflict is Ukraine. Discussing the candidates before the election, the Lowy Institute wrote that on foreign policy "the choice couldn't be starker." It called Trump "the first president since the Second World War to denounce American global leadership," casting Harris as "the last champion of American foreign policy exceptionalism, the final redoubt for those who believe that the United States has global interests which must, if necessary, be protected by a military force that is second to none." Harris's own promise to "strengthen — not abdicate — our global leadership" is, the Institute warned, likely to be sorely tested on day one by Ukraine. That is also the view of retired Australian major-general Mick Ryan, who has written at length on the challenges Harris would face in Eastern Europe. His central thesis is that the Biden administration's strategy is not working — that the White House has no theory of victory in Ukraine beyond giving Kyiv just enough backing to stay in the fight and keep bleeding Russian forces. The Brookings Institute described the same dynamic as "Biden's policy of providing Ukraine with enough support so that it does not lose, but not with the wherewithal to win." Such a track, in Ryan's view, is unsustainable. "A Harris administration will have little time to decide whether it really wants Ukraine to defeat Russia," he writes. "Its decision will have profound consequences for the future of Ukraine and for America's stature and global influence." ## The Arithmetic of Attrition The urgency is grounded in battlefield arithmetic that most observers can see for themselves. Ukraine is now a war of attrition, with Russia absorbing spectacular casualties to grind out slow gains in the Donbas. Moscow is, for now, just about managing to replace those losses with new recruits each month. That practice is likely unsustainable even into next year — at least without an extremely unpopular mobilization — but Kyiv's own manpower pool is projected to run dry first, despite Ukraine suffering fewer battlefield losses. And that is before accounting for the weapons systems and ammunition on which Kyiv depends almost entirely on its Western allies. The implication is stark: simply staying the course leads to eventual Ukrainian defeat. Dragging out the decision compounds the danger, because a long delay would let problems accumulate to the point that they can no longer be surmounted. Harris would therefore have to decide within her first few weeks whether she truly wants to back Ukraine to the hilt. That decision carries hard trade-offs. As Ryan describes it, backing Ukraine fully "will [...] require trade-offs in scarce military resources that might be required to confront China, a tougher approach on China's support for Russia, and a different strategy for dealing with Russian nuclear saber rattling. Russia will be sure to escalate its campaign of sabotage, misinformation, and general mischief around the world in the wake of such a decision." In plain terms, it would force Harris to weigh whether American resources are better spent preparing for a possible war with China or winning the current war with Russia. ## NATO's Iron Commitment Which way Harris would ultimately fall is genuinely difficult to predict. For those who want Ukraine to win, the encouraging quotes are easy to find: as a candidate she promised to "stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies," and the Council on Foreign Relations notes she has argued that a failure to respond to Russian aggression "would embolden other countries considering invasions." Against that, Ryan points out that when asked during the presidential debate whether she wanted Ukraine to win the war, Harris talked around the subject without ever saying yes or no. Her thinking in this area — as with so much — remains a mystery. Where the ambiguity lifts is NATO itself. Whatever her Ukraine strategy, Harris is judged highly likely to remain committed to the alliance. Foreign Policy catalogs her warm words for it: calling America's commitment "ironclad" in 2022, describing the Article Five collective-defense clause as "sacrosanct," and in 2024 calling NATO "the greatest military alliance the world has ever known." That record suggests a Harris administration would not sit by if Russia attacked Poland or moved to annex the Baltic States — a sharp contrast with Trump, whose commitment to the alliance was always shaky and transactional at best. ## The Sudan War: Hell on Earth There is one final conflict that any new president would have to confront, and it is among both the largest and the least reported on Earth: the war in Sudan. An estimated 150,000 people are thought to have been killed, genocide may be underway in Darfur, and entire cities have been reduced to rubble. Yet it is largely absent from the front pages of mainstream outlets — and that neglect extended to the campaign trail, where neither Harris nor Trump spent many words on it. On Harris's side, the silence may partly reflect Biden's own last-ditch effort to secure an African legacy by stopping the fighting. Analysts have not been optimistic. Speaking to Fox News, Sudan expert Cameron Hudson described "an 11th hour attempt to put the situation on a better footing, not least because the humanitarian situation is so desperate," warning that "there could be 2 million Sudanese dead from famine by the time he [Biden] leaves office." Should that come to pass, anything a successor did would amount to rearranging deck chairs on a Titanic that has already sunk. Even so, a new president would not be powerless. One plausible focus for Harris is reducing harm to civilians — specifically the women and girls who have reported brutal assaults and sexual degradation at the hands of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. In a series of remarks over the summer, Harris singled out Sudan — alongside the civil war in the eastern DRC and the collapse of law and order in Haiti — as places where sexual violence has exploded. "Thanks to the leadership of our administration," she said, "we have made it the policy of the United States to use all of our diplomatic, financial, and legal tools to punish those who commit sexual violence." ## The UAE Question and the Limits of Leverage That is not a detailed policy pledge, but it signals that Harris may take a real interest in protecting civilians in Sudan and elsewhere. Levying sanctions against individual, high-profile perpetrators — RSF leadership among them — would be well within her purview as president. The harder question is what to do about those arming the catastrophe. Both sides in Sudan are supplied by outside actors. Some, like Iran and Russia, will not bend to American diplomatic pressure. But the RSF's main backer is one of Washington's closest allies: the United Arab Emirates. Investigations by the UN, the US State Department, and multiple media organizations have traced a flow of weapons from the UAE to RSF forces in Darfur — the same forces a recent UN report accused of large-scale sexual violence. The Biden doctrine has been to keep the UAE close, even designating it a "major defense partner." Sudan, however, may be one area where Harris is willing to upend long-standing policy and try to bring Abu Dhabi to heel. Foreign Policy judges her likely to take a hard line, possibly leveraging Abu Dhabi's desire to buy F-35 fighter jets and American drones — a deal first signed off by then-President Trump. "Under Harris," the magazine writes, "this deal may face further delays or stricter conditions, particularly given the UAE's involvement in conflicts in Yemen and Libya, and more recently, Sudan." Whether such pressure would change anything is uncertain. Abu Dhabi has told Reuters it does not plan to reopen negotiations over the jets any time soon. But Harris could still pressure the country simply by publicly calling out how its weapons are fueling a campaign of genocide. ## The Wider Map and the Unknowable Beyond Sudan's borders lies a broader test: whether Harris can perform outreach to African nations drifting away from American influence. Both Biden and Trump failed to set foot in sub-Saharan Africa while in office, an absence that sent a signal to capitals across the continent. Meanwhile China's influence is growing, as is that of middle powers such as Turkey. Harris may hope to reverse the trend, but it could prove far harder than she imagines. The list of conflicts could go on — Myanmar, the crisis in Haiti, the insurgency in the Sahel, Ecuador's internal armed conflict with its gangs. No survey can be exhaustive. What this analysis offers is a read on four of the most important: Gaza and the wider Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, and a potential war with China. These are predictions, and some will inevitably prove wrong. It is equally certain that fate will throw curveballs no president is prepared for — perhaps, four years on, the conversation will be about some utterly unexpected clash between two countries nobody is watching today. The point is not to forecast the future precisely, but to map the terrain a new commander-in-chief would inherit. It is going to be a turbulent stretch for the next American president, in a world that is already on fire. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How does Harris's stance on Taiwan differ from Biden's? Biden repeatedly said US forces would defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack, directly contradicting the official policy of "strategic ambiguity." Harris has stuck closer to the official line, saying she supports "Taiwan's ability to defend itself" without committing to direct US intervention — a formulation that deliberately leaves the question of American troops unanswered. ### Would a Harris administration break from Biden's policy on Gaza? Analysts expect a change in tone rather than substance. Harris has expressed sympathy for Gaza's civilians and privately pushed Biden to take a firmer stance on the civilian death toll, but she ruled out suspending weapons shipments to Israel and pledged to continue American military aid while emphasizing Israel's right to defend itself. Her own advisers told the New York Times that her empathy toward Palestinians should not be confused with willingness to break from American foreign policy toward Israel. ### Why is Ukraine considered the most urgent decision a new president would face? The war is one of attrition and Kyiv's manpower pool is projected to run dry before Russia's, while Ukraine depends almost entirely on Western weapons and ammunition. Retired major-general Mick Ryan argues that a new president would have only weeks to decide whether she genuinely wants Ukraine to defeat Russia before accumulated problems become insurmountable, because the Biden strategy of providing enough support to avoid defeat but not enough to win is, in his view, ultimately unsustainable. ### How committed is Harris to NATO? She is judged highly likely to remain firmly committed. She called America's commitment "ironclad" in 2022, described Article Five as "sacrosanct," and in 2024 called NATO "the greatest military alliance the world has ever known." That record suggests she would not stand by if Russia attacked Poland or moved to annex the Baltic States — a sharp contrast with Trump, whose commitment to the alliance was always shaky and transactional. ### What is the UAE's role in Sudan, and how might Harris respond? The United Arab Emirates is the main backer of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Investigations by the UN, the US State Department, and media organizations have traced weapons flowing from the UAE to RSF forces in Darfur — forces a UN report accused of large-scale sexual violence. Foreign Policy judges Harris likely to take a hard line, possibly leveraging Abu Dhabi's desire to purchase F-35 fighter jets and American drones as conditions or delays tied to the UAE's conduct in Sudan. ## Sources - Lowy Institute, national security: https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/2024-us-presidential-election/kamala-harris/article/harris-and-national-security/ - Lowy Institute, China: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/kamala-harris-china-competition-antagonism-continued - Foreign Policy, hi-tech threats: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/23/kamala-harris-foreign-policy-generational-shift-us-election/ - Council on Foreign Relations, China: https://www.cfr.org/election2024/candidate-tracker/kamala-harris#china - Mick Ryan, Ukraine: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/kamala-harris-ukraine-us-truly-committed-ukrainian-victory - Brookings, Ukraine: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-would-trump-and-harris-handle-the-russia-ukraine-war/ - Council on Foreign Relations, Ukraine: https://www.cfr.org/election2024/candidate-tracker/kamala-harris#russia%E2%80%93ukraine - CFR, Israel and Gaza: https://www.cfr.org/election2024/candidate-tracker/kamala-harris#israel%2C-gaza%2C-and-the-middle-east - NY Times, Gaza: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/18/us/politics/harris-israel-gaza-war-biden-trump.html - CSIS, Cameron Hudson, Africa policy: https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-us-elections-could-mean-africa - Kamala Harris, remarks on sexual violence: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-vice-president-conflict-related-sexual-violence - Fox News, Sudan: https://www.foxnews.com/world/biden-harris-admin-accused-too-little-too-late-save-people-war-torn-famine-stricken-sudan - Foreign Policy, Harris and UAE: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/10/24/trump-harris-election-saudi-arabia-uae-mbs-mbz-iran-yemen-sudan/ - Kamala Harris campaign website: https://kamalaharris.com/issues/ - Washington Post, brief overview: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2023/presidential-candidates-2024-policies-issues/kamala-harris-foreign-policy/ <!-- youtube:cFzpsOr854I -->