In a presidential race characterized by stark contrasts, there are few policy areas where Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump diverge so greatly as on the issue of the war in Ukraine.
Harris has sought to position herself as a successor to the Biden administration’s policies, suggesting a continuation of its severe economic actions against Russia as well as a commitment to providing U.S. security assistance to Ukraine for an indefinite period.
Trump, meanwhile, has criticized such policies as risking war between Russia and NATO and has hinted he’d be a peace broker who would bring Russia back to the table in order to reintegrate it with the West.
Both candidates have remained fairly mum on the details of how they would get Moscow and Kyiv to come together and end the war, but both have also made sweeping statements about the importance of their own vision for the resolution of the conflict.
Sam Kessler, a geopolitical analyst with the risk advisory firm North Star Support Group, told The Epoch Times that the widely divergent stances on Ukraine stemmed from “two different foreign policy philosophies.”
On the one hand, he said, there was the Cold War mindset of Biden and Harris that sought to degrade Russia through proxy war in Ukraine. On the other hand, there was Trump’s realpolitik approach, which sought to deal with U.S. capabilities as they actually were and to reorient towards the struggle with China.
Those two philosophies, Kessler said, result in much different strategies.
“Vice President Harris’s stance on Ukraine is … to continue supporting the Ukrainians with the fighting against the Russians,” Kessler said.
“Former President Trump’s stance has been to mainly resolve the conflict before the situation gets out of hand and the chance of repairing relations with the Russians becomes non-existent.”
Harris Would ‘Stress Test’ International System
Harris has said she is dedicated to defending the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and has pointed to her role in helping create the 50-nation support network that has supplied weapons and other aid to Ukraine so it can maintain its defense.
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but Harris has previously suggested that Trump’s calls for a negotiated settlement to end the war were tantamount to surrender and that she would not support such a course of action.
During a late September meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Harris said that any suggestions Ukraine could cede land to Russia are “dangerous and unacceptable.”
“They are not proposals for peace,” she said. “Instead, they are proposals for surrender.”
Reflecting the Cold War philosophy mentioned by Kessler, Harris said the United States sought to support Ukraine “because it’s in our strategic interest.”
Kessler said a Harris administration, much like Biden’s, could, therefore, escalate the conflict either directly or indirectly if it thought doing so would degrade Russian capabilities.
“A Harris presidency will likely continue supporting the war in Ukraine as well as taking it further to lengths that may risk a greater conflict and pull the U.S. and NATO into direct confrontation,” Kessler said.
A key area where escalation could happen is the question of whether Ukraine should be permitted to use U.S. weapons to strike targets deep inside Russian territory.
Zelenskyy has said that Russia must be “forced into peace” and so has sought to use U.S.-supplied long-range weapons against targets in Russia “to bring Putin to the table” and increase Ukraine’s negotiating leverage.
The White House has thus far refused such requests and prohibited Ukraine from using its weapons to strike deep into Russia.
Getting Biden and Harris to change their minds on that stance, however, was reportedly a focal point of the so-called “victory plan” Zelenskyy presented to the White House last month.
Moscow, meanwhile, has signaled it would consider such a move an escalation—not only by Ukraine but by the United States.
Speaking to reporters in late September, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was considering changes to its nuclear doctrine.
One of those proposed changes would allow Russia to use nuclear weapons against a nuclear power that supports aggression against Russia, even if it was not the one to carry out the attack.
Putin said that a nuclear strike could be ordered in response to a mass assault by “strategic or tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic and other aircraft” if supported or supplied by a nuclear power.
In other words, if the United States were to supply Ukraine with long-range missiles and Ukraine were to use those missiles against Russia, then Russian authorities would consider the United States a legitimate target for nuclear retaliation.
As such, Kessler said a Harris administration would likely serve as a “stress test” on the international system, as security protocols the world over would be subjected to great volatility, and the United States’ own resources would be further stretched in confronting Russia.
“The risks of continuing U.S. support for Ukraine could lead to greater volatility in the international system, which can include a wide range of areas impacting the global economy as well as things like shipping, supply chain security or access, and manufacturing.”
Trump Would Seek Compromise With Russia
It is precisely the threat of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, the largest in the world, that has most shaped Trump’s approach to the war in Ukraine.
Speaking during the first presidential debate in September, Trump said the Biden administration did not take Russia’s nuclear arsenal seriously enough and that Harris didn’t appear concerned about the possibility that Russia could initiate a nuclear war.
“He’s got nuclear weapons. Nobody ever thinks about that. And eventually, maybe he’ll use them,” Trump said, referring to Putin.
“We’re going to end up in a third World War, and it will be a war like no other because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry.”
To that end, Trump has attempted to position his willingness to negotiate with Russia as a defining characteristic of his foreign policy. He has said he’d make Putin and Zelenskyy speak to each other about ending the war, even before assuming office.
“If I win, when I’m president-elect, what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other. I’ll get them together,” he said.
In a comment provided to The Epoch Times by his campaign staff, Trump said he is “the only one who can get the war stopped” because he is the only one who seeks to bring both sides together to negotiate.
“It should have never started in the first place,” Trump said. “Harris and Biden don’t know what to do or how to end it.”
Another issue in shaping Trump’s approach to Ukraine is a concern that the attempts to bleed Russia are draining U.S. resources that could otherwise be put toward the United States’ increasingly antagonistic competition with communist China.
Alex Gray, who served as chief of staff of the White House National Security Council under Trump from 2019 to 2021, said Trump believed ending the war in Ukraine quickly was vital to preserving the nation’s greater national security interests.
“President Trump understands that ongoing conflict in Ukraine is not in America’s national interest and distracts from our ability to confront the Chinese Communist Party globally,” Gray told The Epoch Times.
“Only American strength will ensure the resolution of the Ukraine conflict on terms consistent with U.S. national interests.”
For that reason, Gray said Trump’s policies were oriented towards increasing the United States’ own deterrent capabilities and energy dominance to maintain global order rather than using proxy wars to degrade adversarial powers.
Still, a second Trump administration may not be able to extract itself from Ukraine so easily.
Kessler explained that the interconnected nature of conflicts throughout the world, particularly given the relationship between Russia, China, and Iran, could make the negotiating process for Ukraine’s future far more complicated.
“The negotiations may be less about being on a war footing and more about creating a new sustainable norm in diplomatic relations,” Kessler said.
“A Trump presidency may still have to deal with having to support the war since at this point it may be more difficult to find a quicker peace—if any—in the immediate future.”
One key issue affecting the possibility of peace, he said, was whether Russia could be turned away from its increasing dependence on China and its embrace of Eurasianism as opposed to European normative relations.
“Putin may be more willing to find a long-term peaceful solution with the West if the opportunity comes, but he is in a position where he has no choice but to play both sides of the geopolitical spectrum,” Kessler said.