„Expect Harris to lean into the rhetoric of alliances to satisfy her supporters“

Peter Rough, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, analyzes Kamala Harris‘ and Donald Trump’s stance on NATO.

By Peter Rough

Kamala Harris is not known for her foreign policy acumen, to put it gently. As president, she will devote little thought to the alliance, absent major crises such as Russian provocations or periodic gatherings like NATO Summits. However, there is a risk that NATO turns into a political football similar to U.S. support for Ukraine. In that case, expect Harris to lean into the rhetoric of alliances to satisfy her supporters. Mostly, though, NATO policy will be run by the progressive establishment, which is friendly to Europe and skeptical of hard power. U.S. policy toward NATO would resemble that of the Obama-Biden years.

Theoretically, it should be easier to forecast U.S. policy toward NATO under Donald Trump since he has already served as president. But Trump likes to keep everyone guessing in order to maintain leverage. Still, the leitmotif of Trum’s first term is likely to feature in his second presidency: burden-sharing on the path to burden-shifting. Trump will focus laser-like on hard power capabilities to deter Russia and on critical infrastructure to keep out China. He is more apt to expose allies to hostile power as a means of cajoling them into larger defense outlays.

Peter Rough is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. and a Young Leader Alumnus of Atlantik-Brücke from the class of 2017.