Former President Donald Trump’s decision to name Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate bucked two well-established trends: vice presidential picks being inconsequential, and foreign policy being a non-factor in American domestic politics.
The pick set off a political firestorm unlike any vice-presidential announcement in recent memory, with much of it being centred on Vance’s foreign policy views. Within less than one day of the announcement, Vance has been described as everything from an “arch-isolationist” who spells the end of Reaganism to a “hawk” on virtually every issue, except for the Ukraine war.
Yet, this piecemeal approach to understanding Vance and his significance on the GOP ticket misses a larger and much more important context. Vance has indeed made Ukraine something of a signature foreign policy issue, emerging as one of the most forceful Senate critics of a Western Ukraine policy that has the results anticipated by its architects in the White House. But Vance’s views on the Ukraine conflict, compelling and well-formulated as they are, underlie a deeper set of convictions that reflect the changing face of American politics.
On the level of party dynamics, Vance’s selection marks nothing less than a stunning rebuke of a tired, fading foreign policy consensus that is increasingly divorced from the challenges confronting the US. It is as strong a signal as any that trump, if victorious in November, would likely seek to bring the Ukraine war to a swift conclusion as one of his first policy items. It’s also possible – depending on a wide array of domestic and external factors that are difficult to predict – that with influence from Vance and others, Trump could pursue a broader re-posturing, away from reflexive interventionism and needless foreign entanglements. It is in this light that Vance’s defiant stance on Ukraine poses a means to a much larger grand strategic goal.
He believes, as does a large share of the American people, and at least to some degree Trump, that the nature of the trans-Atlantic relationship needs to be changed in order for the U.S. to find a strategically sustainable footing in an era of renewed great power competition.
Vance has championed the view that Europe should stand on its own two feet militarily, and do more to provide for its own defence. This argument, resonant with a new style of populist politics that has radically transformed the GOP over the past decade, cuts past the usual talking points around the need for greater “burden sharing” to the more fundamental realization that America’s post-Cold War alliance structures need to be updated to better reflect the challenges that the U.S. faces today.
This is not an argument for abandoning Europe or leaving NATO, which is something that no prominent figure in the realism and restraint coalition supports, but to strive for a trans-Atlantic relationship that is characterized by partnership over what has increasingly been a kind of one-sided dependence. None of this is possible while Europe is roiled by the most destructive war on that continent since 1945, which explains the urgency with which Vance and others representing the new populist face of the GOP seek to bring a negotiated end to the Ukraine war as it enters its third year.
On a broader level, Vance’s political ascendance represents a generational passing of the torch to a new wave of politicians who have taken up the difficult task of reimagining America’s place in the world after decades of policy decisions steeped in a hubristic, ill-conceived drive to preserve the waning post-Cold War unipolar moment, during which the U.S was able to act virtually unchallenged on the world stage. These leaders who defy the established left-right political spectrum are drawing national attention to the fact that America’s balance sheet of resources and commitments has been unsustainable for years. They perceive the link between overcommitment abroad and decline at home, and seek to find ways to end this ruinous cycle.
(Adapted from Mark Episkopos at Responsible Statecraft)
