Sen. J.D. Vance, newly announced as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, stole the spotlight in his keynote address at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night, focusing on the day’s national security and foreign policy theme of “Make America Great Again.”
Praising Trump, Vance officially accepted his party’s nomination to be his vice presidential candidate.
“President Trump represents America’s last, best hope to restore what, if lost, may never be recovered,” he said. “A country where a working-class child born far from the centers of power can stand on this stage as the next vice president of the United States of America.”
In his speech, Vance spoke at length about the threat from China, but did not mention Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the war in Gaza. However, in a nod to so-called Republicans who support American interventionism and whose views on Ukraine clash with his own, he called for “a party that is not afraid to debate ideas.”
The 39-year-old former venture capitalist has less than two years in public office and little foreign policy experience. His recent comments largely align with Trump’s “America First” doctrine and have revealed a worldview that can be summed up as pro-Israel, anti-China and is causing anxiety in Europe.
A former U.S. Marine who was deployed to Iraq, Vance is skeptical of U.S. military intervention abroad and, with the exception of Israel, largely opposes foreign aid. He has argued that the United States cannot simultaneously support Ukraine and the Middle East and be ready for contingencies in East Asia.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said at the Munich Security Conference in February. “The math doesn’t add up in terms of weapons manufacturing.”
But Vance is not an isolationist, as some have portrayed him, said Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center’s Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program.
In a recent speech at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Government, Vance outlined his foreign policy goals.
“We want the Israelis and the Sunnis to control their own region of the world. We want the Europeans to control their own region of the world, and we want to be able to focus more on East Asia,” he said.
“You could call it realistic or maybe prioritising,” Ashford told the Voice of America.
That stands in stark contrast to Biden administration advisers “who argue that all regions are interconnected and that the US must lead in all of them,” he added. “And it’s definitely a break from post-Cold War US foreign policy,” he warned.
But Vance’s goal of shifting the US away from Europe and the Middle East toward China is neither new nor exclusively Republican. Indeed, former President Barack Obama pursued such a doctrine in Asia from 2009 to 2017.
That has not happened, as the US has been caught up in conflicts in both Europe and the Middle East.
Less support for Ukraine
In terms of priorities, Vance is aligned with Trump’s insistence that Washington reduce support for Ukraine and force Europeans to play a greater role in securing the continent.
“I don’t think Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to Europe,” Vance said in Munich, Germany, sending shockwaves through European diplomatic circles. He added that Kyiv should seek a “negotiated peace” with Moscow, even if it means ceding territory.
That prompted criticism from John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and now director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Vance is “completely naive about Putin’s Russia,” Herbst told the Washington Post. VOA.
With Trump suggesting he would not protect countries that fail to meet NATO defense spending targets, even appearing to encourage Putin to attack them, and Vance’s criticism of Ukraine, the prospect of a Trump-Vance administration has raised alarm across Europe.
Herbst remains optimistic, however.
While Ukraine may not be Trump’s first priority, he “perceives himself as a strongman and does not want to be associated with foreign policy failure,” he said. “And a Russian victory in Ukraine if Trump is president would look very similar to a foreign policy failure.”
More support for Israel
While Vance has established himself as a key “America First” surrogate, Israel may be the exception. Citing his Christian beliefs, Vance is an even stronger defender of Israel than President Joe Biden, promoting continued military aid and opposing limits on Israel’s war-fighting conduct.
“Vance’s strong support for Israel is a reflection of the prominence of some conservative evangelical views in today’s Republican Party, as well as the white Christian nationalist positions that have grown under Trump’s control in the party,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Vance has criticized the American neoconservative approach that began with the Bush administration as “strategically and morally stupid.” However, while he is against American interventionism elsewhere, in the Middle East he has advocated a similar strategy of spending American military resources to bolster an alliance of Israel and Sunni Muslim states to deter Iran and maintain peace and stability in the region.
Katulis criticized the Republican vice presidential nominee’s worldview as “a reflection of the confused partisan debate” of the isolationist camps that emerged in the U.S. after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, rather than a “coherent worldview about what it would take to protect U.S. interests and values in the real world.”
Meanwhile, Katulis said Middle Eastern actors are “anticipating more unpredictability, incoherence and confusion” if a Trump-Vance ticket wins in November.
Firm against China
Author of the memoir-turned-film “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance has lived with the social and economic damage that deindustrialization has inflicted on parts of the United States.
In his RNC speech on Wednesday, Vance blamed Biden.
“Our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, cheap foreign labor. And in the decades that followed, deadly Chinese fentanyl,” she said. “Joe Biden screwed things up, and my community paid the price.”
He repeated Trump’s accusation that China is stealing U.S. manufacturing jobs, especially those in the Midwestern part of the country where he comes from.
“We will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building its middle class at the expense of American citizens,” he said.
Vance has “supported more economic restrictions and tariffs on Chinese imports and investments,” said Dean Chen, a political science professor at Ramapo College in New Jersey. “I expect his position on China to be in line with Trump’s nationalists in a possible new administration,” he told the outlet. VOA.
In the U.S. Senate, Vance introduced legislation to restrict Chinese access to U.S. financial markets and to protect American higher education from Beijing’s influence.
On Taiwan, “what we need to prevent more than anything is a Chinese invasion,” Vance said last year during an event at the Heritage Foundation.
“It would be catastrophic for this country. It would decimate our entire economy. It would throw this country into a Great Depression,” he added.
That’s a much clearer stance than Trump, who has repeatedly suggested he might not come to Taipei’s defense if Beijing invades. Washington has no formal treaty with Taiwan, but supplies the democratically governed island with weapons to maintain a “sufficient self-defense capability.”
In a June interview with Bloomberg BusinessweekTrump has indicated that he wants Taipei to pay the US for its defense.
“You know, we’re no different than an insurance company,” he said. “Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.”
Aside from Taiwan policy, Ashford said the biggest shock in a Trump-Vance administration could be on trade policy, with “new tariffs on China or even Europe.”
“It could be quite extreme,” he warned.
[Tatiana Vorozhko, Lin Yang y Steve Herman contribuyeron a este reporte]
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