J.D. Vance and the MAGA Foreign Policy

By Jen Kirby | July 18, 2024 | 1:50pm

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

International Affairs J.D. Vance

In February 2017, then-Vice President Mike Pence went to Europe to reassure leaders that President Donald Trump was committed to the continent’s security, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He mostly said the right things, but Europeans still had a sense of unease. After all, how much power does a vice president really have?

If Trump wins this time, Europe might not even get a nice speech. Trump’s vice presidential pick in J.D. Vance reveals that the MAGA takeover of the GOP’s foreign policy is basically complete.

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Vance, a freshman senator from Ohio and the author of that book everyone was reading in 2016 to pretend to understand Trump voters, doesn’t have a ton of foreign policy experience. Yet he’s molded himself in the Trumpian image, and then some: an America First, anti-China, over-Europe kind of guy. He has opposed aid to Ukraine, suggesting it’s not in U.S. interests to keep funding the war, and that Washington’s focus is detracting from deterring China from invading Taiwan. He’s protectionist on trade, and skeptical of US interventionism. He has criticized America’s liberal economic policies and the commitment to the “rules-based international order” as an enrichment project for elites.

Trump metastasized this strain in the Republican Party. Vance, after his own, er, conversion, now epitomizes it, even hardens it, adding a kind of coherence to the Trumpian worldview. Veeps may not have a lot of foreign policy influence, save for a portfolio item or two. But Vance’s appointment is a clear signal of the party’s future.

“The symbolism still matters, because I think [Trump’s] definitely picking someone who is in his mold. And I think he’s sending a clear message to the GOP about where he wants the party to move,” said Garret Martin, Senior Professorial Lecturer Foreign Policy & Global Security at American University.

“He’s sending a signal that he wants the party to move more in a MAGA line in foreign policy,” Martin added, of Trump.

That reality has heightened nerves among America’s allies and partners, particularly those in Europe and Ukraine. Even partners in Asia are a little wary, given the possibility of a more unreliable Washington and its transactional foreign policy. Still, that means Trump likely sees more of a utility in maintaining partnerships in Asia, whereas both he, and his running mate, have been pretty clear (if not totally accurate) that they see Europe as a bunch of freeloaders. As Vance said earlier this year, the U.S. has “provided a blanket of security to Europe for far too long.”

Which is why European leaders were already deeply worried about what Trump’s return might mean for NATO and its security. Vance’s appointment amplified that sense of unease and urgency. “More champagne popping in the Kremlin. JD Vance nominated to prop up his “America’s Hitler,” wrote Guy Verhofstadt, a pro-Europe member of the European Parliament who’s been critical of the EU for not doing enough to prepare for Trump’s return. “Are Europe & the UK preparing yet or still shuffling the deck chairs on the titanic?”

Vance, in particular, has been outspoken over the two things Europe is probably most worried about, trade and Ukraine aid. On trade, Vance is as much a tariff acolyte as Trump, if not more so. On Ukraine, as Vance said in February 2022: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” He has also said that it’s worth dealing with Vladimir Putin, including making concessions on Ukrainian territory. Mostly, he believes that the U.S. aid to Ukraine comes at the expense of Taiwan and efforts to counter China, even though a big share of the Ukraine funding is building up the U.S. defense capacity, and Vance has continued to back U.S. support elsewhere, including to Israel.

But the inconsistencies don’t lessen Europe’s freakout. “This is a force multiplier. This is somebody from the Trumpist hardliner camp,” said Jan Techau, director of Europe at the Eurasia Group. Vance doesn’t change the trajectory of Trump’s America First foreign policy, but he does reinforce it. This is not a mediator to send to Brussels to reassure allies. And with Vance, Trump is indicating he doesn’t want that this time either; he doesn’t need the grown-ups or generals who slow-roll his policy vision.

“Last time around Trump had people in his administration who somehow limited his impulses, specifically in foreign policy,” said Volodymyr Dubovyk, director of the Center for International Studies at Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University and Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “This time he presumably wants to be surrounded by loyalists, people who think in sync with him, and J.D.’s appointment is proof that he means it.”

It’s Still Trump’s World, but J.D. Vance Probably Makes It Trumpier

“When I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq,” Vance said in his speech Wednesday at the Republican National Convention. “And at each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania or Michigan, in other states across our country, jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war.”

In his speech, Vance blamed Biden for bad trade deals like NAFTA and those with China. To the extent Vance had a foreign policy message at the RNC, that was it, mostly focused on the influence of America’s interventionism and economic policies on the working-class. These are not unfair or completely radical criticisms, and plenty of people on the left share them, too. Vance did conveniently leave out his own party’s legacy in doing things like free trading and invading Iraq, though part of his role is to personify this break with the past and present a new version of the GOP.

Which gets back to the symbolism, if not the actual influence of Vance. His addition to the Trump ticket strengthens the MAGA vibe, but doesn’t fundamentally change what most allies and partners already expected: a Trump less interested, maybe even hostile, to European allies; a Trump ready for some tariff-fueled trade wars that will raise prices for everyone, including those people from towns in Ohio; and a Trump heavily focused on China. “Europeans were under no illusion, even before Vance was announced that this would be a very different kind of Trump White House,” Techau said.

The difference maybe now is that, in Europe, especially, it all feels more real. President Joe Biden’s bomb of a debate, Trump’s consistent lead in the polls, and this assassination attempt against Trump have contributed to the sense that the scenario they hoped to avoid is the contingency they must begin planning for even more aggressively.

Europe already started this, with officials reaching out to Trump’s likely foreign policy team and coming up with their own plans should a future Trump administration put tariffs on all goods. Ursula von der Leyen, newly re-elected as President of the European Commission, talked Thursday about keeping Europe steady in a chaotic world, and shoring up its defense. Trump allies are making the rounds at the RNC. Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, after meeting with Trump tweeted: “We discussed Ukraine and I have no doubt that he will be strong and decisive in supporting that country and defending democracy.”

But defending democracy is Biden’s thing, even if it didn’t actually work out all that well. Trump has always been transactional, and on this, Vance is ideological, skeptical of this kind of global liberal democracy project. “Illiberalism is an ally and thus the idea of defending Ukraine as a democracy standing up to an authoritarian bully falls through,” Dubovyk said.

But he added, “I assume that some flexibility and opportunism will be possible, and that aid to Ukraine would not be stopped altogether, but on the grand scheme of things it does not look encouraging. For Ukraine, and many others, like, say, Taiwan.”

And that is really what Ukraine, and the U.S.’s other allies are hoping for, even as they scramble to hedge as much as possible. Europe is investing more in its defense, which it sees in its own short- and long-term interests, but Europe’s fundamental security relationship with the U.S. won’t transform before November. But it is also a thing Brussels can show to Trump as he returns to the White House, even if it is just a temporary reprieve.

Ukraine’s fate is more closely tied to the U.S. election, so Vance’s stances add to the ever-present stress in Ukraine about a Trump return. Oleksii Goncharenko, a member of Ukrainian Parliament, said the main thing about Trump is that he’s unpredictable. He also doesn’t like to lose – and it might not be so easy to walk from Ukraine without it looking like a loss for America. “It can be very bad for us, it could be very good for us,” he said.

Goncharenko met Vance and debated directly with him at the Munich Security Conference this year. “He is not interested in Ukraine. He was not interested in February, I think it has not changed significantly,” he said. “But I think that if you will become vice president, I think his view on Ukraine and the situation will change very seriously.” Goncharenko pointed to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson who, after seeing intelligence briefings on Russia and the war, pushed through the billions in Ukrainian military assistance.

“Speaking about J.D. Vance, his rhetoric is very concerning,” Goncharenko also said. “But then again, it’s rhetoric. We heard him about Trump in 2016 – and he changed his mind completely.”