Running mate likely to push Trump to pursue \u2018America first\u2019 foreign policy and deal with Putin to end war in Ukraine<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Donald Trump\u2019s choice of JD Vance<\/a> as his vice-presidential pick has reignited fears in Europe that he would pursue a transactional \u201cAmerica first\u201d foreign policy that could culminate in the US pushing for Ukraine to acquiesce to Vladimir Putin and sue for peace with Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s bad for us but it\u2019s terrible news for [Ukraine],\u201d said one senior European diplomat in Washington. \u201c[Vance] is not our ally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Foreign diplomats and observers have frequently called Trump\u2019s actual policies a \u201cblack box,\u201d saying that was impossible to know for certain what the unpredictable leader would do when in power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some have soothed themselves by suggesting that names tipped for top positions, such as former national security adviser Robert O\u2019Brien, would maintain a foreign policy status quo while Trump focuses on domestic affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But a prospective Trump administration now has a much more energetic surrogate who will fuel Trump\u2019s skepticism towards Ukraine<\/a> and Europe, while urging on the party\u2019s aggressive trade and foreign policy elsewhere around the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSenator Vance was one of the leading opponents of the new assistance package<\/a> to Ukraine last spring and has expressed indifference to what happens in that war,\u201d said Michael McFaul, director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a former ambassador to Russia. \u201cBy choosing Vance as his running mate, Trump has clarified a very clear choice for American voters in November on foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPresident Biden\u2019s foreign policy strategy radically contrasts with Mr Trump\u2019s approach,\u201d he said. \u201cBiden and Harris have promoted democracy and stood up to autocrats. Trump and Vance have paid no attention to advancing democracy abroad and instead have embraced autocrats. The contrast in foreign approaches embraced by these two presidential candidates has never been clearer in my lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In public, Vance has criticized US aid packages to Ukraine and pushed for negotiations with Russia<\/a>, although Ukraine has said it did not wish to hold talks. He has accused the Biden administration of \u201cmicromanaging\u201d Israel\u2019s war in Gaza, and said that America should \u201cenable Israel to actually finish the job\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He has advocated containment of China, saying that America was \u201cspread too thin\u201d in Europe<\/a> and pushing for aggressive trade restrictions and intellectual property protections against China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And he has demanded that European countries pay a larger share of their GDP into Nato<\/a>, writing this year: \u201cThe United States has provided a blanket of security to Europe for far too long.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think Vance was chosen at least in part for his foreign policy and for his trade policy,\u201d said Emma Ashford, a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy programme at the Stimson Center Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cVance is very much representative of this new right wing has been growing in the Republican party. They\u2019re much more nationalist, somewhat protectionist, anti-immigration \u2026 Trump was the one who largely initiated this back in 2016 and Vance has become one of the congressional leaders of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Top donors reportedly engaged in a push to secure the nomination for Vance in the final hours. According to Axios, they include Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and David Sacks. All three have been skeptical of Joe Biden\u2019s support for Ukraine\u2019s Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and Sacks on stage at the Republican national convention said Biden \u201cprovoked, yes provoked, the Russians to invade Ukraine with talk of Nato expansion\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They are also linked to a larger set of Silicon Valley tech billionaires, including the Vance booster Peter Thiel, who have been extremely hawkish on China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, the choice has scandalized some traditional Republicans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe [Vance] would capitulate to Russia and sacrifice the freedom of our allies in Ukraine,\u201d wrote the former congresswoman Liz Cheney<\/a>, who has become an outspoken critic of Trump. \u201cThe Trump GOP is no longer the party of Lincoln, Reagan or the constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy<\/a>, has presented himself as a modern success story from the American rust belt, and Trump is said to have chosen him for his backstory and stage presence as much as his policies. But he has also made a name for himself as a leading critic of aid to Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think that it\u2019s ridiculous that we\u2019re focused on this border in Ukraine,\u201d Vance said on an interview on Steve Bannon<\/a>\u2019s War Room podcast in 2022. \u201cI gotta be honest with you: I don\u2019t really care<\/a> what happens to Ukraine one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the Munich security conference in February, he delivered what his own staffers called a \u201cwake-up call\u201d to Europe, in which he played down the threat posed by Russia\u2019s leader and said that the US could not manufacture the weapons needed to supply Ukraine to continue the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI do not think that Vladimir Putin<\/a> is an existential threat to Europe, and to the extent that he is, again that suggests that Europe has to take a more aggressive role in its own security,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vance also said he believed the Ukraine war \u201cwill end in a negotiated peace\u201d, a view that appeared to be backed up on Tuesday by the Hungarian PM Viktor Orb\u00e1n, who has been traveling on a rogue \u201cpeace mission\u201d<\/a> to Moscow and Mar-a-Lago, wrote that Trump after the elections will begin acting as a \u201cpeace broker immediately\u201d<\/a>, even before his inauguration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYes, Trump will be ultimately setting Ukraine policy,\u201d wrote Serhiy Kudelia, a professor of political science at Baylor University, on X. \u201cBut the choice of Vance tells us all we need to know about how Trump wants to approach Ukraine once he becomes president: no Nato membership for Ukraine, cutting military and economic assistance and forcing Zelenskiy to a [negotiating] table with Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In that speech, Vance also said he did not believe the US should pull out of Nato or \u201cabandon Europe,\u201d but that Washington should \u201cpivot\u201d toward Asia, meaning toward a more aggressive policy to contain China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe United States has to focus more on East Asia,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is going to be the future of American foreign policy for the next 40 years, and Europe has to wake up to that fact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n