Many of America’s closest allies were already dreading the prospect of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Now that the former president has picked JD Vance as his running mate, they potentially have a lot more to worry about.
By choosing Vance, Trump has sent a clear signal that, if elected, his America-first foreign policy will be back in force.
Vance, a junior senator for Ohio, is a staunch critic of sending support to Ukraine as it tries to defend itself against Russia. Like Trump, he has repeatedly criticized NATO and its European members for not spending enough on defense. And he has made a number of comments that have raised eyebrows across the pond – including when he said the United Kingdom would become the “first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon” under the new Labour government.
His nomination puts an end to the hopes by some of America’s allies that Trump might soften his foreign policy stance if reelected.
That hope was fueled by Trump himself. While he has often repeated his claim that he “would end the war” in Ukraine in one day if reelected and said he would not send any more money to Kyiv, he stopped short of getting his allies in Congress to block the $61 billion aid package approved earlier this year.
“He could have told members (of the Congress) not to vote for it and instead he tacitly allowed it to go through,” said Kristine Berzina, a geopolitics and security expert who leads the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Geostrategy North program.
“So there was a sense in Washington that Trump has been in a fairly pro-Ukrainian moment, and that he should have the benefit of the doubt – perhaps his views on Europe and Ukraine have evolved, especially given the much higher defense spending in Europe now,” she told CNN in an interview.
But with the selection of his running mate, Trump dashed these hopes. “JD Vance does not appear to be interested in being a good ally to Europe,” Berzina said.
At the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance suggested Ukraine should negotiate with Russia because the US and other allies do not have the capacity to support it. Ukraine and NATO have dismissed that scenario, because it would most likely mean Kyiv would have to give up some of its pre-war territory.
“I think what’s reasonable to accomplish is some negotiated peace. I think Russia has incentive to come to the table right now. I think Ukraine, Europe and the United States have incentives to come to the table,” he said at the conference, adding that the fact that Putin “is a bad guy does not mean we can’t engage in basic diplomacy.”
On Wednesday, Russia welcomed Vance’s stance on Ukraine. “He (Vance) stands for peace, for cessation of aid. We can only welcome this because, in fact, it is necessary to stop pumping Ukraine with weapons, and the war will end,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press conference at the United Nations.
Lavrov added that Russia “will be ready to work with any American leader elected by the American people” as long as this leader “is ready for an equitable, mutually respectful dialogue.”
In Munich, Vance notably skipped a key meeting between a bipartisan delegation of US senators and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, saying he didn’t think he’d learn anything new there. He did attend a meeting with Zelensky in Washington in December but left early.
Asked by CNN’s Kaitlin Collins about Vance’s assertion that the outcome of the war would not change even if Ukraine received US funding, Zelensky said Vance did “not understand what is going on here.”
“To understand it is to come to the frontline to see what’s going on… without this support. And he will understand that millions of people will be killed,” he added. “He doesn’t understand it, of course, God bless you don’t have the war on your territory.”
