In early February 2022, when he was no more than a modest candidate in the Republican Senate primary, JD Vance told a television interviewer: “I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” I had enjoyed his book Hillbilly Elegy, published a few years earlier, and until that point had been intrigued by his political ambitions. That sentence, however, immediately put me off. It was one thing to disagree on how to react to Vladimir Putin’s threats and stratagems, but someone who would publicly say he did not care about one of the major foreign policy issues of our time was surely disqualifying himself from any serious debate. Or any serious career in national politics.
A week or so after that interview, Russia invaded Ukraine. For a moment, I believed Vance’s crass comments would cost him the election. I was wrong. He went on to win the primary and the Ohio Senate election that November. On 15 July 2024 he was picked to be Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate. Given Trump’s age, Vance could very well become president over the next four years or at the next election in 2028, even if others will inevitably fight for Trump’s succession mantle. During Vance’s astonishing rise he has continued to show the same disregard for Ukraine’s fate that he so proudly exhibited in that 2022 interview.
A vice president, of course, does not make decisions on major foreign policy issues. Trump is much more likely to grant him some autonomy over other files such as industrial or drug policy, two topics central to Hillbilly Elegy. But neither is Vance’s selection as running mate irrelevant to Ukraine. The Ohio Senator, only 39, has energy to spare and will build a vast network of people and influence within the administration. The choice is also revealing of Trump’s state of mind: he really has no interest in a compromise with the Russia hawks within the Republican party and no patience for those arguing that the future of Western civilisation is to be decided in the Donbas battlefields.
I wanted to wait for Vance’s big speech on the third night of the Republican National Convention on 17 July in order to have a clearer picture of what his stand on Ukraine truly is. What did I learn from that speech? Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the word Ukraine was never mentioned. Not once. Foreign policy only figured for brief moments.
Vance seems to have little in common with someone like David Sacks, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned geopolitical expert, who spoke from the same convention stage two days earlier. In Sacks’ speech, he effectively blamed the US for the war in Ukraine while sympathising with Russia. (Sacks, incidentally, got a very cold reaction from the audience.)
The contrast helps us understand that for Vance, Ukraine is not a major question at all. His dismissive tone in 2022 does not come from any sympathy for Russia. He simply believes that Ukraine does not matter. If a journalist asks him about it, he may sound a bit like Sacks because of his opposition to further support for the country; but Vance’s preference, as opposed to Sacks, is to ignore the issue altogether. He knows that the Republican rank and file are not into geopolitical theorising.
In recent conversations with two other top Trump foreign policy advisors, my impression was that Trump shares those instincts. The former president does not have a geopolitical vision. He believes, like Vance, that Ukraine is not important enough to justify continued American investment in both time and treasure.
The distinction is critical for how Europeans must think about a Republican victory in November. Contrary to common perceptions, Trump would not stand in the way of those wanting to work towards a Ukrainian victory. He would no doubt want to limit or even eliminate American investment in such an outcome, but those close to him are apparently not averse to finding some solution where American advanced military technology could continue flowing to Ukraine – as long as Europeans were paying for it or, at the very least, such support took the form of loans rather than grants.
In his own speech at the convention, Trump also ignored Ukraine. His only comments on the war were to say it would never have happened under his watch. He seems to believe it will be easy to end it. If that proves to be misguided, as I believe it is, his instinct will probably be to turn away from the issue altogether, arguing that Americans have no real stake in the outcome.
Whether this is good news for Britain and the European Union is unclear. Europe may find it impossible to continue supporting Ukraine’s war effort on its own, but if I am right about Trump and Vance, it could also find itself in a position where it will be blamed for whatever happens on the Ukrainian battlefields. Europeans may find themselves not with a fait accompli imposed by Washington but with a heavy decision to make on their own, and with the full responsibility for that decision and its consequences. Many commentators and officials fear that Trump will try to reach a negotiated ending to the conflict, one insufficiently attentive to Ukraine’s security interests. But what if his administration simply moves on? What if it just deserted the war effort, a prologue to a more general abandonment of European concerns? In that case, Europe would be truly and genuinely alone.
[See also: Ukraine could destroy Labour’s legacy]
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