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To say that Americans of all walks of life have an opinion about J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump's vice presidential running mate, would be a gross understatement. Ever since Trump announced Vance as his V.P. nominee, hot-takes about the senator have been everywhere. Democrats were revolted, with one calling the selection "a direct threat to American values and rights." Republican voters and delegates were largely happy with the choice.
Outside of the United States, officials, leaders, and opinion-makers are still trying to come to grips with a relatively unknown man who isn't known for his foreign policy chops. Elected to the Senate in 2022, Vance's work has centered largely on hyper-local issues in his home state of Ohio, such as ensuring U.S. steel isn't taken over by foreign companies and holding the federal government accountable for cleaning up the toxic chemical spill in East Palestine. Vance doesn't serve on any national security committees.
What we do know comes from his comments to the press and the speeches he has delivered at places like the Heritage Foundation and the Munich Security Conference. Most European officials don't like what they hear.
Vance isn't shy about expressing his displeasure with Europe's tendency to lean on the U.S., a theme Trump has brought up incessantly going back to his infamous 1990 Playboy interview. On the war in Ukraine specifically, Vance is highly vocal about his opposition to more U.S. aid to Kyiv—not because he has an affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin but rather because he thinks it's akin to throwing money down a rat hole. Writing in The New York Times in April, Vance argued that Ukraine's military needs are so extensive that the U.S. defense industrial complex couldn't possibly keep up. And the more weapons and ammunition the U.S. does give to Ukraine, the less the U.S. can provide to Taiwan, the self-governed island democracy that Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to incorporate into the Chinese mainland.
Europe comes in for special scrutiny. Like Trump, Vance firmly believes the U.S. is wedding itself too close to the continent at a time when East Asia should be receiving most attention from the U.S. foreign policy and defense establishment. "The United States has to focus more on East Asia," Vance told a European conference this spring. "That is going to be the future of U.S. foreign policy for the next 40 years, and Europe has to wake up to that fact." This isn't an extreme position. The last three U.S. administrations have acknowledged that the center of gravity in international relations is moving to Asia due to the rise of China's power and the corresponding rise of China's ambitions in the region. With the U.S. moving more of its attention, diplomatic capital, and military resources east, the Europeans will need to pick up some of the slack in maintaining security and stability on their own continent.
With Vance, the major difference is how the message is delivered. He is notoriously blunt about why this shift needs to occur and relishes poking European political elites in the eye. European officials and bureaucrats are understandably piqued about it and have spent the days since Vance's elevation treating journalists as their own personal therapists. Rob Johnson, a former senior U.K. Ministry of Defense official, predicted a dark period ahead. "It's bad for us but it's terrible news for [Ukraine]," a senior European diplomat stressed to The Guardian on July 17. "[Vance] is not our ally." European foreign policy experts are just as worried about the Ohioan's promotion, believing it's another signal that the U.S. can no longer be relied on.
Are these concerns genuine? There's no doubt that worries about U.S. retrenchment in Europe have percolated. Trump's willingness to rake European leaders over the coals, pick a fight with Germany over defense spending at a NATO summit, and flirt with withdrawing Washington from NATO entirely mean the anxiety has never gone away. This is despite the fact that U.S. troop levels in Europe were stable throughout Trump's presidency and Trump himself pontificated about establishing a permanent U.S. military base in Poland (which eventually fell apart). The feeling of the U.S. moving on to greener pastures only dissipated when Russia invaded Ukraine, which prompted the Biden administration to re-pivot to Europe and deploy an additional 20,000 U.S. troops to the continent.
Those troops are still in Europe, but questions about the U.S. military presence there have re-surfaced. Trump's rhetoric toward Europe has remained consistent throughout, with the themes as clear today as they were when he vacated the White House in January 2021—Europe needs to grow up, put its money where its mouth is, do more for itself overall, and show principal leadership over the war in Ukraine. The Europeans, to their credit, are stepping up on defense, devoting more cash to their military budgets, and re-investing in a wilted military industrial complex. But the fact that it took Europe's largest land war in nearly 80 years to shock its leaders out of their coma says a lot.
Ultimately, the U.S. will have to reassess its military posture in Europe and thin down its deployments there if it hopes to encourage the Europeans to stay on course. Washington should want capable security allies over the long-term, not supplicants who run to an overburdened Washington whenever a security crisis comes up.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
