When JD Vance left his memory”Hillbilly Elegy” in 2016, citing a poor Rust Belt upbringing and rise through the Marine Corps and Yale Law School, caught the attention of Donald Trump. In this, Iraq veteran It describes the outlook of his hometown at the beginning of the 21st century.
“Nothing could connect us to the basic fabric of American society,” he said. “We are trapped in two seemingly winnable wars in which a disproportionate share of combatants come from our neighborhood, and an economy that has failed to deliver on the American Dream’s central promise of a stable wage.”
Now, Vance Trump is running mate The November elections are just around the corner and Republicans are polling well. Meanwhile, the United States is involved in two different wars Ukraine and Gaza Strip (though he doesn’t have boots on the ground), and anyone who questions what the Ohio senator’s candidacy means for America’s place in the world can start in the communities of Vance’s youth if the GOP wins.
“The leading stars of his political alignment are economic populism, some degree of isolationism and a focus on the ‘forgotten man’ in US politics,” said Clayton Allen, US director of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
As ideological stars reject free-market orthodoxy — once a central plank of GOP economic policies — hostility to immigration and most alien confusions, plus a healthy dose of social conservatism. Vance embodies this combination, making him the most visible advocate of the New Right currently rising in the Republican Party.
And since Trump rose to political prominence as a presidential candidate in 2016, he has enjoyed challenging Washington’s longstanding consensus on foreign policy, questioning the value of US alliances, trade deals and America’s far-reaching military commitments. Bronwen Maddox, director general of London-based Chatham House international affairs center, said that now Vance has “doubled down on Trump’s worldview and given him better, more coherent words.”
“He’s essentially 100% Trump’s ideology, but 50% age, and that’s what makes him so attractive,” Allen said.
More than in any other foreign arena, Vance has tried to mirror Trump on this issue Ukraine war.
He strongly objected $61 billion military aid package to Ukraine The Biden administration took over in April, and like his senior partner, Vance accused America’s NATO allies of not paying their fair share to support Kiev. In doing so, he emphasized the thick vein of the “politics of scarcity” running through his foreign policy, arguing that the United States could not supply Ukraine with enough material to hold back an adversary as large as Russia.
Vance described Ukraine gives its territory to Vladimir Putin Besides supporting staying in NATO more than Trump, it also responds to “America’s interests”.
Not long ago, most older Republicans would have thought it unthinkable for a party member to make such comments. Chatham House’s Maddox said they were “a big break from the old Atlantic view of the US standing with Europe to support a certain set of values and the security of countries that represent those values.”
He also suggested that Vance may have come from his own military experience and risking American lives and money in places where America doesn’t value it. So Vance is a product of his time.
While he recounted the lessons of military service in “Hillbilly Elegy,” he recently raised obvious eyebrows with a speech at the Republican National Convention this month attacking President Joe Biden for voting in favor of the Iraq war while he was a senator.
Vance tried to attribute his past three decades of politics to an exemplary “establishment” by Democrat Biden, even though the policies he has lambasted his president for are widely supported by Republicans.
“When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician named Joe Biden NAFTAA bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico,” Vance said during the July 17 RNC. “When I was a sophomore in high school, this career politician named Joe Biden gave. Demon A beloved trade deal that further destroys America’s middle-class manufacturing jobs.
“When I was in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq, and every step of the way, in small towns like mine, in Ohio, or in neighboring Pennsylvania and Michigan, in other states, our country’s jobs were sent overseas, our children were sent to war.”
Vance’s isolationism doesn’t just send a message about a potential second Trump administration: His selection shows that there is real debate in the Republican Party on foreign policy issues that have generally been taken for granted for decades, said President William Ruger. American Institute for Economic Research, a think tank based in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
But observers disagree whether Vance, who many say will sharpen Trump’s sometimes muddled foreign policy, represents a new vision or simply a particular set of positions — he wants to cede territory to Ukraine, send troops to Mexico to fight cartels and arm Israel unconditionally. — this reflects the former president’s operational approach to international affairs.
That question has to do with the ticket’s fondness for a number of powerful men — Trump has embraced Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, and Vance loves Hungary’s nationalist and Kremlin-friendly Viktor Orbán. It also highlights how Vance may find himself over his boss’s comments about Taiwan.
While Vance told Bloomberg this month that “the thing we need to prevent more than anything else is a Chinese invasion,” Trump complained to the same publication the same week about Taipei’s industrial success and the cost of protecting the island.
“They have captured almost 100% of our chip business. I think Taiwan should pay us for defense. … Taiwan is not giving us anything,” Trump said.
This discrepancy points to two elements of the Trump-Vance relationship.
First: Although Vance “may be the most influential vice president since [Dick] In the George W. Bush administration, Cheney will have to let Trump be Trump, Allen of the Eurasia Group said. That may not be a problem, he added, because the two share a broad ideology rather than fixed politics.
Second: The man who once made Trump look like Hitler is “a bit of a careerist,” Allen said. “He understands that teaming up with Trump is the fastest way to the top.”
That’s not something Vance’s predecessor, Mike Pence, appreciated — a calculation with almost dire consequences.
According to former pundit Daniel Kurtzer, while Trump was in office, Vice President Pence’s foreign policy visions, while unpopular, were at least “mature” — informed by few terms who lived through the consequences of foreign policy becoming a reality. He is the US ambassador to Israel and now a professor at Princeton. Vance, on the other hand, brings “no foreign policy experience, certainly no experience,” Kurtzer said, and will go after his boss when necessary.
China is unlikely to be a source of disagreement.
Globalization, driven by the rise of China’s economy, has led to the postindustrial disaster that Vance describes in his memoirs. In addition, tariffs against China and a deep distrust of Beijing’s international intentions enjoy broad bipartisan support. Experts expect Trump to maintain and possibly expand the tariffs and increase pressure on China over its global ambitions.
Also like Trump, Vance has called for an immediate end to the war in Gaza, but said the stance was more economic than concerns about Palestinian civilian casualties or shifting support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. To Charles Hollis, former British diplomat to Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Hollis, head of strategic intelligence at Aperio Intelligence, said Trump is “not really a warmonger.” “He thinks that doing business is all there is to it, and wars disrupt that.”
Vance may take a harder line The war in GazaHollis said in April, pointing out that he was one of several senators trying to remove aid to Gaza from the broader Middle East support bill. If he takes office, Vance, who has “never thought much about Israel,” may “need more nuance” in his black-and-white view of the region, Hollis said.
The combination of Trump’s mercurial but hard-line foreign policy, which Princeton’s Kurtzer describes as viewing the world entirely through the prism of America’s borders and interests, and Vance’s worldview could spook potential US allies.
For now, it’s unlikely that the Trump-Vance administration will reimpose tariffs on Canada and Mexico, but the lessons of Trump’s first term will linger long in the memory of America’s allies. “Countries around the world are saying, ‘Oh my God, if the US is treating its friends like this, how is it going to treat others?'” said Chatham House’s Maddox.
Maddox added: “Europe [may start] It deals more with China [and] It takes a different tone against Israel,” he added.
It’s a devastating scenario unfamiliar to Vance after a year and a half as a midwestern junior senator. But that won’t apply to Trump, who could become the first US president to serve two consecutive terms since Grover Cleveland at the end of the 19th century. If he does, former diplomats and analysts say, Vance — detached and tough-minded or not — will eventually follow his master’s voice.