How Anxious Should the US European Allies Be of Trump’s VP Choice the Divisive JD Vance?
Intending to run an ‘America first’ protectionist administration, JD Vance called the UK an ‘Islamist country’ first to get nuclear power
Donald Trump announced on his social network Truth Social that he had chosen the once “never Trumper” Republican and Ohio Senator JD Vance as his new running mate for November's US election following “lengthy deliberation and thought”.
The 39-year-old Vance, a Yale-educated venture capitalist and author of memoir Hillbilly Elegy, was formally selected as vice-presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention (RNC) by delegates on Monday.
Vance, a US Marines veteran, previously described the former president after his 2016 election win as an “idiot” and “America’s Hitler”. However, has since changed his stance on Trump and supports his populist views including those on foreign policy, immigration and free trade.
Over the weekend, Vance was criticised for apportioning blame on the Biden campaign for painting Trump as an “authoritarian fascist” that needed stopping “at all costs” and claiming “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.”
Vance’s foreign policy regarding “American first” has a limitation that is “America first with an Israel exception”. He wants to continue US support for Israel with military aid. As in May he asserted at a speech at the Quincy Institute:
“A majority of citizens of this country think that their saviour, and I count myself a Christian, was born, died, and resurrected in that narrow little strip of territory off the Mediterranean”.
According to Vance:
“The idea that there is ever going to be an American foreign policy that doesn’t care a lot about that slice of the world is preposterous.”
On the contrary he opposes any US support for Ukraine having said in a podcast interview in 2022 with Trump’s former adviser Stephen K. Bannon how it is “ridiculous” to focus on “this border in Ukraine”.
Additionally:
“I’ve got to be honest and with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”
Battling with the Senate, he tried without success to stop Ukraine from receiving a $60 billion military aid package and opposes any US proposal to continue to fund the war.
In February at the Munich Security Conference, Vance advocated Trump's “America First” foreign policy asserting that:
“We want Europe to be successful, but Europe has got to take a bigger role in its own security. You can’t do that without industry”.
He wants to focus on the potential threats that China poses rather than have US European allies rely on them.
He expressed how the US does not:
“Make enough munitions to support a war in Eastern Europe, a war in the Middle East, and potentially a contingency in East Asia”.
Speaking at the National Conservatism conference last week Vance spoke about a conversation he had with a friend about “nuclear proliferation” being “one of the big dangers in the world” and “to beat up on the UK” he jibed:
“And I was talking about, you know, what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon, and we were like, maybe it’s Iran, you know, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we sort of finally decided maybe it’s actually the UK, since Labour just took over.”
The Labour Party regained power, after 14 years of Conservative reign, in a July 4 election.
In response to the comments the UK Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Angela Rayner rejected them saying Vance had said in the past "quite a lot of fruity things” and that "I don’t recognise that characterisation".
