Mike Wendling
BBC News, Chicago
BBC
The White House debate torn the US alliance with Ukraine, shaking European leaders, and highlighting JD Vance’s important role in empowering the expression of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The Vice President gave a punch on the global stage – so what drives his worldview?
Vance’s first major foreign language speech at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February surprised many.
Rather than focusing on the war in Ukraine, the US Vice President only briefly mentioned the bloodiest European conflict since World War II.
Instead, he uses his debut on the international stage to betray the US allies on immigration and freedom of speech, suggesting that the establishment of Europe is anti-democratic. He accused them of ignoring the will of their people and questioned how they truly share the values they are protecting alongside America.
“If you run for fear of your own voters, there’s nothing America can do for you, and there’s nothing you can do for the Americans because of that,” he warned.
It was a bold and unexpected way to introduce yourself to the world by angering European allies. But a few days later, he returned to the news and returned to the centre of a ferocious line with Ukrainian President Voldimi Zelensky.
For those studying the rise of Vance, these two episodes were not surprising.
The vice-president has come to represent the intellectual wing of the conservative movement that gives Trumpism an expression. In his writings and interviews, Vance expressed his ideology in his mind to join the point between American workers, the global elite and the role of the United States in the wider world.
On last year’s campaign trail with Donald Trump, Vance sharply criticized many of his time by criticizing Democrats (the usual attack dog duty traditionally paid to running buddies) and sparring with reporters.
And while Elon Musk’s oversized and unconventional role in the Trump administration first veiled him, Munich’s speech and an oval office showdown raised the profile of Trump’s proxy.
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It also leads to questions about the winding ideological journey he made during his years in the conservative movement, and what he really believes now.
“He’s a much more pragmatist than the ideologue,” said James Oh, an associate professor of religious philosophy at Cambridge University and a friend Vance described as his “Great Sherpa.”
“He can make it clear what it is, not what America’s interests,” Orr said. “And America’s interests are not the interests of the abstract utopia or matrix of propositions and ideas, not the interests of the American people.”
Vance has repeatedly returned to the theme in this “America First,” or perhaps “America First” – speech.
For example, at the Republican National Convention last summer, he lamented that “employment was sent abroad and children were sent to war” in small American towns. He then attacked then President Joe Biden, saying, “For half a century, he was the champion of any policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer.”
But Vance is also the one who has tried many different views by Hillbilly Elegy after a rigorous upbringing in an Ohio family with its sudden fame behind Appalachian roots and bestselling memoirs.
Not only is he a former “Never Trumper,” who described the US president as “denigable” and “idiot” in 2016, but his book is responsible for much of the light-form plunder of rural poor people for the choices that individuals have made.
Recently, he has shifted the responsibility to the elite. He is variously defined as a Democrat, traditional Republican, liberal, corporate leader, globalist, and academic.
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In his speech, Vance regularly argues that “America is not just an idea… America is a nation.”
He links this statement with an anecdote about the cemetery of his family’s ancestors in Kentucky. There he says he and his wife, and insists that their children will be buried one day, and that their family and homeland are more important than some of the traditional core ideas of America.
In Vance’s view, the Trump administration’s priorities are to improve lives for Americans who have been in the country for generations but have little to no country’s vast wealth.
Rod Dreher, a conservative American writer who is also a friend of the vice president, said Vance’s idea stems from the belief that “moderate Normy Republicans could not provide anything to stop the so-called eternal war.”
“He redping, so to speak, by Donald Trump,” Dreher told BBC Radio 4’s Today Program this week.
“Red-Pilled” is internet slang, as featured in the Matrix film, for a sudden, perhaps, awakening to a hidden truth. It is generally used by appropriate online people who believe they have special access to reality, and people with liberal, centric or establishment views are uncritical thinkers.
And Vance is the vice president and seems to be much more plugged into internet culture than his boss. He is an X’s enthusiastic user, and as many politicians do, he often dives directly into the debate, rather than using it, often as a platform for announcements.
His appearance on Fringe’s right-wing podcast provided feed to his opponents, similar to his provocative trollish comments that the US was run by “childless cat women.”
Married to the daughter of an Indian immigrant, he was rejected and rejected by members of alt-right, even though he reflected some of their views. But he has friends and allies at some of the lesser known corners of Silicon Valley.
After graduating from Yale Law School, he was taken into the world of venture capital by influential Silicon Valley conservative Peter Tiel.
He cited people like blogger Curtis Yalbin, a key guru of a “newly reactive” movement that dreams of the fantasies of technically supported hypercapitalist society led by powerful monarchs.
His familiarity with internet fringes was further demonstrated when he spread false rumors about pet-eating immigrants and allegations of corruption in Ukraine.
“He’s kind of stew in this online world,” said Cathy Young, author of conservative anti-Trump media outlet The Bulwark.
At the same time, Young said his anecdotes about the family’s cemetery and homeland suggested another political tendency: the “unsettling undertone of naturalism.”
“It bothers some people and seems right,” she said. “Part of America’s heritage is that we are a country of immigration. [Former Republican President] Ronald Reagan spoke about it, one of the things that stood out in the country is that anyone can come from here from any part of the world and become an American. ”
Vance’s “American” idea clearly extends to the issue of war in Ukraine. When he was a Senator, he was often critical of the American involvement in the war and the huge amount spent on it, recalling that his former Senate colleague, Josh Hawley, is a Republican from Missouri.
“At the time, his position was very similar as he is now… the conflict must end,” Holy told the BBC. “It needs to end in a way that is in the best interest of US security and in a way that will increase responsibility for European allies.”
Vance regularly accused the Biden administration of being more interested in Ukraine than causing illegal immigration. In 2022, during the Senate campaign and after the Russian invasion, he said:
His views were made public during a dramatic discussion with President Zelensky in the oval office. Vance accused Zelensky of lack of respect, sending politicians on a Ukrainian “propaganda tour” and thanking the US aid.
Getty Images
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“Please provide a word of thanks to the president who is trying to save the United States and your country,” he told the President of Ukraine.
This debate led European leaders to rush to defend Zelensky, but tried to maintain negotiations on the possibility of a peace deal.
Vance then urged widespread anger from his allies when he poured light corn on the idea of security assurance in the form of an army “from a random country that hasn’t fought war in 30 or 40 years.”
He later denied that he was talking about England or France. The UK or France are the only European countries that have publicly stated their willingness to send peacekeeping forces to Ukraine.
But the Vice President’s willingness to step on the toes of his allies reflects a worldview that, in his words, barely has time for “This country is good”, “This country is bad”.
“That doesn’t mean you have to have a complete moral blind spot, but that means you have to be honest about the country you’re dealing with, and you’ve completely failed that in most of our foreign policy establishment in this country,” he told a columnist for The New York Times last year.
His tone shifted from his two years in the US Senate before he was chosen by Trump. Democrat Corey Booker remembered Vance as “very practical and thoughtful.”
“That’s why some of these things surprise me,” Booker told the BBC.
Others will detect the same disconnection.
Now Atlantic author David Fulham said Vance’s views have changed significantly since he first commissioned a former Marine at the time at Ohio State, when he wrote for a website about conservative politics more than 15 years ago.
“He wasn’t the cultural warrior today,” Fulham said.
Fulham, a former George W. Bush speechwriter who is a solid critic of Trump, calls Russian Vance’s views “ideological praise.”
In Munich, when he spoke about freedom of speech, he cited cases involving conservatives and Christians in Western countries, but he avoided mention of harsh clampdowns on Russian expression.
But he and his advocates see the situation through a different lens.
“It’s not that Russia is not a threat, it’s that Europe and the UK are frankly having far worse problems at home,” Dreher said.
The swift end of the Ukrainian conflict is not just about stopping billions of dollars thousands of miles away in Vance’s mind, but spending thousands of miles away.
He himself says there is a bigger issue that the US and its friends should focus on more than Ukraine: the threat of China.
Vance’s views on Ukraine and his willingness to air them publicly provided dramatic moments early in Trump’s second presidential term.
But it also provided a vice president’s ideology, his prominent and clear illustration of how he views America’s position in the world.
With reports from Washington’s Rachel Look and Anthony Zooker and Lily Jamali of San Francisco
