“It’s not good for Europe to be the permanent security vassal of the United States.” So says JD Vance during a phone conversation with UnHerd on Monday, his first major interview with a European outlet since taking office as Vice President. The backdrop is a week of turmoil on financial markets triggered by President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.
The decision to apply (and then partially rescind) hefty tariffs on European allies — combined with a barrage of harsh statements about Europe from Vance, both public ones and leaked private messages — has left many on the Continent wondering whether America can still be thought of as a friend.
Vance’s answer: yes, provided European leaders are prepared to assume a more independent role on the international stage, and to be more responsive to their own voters, especially when it comes to the question of immigration.
“I love Europe,” Vance tells me in a wide-ranging interview from his office in the West Wing, showcasing a diplomatic side that has not always been front and centre. “I love European people. I’ve said repeatedly that I think that you can’t separate American culture from European culture. We’re very much a product of philosophies, theologies, and of course the migration patterns that came out of Europe that launched the United States of America.”
Europe’s leaders are a different matter. Take Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who, in a recent interview with the American TV programme 60 Minutes, charged Vance with “somehow justifying” Russia’s invasion of his country.
Vance counters this by referring to his condemnations of Moscow’s actions since 2022. But he adds: “I’ve also tried to apply strategic recognition that if you want to end the conflict, you have to try to understand where both the Russians and the Ukrainians see their strategic objectives. That doesn’t mean you morally support the Russian cause, or that you support the full-scale invasion, but you do have to try to understand what are their strategic red lines, in the same way that you have to try to understand what the Ukrainians are trying to get out of the conflict.”
“I think it’s sort of absurd for Zelensky to tell the [American] government, which is currently keeping his entire government and war effort together, that we are somehow on the side of the Russians.” That kind of rhetoric, Vance says, “is certainly not productive”.
Beyond Ukraine, the American Vice President worries that European leaders are still failing to reckon with 21st-century realities on immigration, integration, and security.
Vance says: “We’re very frustrated — ‘we’ meaning me, the President, certainly the entire Trump administration — that European populations keep on crying out for more sensible economic and migration policies, and the leaders of Europe keep on going through these elections, and keep on offering the European peoples the opposite of what they seem to have voted for.”
Immigration is at the heart of Vance’s palpable frustration with European leaders. He argues that, as in the United States, open-borders policies handed down from on high are poisonous to democratic trust. As Vance notes, “the entire democratic project of the West falls apart when the people keep on asking for less migration, and they keep on being rewarded by their leaders with more migration.”
Europe’s other blind spot, Vance says, is security. “The reality is — it’s blunt to say it, but it’s also true — that Europe’s entire security infrastructure, for my entire life, has been subsidised by the United States of America.” As recently as a quarter-century ago, “you could say that Europe had many vibrant militaries, at least militaries that could defend their own homelands”.
Fast-forward to today, Vance says, and “most European nations don’t have militaries that can provide for their reasonable defence”. True, “the British are an obvious exception, the French are an obvious exception, the Poles are an obvious exception. But in some ways, they’re the exceptions that prove the rule, that European leaders have radically underinvested in security, and that has to change.”
Vance’s message to the Continent, he says, is the same one delivered by Charles de Gaulle at the height of the Cold War, when the French president insisted on a healthy dose of independence from Washington. De Gaulle “loved the United States of America, but [he] recognised what I certainly recognise, that it’s not in Europe’s interest, and it’s not in America’s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States”.
What the Vice President had not made clear before this interview is that he would prefer to see a strong and independent Europe precisely because it could then act as a better check against the foreign-policy missteps of the Americans.
He says: “I don’t think that Europe being more independent is bad for the United States — it’s good for the United States. Just going back through history, I think — frankly — the British and the French were certainly right in their disagreements with Eisenhower about the Suez Canal.”
Vance also alludes to his own experience as a combat veteran of the Iraq War. “Something I know a little bit more personally: I think a lot of European nations were right about our invasion of Iraq. And frankly, if the Europeans had been a little more independent, and a little more willing to stand up, then maybe we could have saved the entire world from the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq.”
Bottom line: “I don’t want the Europeans to just do whatever the Americans tell them to do. I don’t think it’s in their interest, and I don’t think it’s in our interests, either.”
Talking about the UK specifically, Vance puts great emphasis on the place it occupies in the affections of President Trump — with a trade deal highly likely as a result.
“We’re certainly working very hard with Keir Starmer’s government” on a trade deal, Vance says. “The President really loves the United Kingdom. He loved the Queen. He admires and loves the King. It is a very important relationship. And he’s a businessman and has a number of important business relationships in [Britain]. But I think it’s much deeper than that. There’s a real cultural affinity. And of course, fundamentally America is an Anglo country.” Thus, “I think there’s a good chance that, yes, we’ll come to a great agreement that’s in the best interest of both countries”.
Other European states are likely to reach new trade arrangements too, though the climb might be steeper. Already, “with the United Kingdom, we have a much more reciprocal relationship than we have with, say, Germany… While we love the Germans, they are heavily dependent on exporting to the United States but are pretty tough on a lot of American businesses that would like to export into Germany.”
The administration’s lodestar will be “fairness”, Vance says. “I think it will lead to a lot of positive trade relationships with Europe. And again, we very much see Europe as our ally. We just want it to be an alliance where Europeans are a little more independent, and our security and trade relationships are gonna reflect that.”
As financial markets have whipsawed in recent weeks, it has not been clear what success looks like from the administration’s point of view. I ask Vance how he will judge the tariff policy in the long term. “What we want to see is lower trade deficits, really across the board,” says Vance. “Sometimes, a trade deficit makes sense. Like, America doesn’t produce bananas. So obviously, we’re gonna be importing bananas, not exporting bananas. So with certain product categories and maybe even with some countries, a small trading deficit can be justified.”
The status-quo system as a whole, however, is intolerable from the White House’s point of view. “What the global trading system has led to,” complains Vance, “is large and persistent trade deficits across product categories, with the gross majority of countries really using the United States [home market] to absorb their surplus exports. That’s been bad for us. It’s been bad for American manufacturers. It’s been bad for workers. And God forbid, if America ever fought a future war, it would be bad for America’s troops.”
But before he became a politician, Vance was a venture capitalist. Has he had heart-sinking moments watching his own portfolio sink into the red in recent weeks? He sounds unfazed.
“Any implementation of a new system is fundamentally going to make financial markets jittery,” says Vance. “The President has been very consistent that this is a long-term play… Now, of course, you have to be responsive to what the business community is telling you, what workers are telling you, what bond markets are telling you. These are all variables that we have to be responsive to” in order to “make the policy successful”.
But Vance says the administration can’t govern for the stock market alone. “No plan is, you know, going to be implemented perfectly… We’re very cognisant of the fact that we live in a complicated world where nobody else’s decisions are static. But the fundamental policy is to rebalance global trade, and I think the President has been very clear and persistent on that.”
Even as adjustments and delays to tariffs seem to have soothed markets and allies, for now, the Trump administration is bent on applying its brand of shock therapy 2.0 to the international system. The goal, of course, is nearly the diametrical opposite of the original therapy: while shock therapy 1.0 goaded the world to follow America into adopting neoliberal globalisation and to follow Washington on its military adventures, this one is aimed at reversing both outcomes.
Yet it can be no less discomfiting to live through the change — not just in the policy orientation, but how it’s communicated: not least by a very-online Millennial Vice President who revels in online debate. Does he think he tweets too much? Eyebrows were certainly raised in Europe when he took the time to get into a Twitter dispute with podcaster Rory Stewart.
Vance laughs. “There are many blessings to this job. One unquestioned downside is that I very much live in a bubble. I’m surrounded by Secret Service agents. It’s very hard for a random person to walk up to me — in fact, it’s damned-near impossible. I see social media as a useful, albeit imperfect, way to stay in touch with what’s going on in the country at large… I probably spend way less time on Twitter than I did six months ago, and that’s probably good for me.”
All told, the Trump-Vance administration’s commitment to turning the page on globalisation as we knew it runs deeper than allies and adversaries alike might imagine. As Vance says: “We’re not on anybody’s side, we’re on America’s side.”
Sohrab Ahmari is the US editor of UnHerd and the author, most recently, of Tyranny, Inc: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What To Do About It
SohrabAhmari 
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SubscribeI hugely enjoyed her Wolf Hall trilogy, it’s such a pity she can’t see historical parallels between the Tudor period that most obviously fascinates her and the present. David Starkey – before his public shunning – gave a brilliant lecture drawing the parallels between the break with Rome in Henry’s time and the break with Brussels in our own.
You would imagine that historians who have to be alive to nuance and be able to see patterns in the past, would be able to discern echoes of those patterns in the present. Yet Ms Mantel appears to have a blind spot due to her personal animus towards the PM and her apparent loathing of the ghastly, brexity Untermensch.
I’ve written previously about where I think Brexit will sit in our history – I’m very much of the view that it will seen as the latest in a long line of occasions when the people of these isles have stood up to those in power and asserted and fought for their rights.
As a country we have long taken pride in our democratic tradition. Even those on the political Left, who recoil from most of British history, have always wanted to associate themselves with the struggles of the British people to achieve a voice, to have a say – however small – in shaping our national destiny.
Before most other countries in Europe, we created a system of Popular sovereignty, the idea that people should have a say in how they are governed – and by whom.
Our membership of what the EU had become was denying the British people their democratic say, and they rebelled against it. For a good many years after the 1975 vote, there was general acceptance of our place in the EEC and its other incarnations. Of course I can’t speak for all 17.4 million Leave voters (nor the countless millions of Eurosceptics across the EU) but I would hazard that a very large number of them would agree that the Common Market had made sense. A group of entirely sovereign European nations agreeing to cooperate on trade. Had we remained simply as that there would have been a willingness – even enthusiasm – for the project.
Since Maastricht, it was the creeping usurpation of powers without a democratic mandate that caused the rising Euroscepticism (not merely here in the UK but across all of Europe). 40 years after our vote to stay in, the EEC had morphed into an entirely different organisation that had accrued untold additional powers and areas of responsibilities (and sought to accrue yet more) without seeking the consent of the governed.
In all that time – despite promises from previous PMs – we had not been afforded the opportunity to voice our opinion on our membership of a completely different entity – one that was moving towards full fiscal and political union. Finally, 24 years after Maastricht, we were given the chance – our first chance – to voice our support for it but instead we rejected it.
The horrified establishment, determined to maintain a comfortable status quo that suited them very well, then attempted to thwart the expressed will of the people – who they regarded with contempt.
Historically, the demands of all the various rebellions and movements against entrenched privilege and power in this country have essentially been the same, namely that if – as citizens – we are expected to live by the laws of the land then we should have a say in who makes those laws – with the obvious corollary that if we have no capacity to influence who makes the laws, then we will break the law. The Peasants Revolt, the English Civil War, the Chartists, the Suffragettes, it has all been the same, the right to have a say in our national destiny. The right to have a vote and, since achieving universal suffrage, that each vote should count the same whether cast by duke or dustman, young or old, male or female.
We fought for those rights. We hold those rights dear. They are rights that everyone, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum, claims to hold dear. Even those who might not stop to consider those rights in the abstract, still have a sense that democratic sovereignty and the common law are the birthright of every Briton, thanks to those who came before us and fought to gain those rights.
Yet many of the self-same politicians, writers and public figures who are always happy to pay lip service to those struggles and want to be seen commemorating the anniversaries, tried to deny the common man his vote – using PRECISELY the same arguments that the patrician classes had used to deny their votes previously.
On the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre – where protestors whose banners called for “Universal Suffrage” and “Liberty & Fraternity” were ridden down and killed by a Cavalry charge in St Peters Fields – the BBC, the Guardian, and a whole variety of bien pensant commentators were at great pains to lay claim to the heritage of the protestors. Articles and programmes abounded, with the great and good all wishing to associate themselves with the noble aims of the Perterloo “martyrs”, whilst at the very same moment they were explicitly engaged in a campaign to disenfranchise millions of ordinary voters who’d voted for Brexit. Ms mantel was a vocal member of the wildly anti-democratic 2nd Ref campaign, that had deep support from other metropolitan elitists and luvvies.
The hypocrisy was simply breath-taking.
The arguments the establishment used – that the “little people” were too ill-informed, too easily swayed by lies etc, were precisely the same arguments used against universal suffrage: That working class people, or women, were not informed enough, not educated enough, not intellectually robust enough, to deserve the vote.
If you support the concept of Free Speech then that has to extend to supporting the right of someone you disagree with being allowed to say things you would recoil from. If you support the idea of universal suffrage then that has to extend to accepting the result of such a democratic vote, even if the result is one with which you strongly disagree. If you refuse to accept a democratic vote, you are not a democrat – it’s a pretty fundamental point.
We are past Peterloo type insurrection now, we are not going to see cavalry charges on our streets, or armed uprisings (whatever the more lurid catastrophists employed by the Guardian might like to pretend), but the fallout from the attempt to disenfranchise such a large number of voters (the majority view at the referendum, let’s not forget) was profound. We could see what was happening and were angry about it – and rightly so.
So, when public figures suggest they’re ashamed of this country it only comes across as arrogance, bitterness and petulance, rather than principle. For all their self-perceived high-mindedness, they should consider this: – You might like to claim the heritage of the Chartists and wish to commemorate the Peterloo Massacre but just remember which side of this divide you were on. When it came to it, you did not stand for Universal Suffrage, Liberty or Fraternity, you stood with those cheering on the forces who’d ride roughshod over the plebs just to maintain their comfortable status quo.
T’rific Paddy Taylor
What a wonderful comment. Hats off
Lest we forget: the current Leader of the Opposition colluded with foreign powers to obstruct HMG in the Withdrawal talks in an attempt to overturn the referendum result.
Excellent post, thank you, would uptick ten times if I could.
It was the FO and the Civil service post Suez in 1956 who pushed tojoin Europe and politicians like Heath. heath was described as someone who should have been acivil servant , not a politician. As Peter Shore said after Suez, 2 The FO had a nervous breakdown “. What people ignore is that after 1939 and nationalisation the group who ran Britain were the civil servants and their friends in the Law, universities, CBI and nationalised industries. They were highly educated but lacked common sense and backbone. This group lacked the practical skills and backbone to confront the shop stewards in the un and semi skilled unions, so considered Britain should have a future in the EEC.
We entered the EEC to benefit trade because shop stewards in semi skilled unions were destroying Britain’s industry. The EEC was always intended to be an empire, a challenge to the USSR and USA but either the FO and Heath did not realise or knew but but did not tell the British public. In the last 10 to 20 years vast swathes of Britains came to realise we had lost our sovereignty to the EU Empire.
Those who sacrifice safety for security, derserve neither.
TImid men prefer the calm despotism to the tempestuous seas of liberty.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom go home from us in peace . We ask not your consel.or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed. May your chains set lightly upon you.
I look forward to Ms Mantel’s scintillating trilogy on Brian Boru!
As an ulsterman and holder of both British and Irish passports, I say this is yet another Brexit dividend and don’t let the door hit you on the way out….
The literal grass in Ireland is greener but the metaphorical grass is another story.
Perhaps like many others of her ilk the real reason she is upset is because her cleaner went home and she’d have to pay more than minimum wage to get a new one.
Indeed.
She turned Thomas Cromwell into Nick Clegg. Who will she reinvent Brian Boru as? Justin Trudeau maybe.
my God what a brilliant comment full of on-point observations – I’m an Irish my myself with both passports
Hilary Mantel is NOT an historian. Please, someone, fix that.
“Hooray for Hilary”.
Now relieve her of her UK passport, and if she wants back in, turn her around, at the border, and speed her on her way with a size ten up the posterior. Oh, and if she has a house in the UK then relieve her of it and give it to somebody more in need, I understand there are lots of new arrivals, with big families, who would probably be very grateful of the opportunity to live in the Uk, without publicly sh*****g all over it.
It should be mandatory. Only ONE citizenship per person at any one time.
Why are we still discussing ways to stop the Kent dinghies? We could just hand out free tickets from Charles de Gaulle to Dublin to every refugee in Sangatte. According to Hilary Mantel, the Irish are keen to welcome all comers.
That’s a bit dangerous as there are no border controls between Ireland and the UK.
The comment about refugees shows how deluded Mantel is. She should come and listen to the rhetoric on that subject in, well, more or less any other European country. Britain might not look so bad.
Her comments also imply that the EU/being in the EU imbues a country with a certain moral superiority. How? The EU recently quadrupled the amount of humanitarian aid it would make available for Afghan refugees. But before Mantel and her ilk start getting all doey-eyed about this, this move was anything other than altruistic. It was basically a bribe to countries like Pakistan etc. to keep the refugees OVER THERE and not let them get anywhere near the Aegean. Ever since things spiralled out of control in Afghanistan, there has been a collective hyperventilation going on in Europe and NONE of it, I repeat: NONE OF IT has to do with concern about human welfare and everything to do with keeping migrants the hell away from our borders.
Chew on that, Hilary.
And, I would like to add another consideration for Mantel if she’s so sure the EU is morally superior: think about the smear campaign that went on over the AstraZeneca vaccine. Even pro-EU publications like Politico have openly stated that this was driven by political considerations and has had the very real-world effect of increasing vaccine hesitancy and making it harder to put an end to the pandemic around the world. Mixing up politics and public health…not really a good look for a lovely, cuddly, peace project is it?
The EU’s conduct over the AstraZeneca vaccine was utterly reprehensible. People have almost certainly died as a consequence. If the UK (or Trump) has behaved in a similar way, the screams of condemnation would have been long, loud and hysterical.
Ireland’s record on refugees is not particularly generous.
Less so than countries certain Irish folk like to criticise on the issue, like UK and Australia.
Indeed, and following independence the Irish indulged in a fair old bit of ethnic cleansing but we don’t want to talk about that since it would damage the image the Irish have of themselves as “loved as warm, charming and banterous folk”
“the Irish indulged in a fair old bit of ethnic cleansing” can you back that up with facts?
I am Irish-born and raised with half my family from NI and the other from ROI – do you know why we have two countries on the one island it is because of Westminster and the Royals. See I didn’t blame the brits, only the elites.
as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s on both sides of the border, I know what live ammunitions, bombs and poverty looks
there was no ethnic cleaning between the Irish, it was by Westminster and has been for the last 600 years.
Ireland had a population of 11 million in 1840 and by 1940 it was down to 2.9 million – now that was an ethnic cleansing
You come across as some bitter old bousy who has been in this mortal realm a bit too long to enjoy it anymore.
have you been to Ireland recently, it is full of immigrants – not sure how you can distinguish a refugee from an immigrant they don’t wear badges.
In any event, most of the men coming across the channel are not refugees they are illegal immigrants – shitting on Ireland isn’t going to change that.
I would have returned to my native Canada if Jeremy Jewbaiter had won the 2019 election.
Jeremy looks like a better option than Boris or Keir both of them are more woke than him, also both of them have been sworn in to the WEF possy.
Build Back Better
I’m an Irish citizen through pure accident of birth. My father was born in Ireland but came to the UK at the age of three. He married my German mother while serving in Germany with the British army and my older brother and I were born on UK bases in Germany. I’ve lived in the UK continuously for 58 years and have only ever visited Ireland for three or four days ‘mini-breaks’. I’d gladly become a UK citizen but would have to face the same bureaucracy and expense as a recent arrival from the other side of the World. I know I’m whingeing but it does seem a bit silly.
same as that, it just cost me over £1,500 and that apparently was the cheap route. if you do it the English channel route you can get everything for free, plus a hotel and the dole while you wait the 5 years for processing.
Did anyone say “tax breaks for artists/writers resident in Ireland”?
pulling a reverse-Mantel sounds like something Simone Biles would do
or possibly Stormy Daniels?
“I haven’t renewed my Irish passport, partly out of laziness” you will find the online renewal process amazing compared to the Homes Office. You will get your passport delivered to your down within 2 to 3 days, it literally takes 10 minutes to run through the whole thing online.
I am Irish and am now in the process of becoming an English citizen not because one is better than the other but because it is a handy thing to have – one will have my Irish name and the other will have my English name.
It also entitles my children too both of them
Is it unHerd policy to feature unflattering photos of persons with whom they disagree? This should not be the policy of a respectable journal.
If you mean the one of Ms Mantel, it’s a good likeness. But so what?
It’s the photo being run on many pieces about her Repubblica interview. And to be honest I don’t think I have ever seen a photo of Hilary Mantel that was really “flattering”. UnHerd had to pick one!