July 16, 2024 - 5:30pm
European leaders were already panicking at the prospect of a Donald Trump victory, which looked likely even before Saturday’s assassination attempt galvanised support for the ex-president. But Trump’s announcement yesterday that he has chosen the 39-year-old Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate has sent them into a full-blown meltdown. According to Politico, the mood in Brussels, and in most European capitals, is that Vance’s appointment is “a disaster for Ukraine — and by extension for the European Union”. But why would that be the case?
Vance is more isolationist than any prominent member of the Republican Party, and has been the fiercest opponent in Congress of US financial and military support for Ukraine. He has often described the maximalist military-victory-at-all-costs strategy as completely unrealistic, claiming it has always been known in US foreign policy circles that “the idea that Ukraine was going to throw Russia back to the 1991 borders was preposterous.”
Ukraine “has gone from about 40 million people to 28 million people,” he told Tucker Carlson. “Men in their prime were killed, wounded or maimed. They’ll never be functional people ever again and that is what we have accomplished here: it has become a rump state that will become a permanent welfare client of the United States of America and of Nato, but I joke here when I say that Nato’s going to pick up the tab because we all know they won’t.”
Vance is a strong believer in the need for the US to “stop the killing” by urging Ukraine to strike a peace deal with Russia, even if that means compromising over territory. He doesn’t believe this will embolden the Kremlin to take more Ukrainian land and invade other European countries. “If you look at the size of the Russian armed forces, if you look at what would be necessary to conquer all of Ukraine, much less to go further and further west into Europe, I don’t think the guy’s shown any capacity to be able to accomplish these imperialistic goals, assuming that he has them,” Vance told NBC News.
Vance has also echoed Trump’s long-held view that Nato members have not been spending enough on defence, and need to start taking security into their own hands. “The United States has provided a blanket of security to Europe for far too long,” Vance wrote in the Financial Times in February. He, like Trump, is no peacenik, of course. Neither is he a non-interventionist, having espoused a hawkish approach vis-à-vis countries such as China and Iran — just like Trump.
But they both adhere to a much more realist worldview than Biden’s liberal globalism, which justifies American interventionism in every corner of the planet in the name of upholding US hegemony. Trump’s vision “recognises that we are in an era of rising multipolarity, and you can’t fight against that — you have to deal with it”, Vance told the writer Sohrab Ahmari earlier this year. Thus, in choosing Vance as his vice-presidential candidate, Trump is signalling that he is serious about disengaging from Europe, bringing the war in Ukraine to a close, and pursuing a (slightly) less reckless foreign policy in general.
Why would this be a “tragedy” for Europe? On the contrary, it should be viewed as an opportunity — not just to end a conflict that has proven to be an economic, geopolitical and security disaster for the continent, but also to end Europe’s decades-long vassalage to the US and finally develop its own strategic autonomy.
Unfortunately, European leaders seem to be suffering from a severe case of Stockholm syndrome. They have internalised their sub-imperial role to such an extent that they are terrified at the thought of taking their fate into their own hands. Ultimately, Europeans have much more to fear from their own feckless elites than from a future Trump-Vance White House.
Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.
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SubscribeEuropes “vassalage” is something they chose for themselves, and it’s high time they snap out of it and start defending themselves and stop suckling at Americas teet. I suspect it worries them because it means they will have take money out of their social programs.
“I suspect it worries them because it means they will have take money out of their social programs.”
Exactly.
There was a time when America was happy with the arrangement.
I don’t believe that’s the case. From what I recall, the public at large didn’t particularly like the arrangement, but saw it more as americas responsibility at the time. Later generations just saw it as the way things were and don’t question it as much.
After ww2, embattled Europe was weak and really couldn’t defend itself, so the arrangement had some sense in the face of the USSR, but the American public I don’t think was ever “happy” about it
Yes, for a period after WW2 while Europe rebuilt and the USSR and Warsaw Pact really had the potential to advance farther west.
That all ended 1989-92. Since then NATO has mostly screwed around in the Balkans and then sought a new Cold War by kneecapping Russia rather than integrating it into a real “common European home.” All the while, America’s leader class has encouraged Mexico and much more, China, to steal its industrial economy while at the same time shrinking its own defense industry to a hollow echo of what it had been. Now, its military commitments far exceed its abilities and European NATO is well able to afford its own defense against anything short of a full-on invasion that Russia is far from able or desirous of doing, now and for any foreseeable timeframe.
Most Americans think NATO is worth keeping, but only with a rethinking of its purpose and structure. And there is no sign that Trump or Vance sees things much differently.
If I had to guess, it is not Stockholm Syndrome, it is fear.
Before I say why it is fear, I will simply say that unlike the EU, the US has one person in charge of foreign policy, the president. Congress gets to vote on funding, it can hold hearings, it is supposed to vote on war and the senate votes on treaties, but the reality is that the president sets the foreign policy agenda.
But I think that EU leaders are afraid of the responsibility and whether or not they can handle it or want to be responsible for it.
Right now they can always point to the US as the source of any issues. Once the US is out of the picture they will own it all and be accountable for it all.
But unlike the US, they have to build a consensus among a lot of people to move a policy or to take an action. That takes time and is not easy to do. And, if whatever policy or action they take fails, or even inaction, they will own it without being able to point to the US as the source of the problem.
It also means that they are going to have to invest in their own defense and probably at a cost they do not want to pay, not just in terms of money, which will cut into social spending, but also in terms of probably needing mandatory military service. It will also likely mean needing some level of consolidated foreign policy that supersedes that at the national level and probably some form of all European army. In short, giving Brussels more power, more federalism, and that, from the outside looking in, seems not very likely to work out well but they will have to figure it out.
That said, the US will always back Europe in a pinch. We always have and we likely always will. Trump and Vance are just suggesting that the US step back, focus more internally for awhile and start looking more closely at the Pacific and the Middle East and that we need Europe to step up and deal with Europe and Russia while we do. We cannot be the primary wall for the entire western world. We just do not have the resources to do it.
Excellent comment. You’ve identified precisely why the EU bureaucracy is doomed to flounder in a fast-moving world, and why the UK was right to extricate itself from said bureaucracy. We’d no doubt be among the senior players in any pan-European army (doesn’t have to be just EU-based) but without having to automatically surrender our chain-of-command to a wider political entity.
A Trump/Vance ticket might just be the shock that Europe needs to reawaken from its post-WW2 slumber, before the atrophy becomes terminal.
Good comment. However, I fear the atrophy is already terminal, and irreversible.
The EU has two serious problems that are now being more clearly exposed. First is there very Cumbersome and undemocratic governance model. Second is that the money that should’ve been spent on defence has been spent on fighting climate change. The probability of a Trump victory brings these problems into clearer focus.
Excellent comment. Canadians are well acquainted with the time-honoured practice of taking cheap shots at America the Bully. Aside from being our largest trading partner we as guilty as the EU for abusing the free security blanket the US provides.
That said, the West overall has found itself hobbled by progressive moral warfare pitting the oppressors against the oppressed. As volunteers are no where to be found, one wonders which groups will get their conscription notices first – or which will be granted immunity.
While we’ve been hosting pro-Hamas campouts and policing pronouns the BRICS nations have been busy making big deals in the fossil fuel sector. China is currently the undisputed Big Dog in renewables and the resources required to produce them. Meanwhile irresponsible immigration policies and Net Zero continue to erode the welfare state that the Left claims to champion.
The ‘Vision of the Anointed’ (thanks Thomas Sowell) foisted on us by ‘experts’, technocrat grifters and self-aggrandizing political climbers – have got it wrong: the Somewheres class is the solution, not the problem. Trump/Vance may or may not be the absolute best answer but it certainly is an acknowledgement that things cannot continue as they are.
Well said, Walter. ‘Tis always easier to sit and critique, than to get up, work hard, and sometimes fail and sometimes, to succeed …..
If Trump wins in November and is succeeded by Vance for two terms (Nikki Haley will be NATO’s candidate in 2028), the US has a chance. Vance, based, I suppose, on his upbringing (he is the personification of the American dream), knows that if the US wants to remain a great power it must address domestic economic weaknesses and can’t afford to send (borrowed) billions to Ukraine, much of which will probably end up in Switzerland. Unlike the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Vance is unlikely to cave in to pressure to send more billions to Ukraine. Trump, whose background is very different to Vance, is also unlikely to throw good billions after bad. So this is a chance for Europe too.
If Vance is “the personification of the American Dream”, I am glad I am not American.
He is a very impressive individual. Have you read his book “Hillbilly Elegy”?
Don’t worry, based on your comments elsewhere we are also glad you aren’t an American.
We are glad to!
You must not come from grinding poverty.
Can you expand on that remark about Ukraine weapons money ending up in Switzerland?
Precisely. Most of the aid is jn the form of military equipment. Is he concerned some Ukrainian oligarch going to stash a tank or F-16 in a Swiss vault?
In addition to the transfer of weapons and materiel, billions and billions in cash have been sent to Ukraine, ostensibly to pay government salaries, pensions, etc. it is believed that much of this money is immediately transferred back out to Swiss bank accounts, and, Democrat party coffers.
Given Fazi’s involvement in the “please surrender” letter I don’t think that his ideal future of Europe, a Europe dominated by corruption, brutality, authoritarianism and greed, is one that I share. Putinism is a vicious cancer upon the world, one that should have been operated on long ago.
So what’s holding you back?
Go on…lead! No doubt those of like mind will follow…
Surrender!?
Russia’s economy is the same size as Italy’s! Europe’s population is 4× that of Russia, and its economy is 20×. And yet, after 2 years of war, when Congress cut off aid for several months, Ukraine apparently had nothing!
Where was Europe! The EU? The rest of Nato?
Hiding under their bedsheets?
It’s high time Europe takes responsibility for its own turf!
Europe needs a massive rearmament, and a massive uptick in military production.
To defend against…what (and who) exactly? Or perhaps to go seek “revenge” against Russia? Oh, spare the world this delirious, ahistorical nonsense. Let me try help:
“European rearmament” – just like “European Unity” – is a political and sociological Shrodinger’s Cat, able to exist in a superposition of narrative states … until you lift the lid.
The realities underpinning EU nations have shifted in culture, ethnicity, economic vitality (even sustainability), and most importantly, ideas about their place in history and the World. Terminally indebted and with virtually no industrial base or sense of “shared intentionality”, any attempt from above to impose further suffering to prop up/prolong false-paradigm elite projects and ideological spats with neighbours (able to defend themselves) will lift the lid and expose the true state of “the Cat”:
This is not 1939: Europeans will go to war against one another and/or with their elite overlords LONG before they carry their flags towards the Russian (or any other) border.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. If you want to fight the Russians then off you go to Ukraine. Don’t drag my kids into it. The Russians won’t attack NATO. They’re not insane.
MM didn’t propose marching on Moscow. He proposed readying ourselves for attack – from Russia, Iran, China, whoever. It’s not the worst idea is it?
It seems Vance can talk the talk, but walking the walk will be more difficult.
In any event, the USA will become isolationist over the next thirty years and thrive by doing so.
Trump/Vance may be the vanguard.
It needn’t be Stockholm Syndrome though. Mary Harrington, in the other part of Unherd (I’ve never understood the distinction), puts it like this.
Why the Right loves a Great Man. It could be nothing to do with the “sub-imperial” role, but a cultural change among the political class. They don’t take “their fate into their own hands” on anything.
European leaders are experiencing the same rabbit in headlights moment as the British government when Brexit went through. They don’t want responsibility, much less accoumtability. I am reminded of John Gray, who said that a good friend had given him the best reason for voting against Brexit – the government isn’t up to the task of making it work.
I agree with Fazi – bring it on. We deperately need to expose these amateurs until the Millennial leadership emerges, as it will.
If you think Millennials will make good leaders, you must know different Millennials to me.
Even Millennials are members of the human race who will become middle aged and grow old. Is there no chance they might learn something and even attain some wisdom?
Except I’m scared of Millenial leadership!—at least, if they’re female.
Any nation that spends less than 2% on its defense cannot be taken seriously. Like a man who plants a vineyard and puts up a No Trespassing sign, but no fence and no watchman, this is he …..
Like China?
Even if the war does end up in a bloody stalemate, Russia will be suffering as well. Any damage that can be done to Russia now will push back the date when it has to be fought again (although that date is inevitable). The idea that Russia will be welcomed back into the civilised world is laughable.
Yes, let’s encourage the Ukrainians to sacrifice an entire generation. They’re not our kids, so who cares, eh? Repulsive comment.
No, it’s not. The way things stand today, the fewer Russians the better off the world is.
If you spend decades as part of a recklessly antagonistic military alliance, then the process of winding down that alliance is always going to feel a bit scary because you know how many people you’ve antagonised and you justly fear that they may treat any diminution of your own military strength as the right moment to take advantage.
But the fact is that most of the rival powers we face are vastly less antagonistic than NATO has been since 1990. It is almost certainly projection to assume that they will seek to capitalise on military weakness. We would. But they might not.
That said, even though I think that a US administration seeking a sensible settlement in Ukraine would be a very good thing indeed, just about everything else about Vance is awful.
I’ve never understood why people fawned over Hillbilly Elegy; there’s real pathos in it for sure, but part of the tragedy it describes is how Vance’s own desperation to escape those circumstances prevents him from seeing just how fortunate his own escape is and how completely that stifles any sympathy he might have had for those who didn’t catch the breaks he did.
No he has not. Last year, Vance walked the picket line with UAW members striking for higher wages and benefits. Read Lee Fang’s article (on Substack) for the actual facts on Vance’s anti-corporate stances and legislation he has cosponsered with some of the Senate’s most progressive members. Or do the research yourself.
George, how perfect you must be of character and deed, to sit in judgement with such ease over your fellow man …..
I’m not saying I’m perfect at all. Where do you get that from?
I’m saying that his book describes a whole region of the US where incentives and values are misaligned in ways large and small. He is pretty clear that, but for the influence of his grandmother and his first c.o. when he joined the army, he might well have ended up on the scrapheap.
That part of his story is acutely observed and rather moving. Which makes it all the more striking that he seems to have so little sympathy with those who did not have the support he did. He is very aware that he didn’t get out by hauling himself up on his own bootstraps. But he offered little other than “bootstraps” for his peers.
He was still pretty young when he wrote it and people grow – he’s certainly smart enough.
You think the Islamic Republic of Iran isn’t an antagonistic nation? It calls for the death of Israel (‘little Satan’) and America (‘big Satan’) daily.
He probably means they aren’t coming to invade the UK anytime soon.
And, remind me, why does Iran hate America so?
I’m sure it has nothing to do with America’s coup against Mossadegh in the 50’s, its restoration of the Pahlavis and maintenance of their brutal and profoundly unpopular regime.
Moreover, I am quite certain that America’s sponsorship of Iraq in the magnificently sanguinary Iran/Iraq conflict is entirely irrellevant to Iran’s view of America.
None of which excuses the murderous behaviour of the regime in Iran (nor its own horrific actions during the Iran/Iraq war). But, it’s surely relevant your question – no?
“Ultimately, Europeans have much more to fear from their own feckless elites than from a future Trump-Vance White House.”
Bravo!
Excellent. Our meek Elites love role playing as Masters of new Union of States. But they shrink like peacenik mice from the grubby realities of imperial power and responsibility. Their betrayal of Ukraine echoes their monstering of Greece and Brexit Britain. We need grown ups from America to school this rabble and steer us to a safer world.