Trump-Vance would focus more on China than Russia

Donald Trump’s choice of Ohio senator J D Vance as his running mate in the presidential election has reignited European fears of American abandonment. Vance is known for his opposition to aid for Ukraine and his almost singular focus on China as the defining security challenge for the United States.

If Trump wins in November, Vance as his vice president would further the reorientation of US foreign and security policy away from the Euro-Atlantic area towards the Indo-Pacific. And given Vance’s likely aspirations for the presidency in a post-Trump era, this will have significant implications beyond another Trump presidency.

By choosing Vance, Trump plans to lock in his brand of American populism. It’s a choice that signals the former president’s now complete control over the Republican party and its future direction. More than anything else, Vance’s appointment as running mate signals the end of the post-1945 internationalist US foreign policy consensus.

European leaders are thus rightly worried about the continuing US commitment to European security. At the Munich security conference in February 2024, Vance reportedly told his European interlocutors that he is “much more interested in some of the problems in East Asia right now than I am in Europe.”

For Vance, the choice is a zero-sum game: arms for Ukraine would be better sent to Taiwan. In April 2024, he wrote a scathing op-ed in the New York Times arguing that rather than providing more military aid to Ukraine, Washington should convince Kiev to give up on the goal of restoring its full sovereignty within its internationally recognized borders of 1991 and start negotiating with Russia.

This is a position shared by Trump and appreciated by Russian President Vladimir