An argument in the White House tore apart the US alliance with Ukraine, shook European leaders and highlighted JD Vance’s key role in forcefully expressing Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The vice-president has come out punching on the global stage – so what is it that drives his worldview?
Vance’s first major foreign speech, at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February, caught many by surprise. Rather than focusing on the war raging in Ukraine, the US vice-president only briefly mentioned the bloodiest European conflict since World War Two. Instead, he used his debut on the international stage to berate close US allies about immigration and free speech, suggesting the European establishment was anti-democratic.
It’s also led to questions about the winding ideological journey he’s made during his years in the conservative movement – and what he truly believes now.
“He’s much more of a pragmatist than an ideologue,” said James Orr, associate professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Cambridge and a friend whom Vance has described as his “British sherpa”. “He’s able to articulate what is and is not in the American interest. And the American interest is not the interest of some abstract utopia or matrix of propositions and ideas, but the American people.”
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