A more cuddly JD Vance has emerged – I wonder why ...Middle East

JD Vance has been, as one old friend quips, to “nice school”. Now we see a marked change from the mordant style of a Vice President who has so far pitched himself as the lead Hells Angel in the Gang of Trump motor-revvers.

In an interview with the (largely sympathetic) Unherd website, we got the affable, upbeat version of “JD”, successor to the hard-line snark of punitive Vance, who has been busy telling Europe off for months. It is a reminder that this Veep is a protean figure – an outrider for the Maga movement, but capable of a switcheroo into schmoozing when it suits the cause.

So what is the cause, beyond the advancement of Vance-ment?

Talking to – and more often at – hapless Europeans now appears to be part of his brief. Undoubtedly, there has been a tonal switch. The “JDV” in the Unherd version is fond of Europe but solemnly wishes it would get its act together on defence. It should not be a “vassal” of the US, he said, but at the same time should warm to being told off by Washington.

square ANNE MCELVOY

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“I love European people,” he blandished. “You can’t separate American culture from European culture.” Sceptics might reply that the present administration is having a good go at that.

The UK gets a large dose of love-bombing and a convincing pledge that a trade deal is imminent. No one on Team Keir is going to turn down this rough courtship – though any trade agreement would need to be sizable to offset the existing levies imposed on the UK and far larger ones on steel and cars.

But one reason for the cosier tone on the international stage is a desire to offset a blizzard of negative headlines which have followed the President’s abrupt row-back on tariffs. Only a couple of weeks ago these tariffs were presented as a definitive game-changer which would force concessions and prompt industrial production back to the US. The massive fall in bond markets and unease at the consequences for the more industrial end of Republican states appear to have worked their magic and corrected a reckless course.

That leaves the job of making all of this sound coherent to Vance, who has always encouraged a more strategic focus on China than the splashing of tariffs around the globe.

His default setting in public is pugnacious. But even in the leaked messages of Trump’s inner circle discussing the timing of a range of missile attacks on Houthi insurgents in Yemen, Trump’s deputy is one of the voices asking whether it was tactically wise to act now, or better to prepare public opinion for the shift of a declared “peace president” to one ordering air attacks in the Middle East to protect shipping – a policy which looks a lot like his predecessor’s.

Admittedly, a trade-halting 145 per cent charge imposed on Beijing’s imports to the US is a dubious way to boost global prosperity. It is however aligned with a view that Vance has long espoused – namely that Chinese companies holding so much debt in America is a risk, and that the wider purpose of the tariff era is to redress the imbalance of power on trade with America’s main economic rival.

square ADAM BOULTON

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Some of this is pragmatic trade policy, but a lot of it is a belief system about America’s role in the world and grievances which go far beyond tariffs.

Vance’s close friend and intellectual mentor on religious matters, James Orr at Cambridge University, defends Vance’s exasperation as, “talking about the leadership of Europe and not the people of Europe – he is being forceful with his leadership”. That element is on show in the interview.

It is also where we move to a less coherent area of the Vance doctrine – and Russia (and therefore Ukraine’s fate) is at the heart of it.

It’s widely accepted across Europe that spending on security and defence needs to rise, and equally accepted that the cause of this is a more fervent Russian appetite to restore the might of the old Soviet Union, prising as many countries in the old Eastern Bloc away from a post-war Western idea of democracy as possible.

At the same time, Vance is trying to explain away the US administration’s glaring pivot away from supporting Ukraine, whose pleas for more external help in its self-defence he dismisses as “absurd”, to accepting pretty much any pallid excuse for continued aggression and excuse-making dreamt up by the Kremlin’s mouthpieces: “It does not mean you morally support the Russia cause or the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but you need to understand their strategic red lines”.

It is not unusual for new administrations to want to reset relations with Russia and often on more bilateral terms than other allies might like. But to dismiss the territorial integrity of Ukraine and its leadership is not just an “understanding”. It is a cave-in, and one that aligns with support for other autocracies – including a now shakier looking Viktor Orban in Hungary. The “understanding”, alas, seems only to work one way.

square KATE MALTBY

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And it is also a view whose terms will endanger other countries from the Baltic states to the Balkans – and embolden Moscow’s desire to destabilise more of Western Europe, not least by backing many of the far-right forces Vance thinks need more of a hearing in politics. In short, Vance’s recipe for keeping Europe safe is that it should pay up a lot more to defend itself from the advances of the very Russia that he placates or excuses.

For ardent Vancians, this is simply an upgrade on the pragmatism of the late Henry Kissinger towards large nuclear powers (although Kissinger would surely have counselled against starting a trade feud with China without much evidence that the US is in a position to win it).

There is always in Vance a kind of intelligence and slyness which is a refinement on Trump’s more megalomaniacal truth-inversions. It is also a case-building exercise for ambitions which stretch beyond this White House and position him as a figure with global stature on the new right, with a possible eye on the presidential contest in 2028. So far, his most likely rival on that front is the president’s son (and closest adviser) Donald Trump Jnr.

For a vice president with his own urge to rule rather than deputise, Europe, alternatively cherished and upbraided, is another talking point – a big old place on the map where the coming Washington power battle will be played out.

Anne McElvoy is co-host of the Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast

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