Probably the most notable thing from a European point of view about JD Vance, the now likely next Vice President of the United States, is his attitude to foreign policy. For many readers, I am sure the next few paragraphs will read like manna from heaven:
Vance comes from a long dormant school of American isolationism. Unlike almost any major candidate of either party for several generations, he would like to reduce America’s role in the world, rather than enhance it. He is critical of US spending on NATO and US subsidies for European defence. He would, quite unambiguously, either scale back or end entirely US support for Ukraine. He is skeptical of US support for the independence of Taiwan in the face of potential Chinese aggression. Of the US’s current foreign policy entanglements, he seems committed only to the relationship with Israel, who most Americans see as a vital security partner in the Middle East.
Now, from the sole and selfish point of view of an American, a return to the pre-1941 stance of military isolationism is understandably attractive to many voters: The United States has paid more in blood and gold than any other country since the end of the second world war for what might be called the preservation of the liberal world order. The US funds standing armies in South Korea, Germany, and the Middle East, as well as an Air Force and Navy larger by multiples than that of any other nation. The US’s spending on defence dwarfs that of any other state, and it invests more annually in its armed services than the next six NATO countries put together. With a national debt approaching thirty trillion dollars, Vance is probably correct in his instinct that such commitments are not ultimately sustainable without big tax increases in the long term.
The problem, of course, is that most of my readers are not Americans. The other problem is that nature abhors vacuums.
There is, it seems to me, an assumption amongst a particular class outside the US that a general pullback of the United States from its self-assumed role as global policeman would result in a safer, less militarised world. That, for example, a reduced US commitment in Europe would ease a lot of the paranoia in Moscow about NATO’s ambitions, and allow the Russians to become more congenial and friendly safe as they might be in the knowledge that the Americans had no interest in eastward expansion of western values. The problem is that this would seem to me to be a very naïve reading of the likely impacts.
We know, for example, that the European Union, or at least many in Brussels who have significant influence over the future direction of the European Union, actively resent being in the shadow of the United States. We further know that for many European countries, fear and loathing of the Russians is, for historical reasons, significantly greater than the fear and loathing felt in somewhere like Nebraska. We further know that there is already significant pressure being exerted at European level for increased defence spending and arms production. Poland, for example, is already on course to become a military greater power on land than either the French or the Germans.
There is another problem, which is that a muscular United States deters its allies, as well as its adversaries. Countries like Poland and entities like the European Union have significantly less reason to fear the Russians (I am using Russia as an example here, but the same thing could be written about Korea, Japan, and Taiwan vis China, or about the Saudis and Jordanians vis Iran) whilst the US is standing as guarantor of their interests. Were those guarantees to be weakened, then the countries guaranteed have more reason to become jumpy, and perhaps to act less rationally.
Beware, in other words, the devil you don’t know.
There is, it strikes me, a tremendous hunger for change in the west. That is evidenced enough by election results where, across the western world, the re-election of Governments is becoming a rare event with voters generally eager to toss out the bums at every available opportunity (oddly, Ireland remains an exception here). The US is no different, with a right that is now significantly more nationalist and more “America First” than it has been at any time since before Pearl Harbor. Over the coming decade or more, the US will have to decide because of demographic trends whether to prioritise defence, or to cut back on the armed forces and re-direct that money towards social spending on things like the rapidly mounting Social Security bill. It may also have to contend with a debt crisis that is slowly spiralling towards the unsustainable.
The problem for the rest of us is this: It is very hard to find, in human history, an example of the decline of a superpower which has been followed by an era of peace and harmony. The fall of Rome led directly into a period so bleak that we now call it the dark ages. The fall of the European Empires led directly to the second world war. The dissolution of the Caliphate led to generations of intra-islamic bloodletting. Even in more recent times, the collapse of the Soviet Union hasn’t exactly resulted in an era of enlightenment in many of its former states like Kyrgyzstan or Chechnya. The idea that you can simply take American power off the global map and make the world a more peaceful place is at odds with the history of the world.
None of this is to say that Vance’s isolationism is wrong, from the American point of view. It is simply to say that those who cheer it might perhaps be careful what they wish for.