J.D. Vance’s foreign policy: When restraint meets culture war

When it comes to foreign policy, history shows us there are two types of US vice president. A few amass outsized power and influence, like George W. Bush’s second in command, Dick Cheney, who was the driving force behind America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. Most not so much. Donald Trump’s first term vice president, Mike Pence, belonged to the latter group; as did Joe Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris. Indeed, when Harris became the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2024, her foreign policy positions were largely a mystery.

Trump’s second term vice president J.D. Vance is shaping up to be more a Cheney than a Harris or a Pence. Trump’s approach to foreign policy makes it hard for any member of his cabinet to exert influence, given that the president tends to take foreign policy decisions independently, often changing his mind on the advice of the last person he spoke to. Still, Vance is carving out a clear foreign policy profile, which is, in certain ways, revolutionising the Republican Party’s approach to how the US does business with Europe and the world.

But that’s where the similarities between Vance and Cheney end. Cheney was a neoconservative interventionist; an advocate of aggressive use of military force for democracy promotion and regime change in the Middle East. He was adversarial towards Russia and supportive of NATO enlargement; his donor networks of traditional arms contractors reflected and shaped this ideology.

Vance is the opposite of this in every way. The moment many Europeans knew he would be no ordinary second in command was likely his controversial speech at the Munich Security Conference (MSC), which was unbridled in its attack on the liberal order and reflected the interests of his Silicon Valley donors. But Vance’s noisy salvo in the transatlantic culture war contrasts starkly with his commitment to restraint in foreign policy. Some of his views thus create headaches for Europe—but they could in some ways could also become an aspirin.

Indiscriminate restraint, discriminate donors

The vice president has repeatedly said—publicly, and in a leaked Signal chat back in April, when he opposed US strikes against Houthis in Yemen—that he favours a restrained approach to US use of military force. He is also sceptical about America’s overseas commitments and rejects what he sees as freeriding by America’s allies on security. As a senator he spoke against US military interventions in the Middle East. Early in Trump’s second presidency, meanwhile, he supported new nuclear deal with Iran and opposed the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June.

Vance’s positions on military restraint in the Middle East align with European interests. This is not necessarily so when it comes to Ukraine. On this matter, his interest is in achieving a “reset” with Russia, even if that comes at the expense of Ukraine’s territorial integrity—just as it is for many other members of the Republican Party’s “restrainer” foreign policy tribe.

At the 2024 MSC, Vance spelled out how US had neither the capacity not the interest to lead on deterring Russia in Europe. This year, he made clear he does not even think Russia is the biggest threat to the continent—that role goes to liberal policies on immigration and “censorship” of conservative voices across Europe. The vice president also played a key role in stirring the infamous verbal attack on Ukraine’s president, Volodomyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office. And, shortly after that meeting, it was a group of restrainers around Vance who sparked the US initiative to suspend intelligence-sharing and weapons deliveries to Ukraine.[1]

If Vance was in charge, he likely would not have agreed—as his boss did in August—to continue selling weapons to Europe for Ukraine through NATO’s new Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), which allows European countries to continue buying American weapons for Ukraine

The change in Washington’s tone on Ukraine mobilised one group of European leaders (the NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, German chancellor Friedrich Merz and Finnish president Alexander Stubb) into a counter-offensive for Trump’s ear. This involved investing money, personal diplomacy and charm to convince the president to continue military support for Ukraine. But if Vance was in charge, he likely would not have agreed—as his boss did in August—to continue selling weapons to Europe for Ukraine through NATO’s new Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), which allows European countries to continue buying American weapons for Ukraine.

And yet, the vice president’s stance on Europe’s strategic autonomy is something to which European governments should pay close attention. Vance is known to be a fan of Charles de Gaulle’s vision of European military independence. The vice president has claimed “it is not in Europe’s interest, and it’s not in America’s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States.” He shuns a transatlantic relationship in which the EU is excessively dependent on the US military protection, and has called Europe’s security infrastructure a “blind spot”.

Unlike Cheney, Vance has fewer donor ties with traditional US defence contractors and more with Silicon Valley tech billionaires. This creates problems for Europe on regulatory issues related to digital technology and helps stoke the free-speech fires of the culture war. But it also opens up opportunities for Europe in the defence industrial realm. Restrainers in the vice president’s network see US weapons stocks and production as overstrained and unable to meet increasing demand. They have therefore consistently encouraged Europeans to boost their own defence industry. In other words, J.D. Vance’s ties to leading tech CEOs influence his critiques of EU digital regulations. But he is likely to encourage the development of Europe’s defence industrial base, which the continent needs to meet its growing number of security challenges.

Short-term pragmatism, long-term staying power

Perhaps as importantly, Vance is a political pragmatist. He knows how to reframe his views and positions to fall in line with Trump’s official policy when it clashes with his advice. Even more shrewdly, he is skilled at reframing those of Trump’s policies he initially opposes—and ultimately legitimising and owning them. Vance’s opposition to US participation in the strikes on Iran is a case in point. He staunchly opposed the use of military force against Iran. But after the fact, Vance commended the action as a tenet of Trump’s new foreign policy doctrine. He claimed it as an example of effective surgical action that was essential to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons development but managed to keep the US out of another “forever war” in Middle East.

Even if Trump’s foreign policy decisions do not always align with Vance’s preferred course of action, the vice president’s footprint on US foreign policy is likely only to increase. There are three reasons for this.

First, Vance’s restrainer foreign policy views are shared by a network of high-level officials in Trump’ cabinet. These include allies in the Pentagon, the intelligence community, parts of the state department and the White House. Those representing Bush-era pro-interventionist foreign policy views have been either sidelined or purged from the administration.

Second, Trump himself has a strong restrainer streak and great antipathy towards military confrontation. This will shape US foreign policy over the next three years, even if it does not entirely determine it. The president temporarily defied Vance on the Iran and the Houthi strikes, for example, but soon corrected course. In keeping with this, the administration’s forthcoming national defence strategy is reported to prioritise the western hemisphere and homeland security. In October the strategy will be joined by a global posture review. Whether these result in a dramatic reduction of US forces in Europe or not, America’s commitment to European security and NATO will be weakened. Trump’s ambiguous response to incursions by Russian drones in Poland (Here we go!”) underlines this changing relationship. As does the president’s seemingly supportive social media post from the margins of the United Nations General Assembly (“…Ukraine, with the support of European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN [back all of its territory]”). Reading between the lines: there will be no active US involvement in this endeavour beyond the sale of certain weapons systems through PURL.

Third, Vance is emerging as the main contender to become the Republican Party’s 2028 presidential nominee. His approach thus seems to be to adjust his expectations and go along with those of the president’s policies that go against his ideology, while quietly building donor networks and political support for the 2028 Presidential nomination. His wife Usha Vance, in a recent speech to a group of school students said: “You don’t always get to choose what you are doing… but the most important thing is to remember the kind of person that you were before it, and the kind of person you want to be.” The US vice president seems to be heeding her advice.

The 2028 US election remains a long way off. But it is not too early for Europeans to start preparing for the possibility of a J.D. Vance presidency. They should plan and act accordingly: first and foremost by taking his advice and reducing their military dependence on America. It is only when the EU and European countries mature into sovereign military actors, capable of acting independently in security affairs, that they will be able to protect their interests in other realms as well—whether that is tech, trade or culture wars.

[1] Author’s conversations with former US officials, June 2025.