{"id":28068,"date":"2026-08-13T19:11:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T19:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/28068\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T19:11:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T19:11:07","slug":"ukraine-iran-j-d-vance-is-learning-an-important-foreign-policy-lesson-the-hard-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/28068\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine Iran: J.D. Vance is learning an important foreign policy lesson the hard way."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n

Some higher-ups in the Trump administration are starting to realize they need two assets that they\u2019ve previously disparaged: allies and military officers who know how to think independently.<\/p>\n

In an embarrassing moment on July\u00a031, according to the Financial Times<\/a>, Vice President J.D. Vance had to plead<\/a> with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to stop firing drones at oil-shipping vessels in the Black Sea because the attacks\u2014while slashing Russia\u2019s energy revenues\u2014were also raising global gasoline prices, hurting not only the economy but President Donald Trump\u2019s popularity.<\/p>\n

It must have been particularly embarrassing because Vance\u2019s hostility toward Ukraine and toward Zelensky personally has been even more virulent and consistent than Trump\u2019s. It was Vance who incited the disastrous exchange at the Oval Office meeting in February 2025<\/a>, accusing Zelensky of being insufficiently thankful for the U.S. aid he had received, which prompted Trump to deride Zelensky for holding no \u201ccards\u201d in his war with Russia\u2014then to cancel the ceremony and lunch at which the two leaders and their teams were to sign and celebrate an investment accord.<\/p>\n

Afterward, Trump hailed the tense exchange as \u201cgreat television\u201d (the meeting was broadcast live) and followed the grisly show with cutbacks in military aid to Ukraine, which, though subsequently somewhat resumed, has never been restored to previous levels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And now, 18 months later, Vance had to beg the leader whom he had humiliated\u2014and whom he has publicly demeaned and insulted several times since<\/a>\u2014because it turns out that he, Trump, and the world oil market need a favor: In short, they would like for Zelensky to act the way an ally acts, compromising his own interests a little bit to advance his allies\u2019 interests.<\/p>\n

Zelensky complied with Vance\u2019s request, which was reportedly made in secret (perhaps to avoid the embarrassment). Now let\u2019s see if Trump will grant Ukraine the license to produce Patriot air-defense missiles, the only weapons that can shoot down Russian ballistic missiles. Trump said he would when he met with Zelensky last month, then backpedaled soon after. On Thursday, Zelensky proposed that the U.S. supply him with just 10\u00a0percent of its Patriots<\/a>. (He might have asked for more, but he knows, like everyone else, that the U.S. shot off roughly half of its Patriot stockpile in the unnecessary war on Iran<\/a>.) A good idea. We\u2019ll see if Zelensky\u2019s assent to Vance\u2019s plea moves Trump to respond in kind. If he doesn\u2019t, we\u2019ll see how long Zelensky will wait before once again attacking oil ships in the Black Sea.<\/p>\n

Trump got a taste of the lesson\u2019s flip side\u2014what happens when a nation, even a big nation, doesn\u2019t have allies\u2014when he asked members of NATO to help him out in the war on Iran and, except for a few token gestures by one or two members, they said no.<\/p>\n

They might have received this request more warmly if Trump had treated them a bit better over the years, if he hadn\u2019t yelled at them so much and threatened to quit the alliance, even suggesting that he might not come to their aid if they were invaded by Russia. They still might not have taken part in the Iran war, but they might have cordially advised him of the many reasons why going to war made no sense, thus bolstering the warnings that some of his own advisers were issuing (though all too gingerly, knowing the grim fate of Trump\u2019s inside dissidents<\/a>).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Fred Kaplan
\n Here\u2019s What\u2019s Holding Trump Back From Making a Deal With Iran
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

One widely reported result of Trump\u2019s indifferent-to-hostile attitude toward allies is that many of them are seriously discussing ways to form new relationships\u2014in security, trade, supply lines, and other transactions\u2014that rely much less on the U.S. This trend is affecting not just the leaders but the populations of those countries. In a recent Pew Research Center poll<\/a> of 36 nations, the people in 25 of them hold a more favorable view of China than they do of the United States. Of the nine that like us equally or better, just two\u2014Hungary and Poland\u2014are members of NATO.<\/p>\n

The second realization\u2014that more independent thinkers are needed in the military\u2014may not yet have percolated through the White House or the uppermost levels of the Pentagon, where \u201cWar Secretary\u201d Pete Hegseth has ordered soldiers to take testosterone tests<\/a> and has eliminated programs in which officers can take yearlong fellowships<\/a> to study strategy and history at elite civilian universities. Hegseth has denounced these programs as \u201cwoke.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet, on July\u00a029, a senior officer in the intelligence branch of U.S. Central Command, which plans and executes military operations in the Middle East, emailed a broad group of analysts and officers, stating: \u201cWe are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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As Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen, the CNN reporters who broke this story, put it, \u201cThe crowdsourcing-style query, which military officials said was unusual over email, is one sign of the limited\u2014and potentially unpalatable\u2014options available to Trump to force Iran into a detail on his terms.\u201d The idea of \u201ckicking off\u201d a \u201cbrainstorming session via email\u201d was \u201cto see if anyone had a better idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Better ideas of this sort are unlikely to come from the sessions\u2014rollicking as they may be on other grounds\u2014in which Hegseth, visiting a military base or a warship<\/a>, orders the gathering warriors to drop and give him 50 pushups. They\u2019re more likely to come from officers who\u2019ve been seasoned on the battlefield and in academic seminars. I wonder if Hegseth has asked Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one of the president\u2019s favorite generals, what, if anything, he learned during his fellowship at Harvard\u2019s John F. Kennedy School of Government<\/a>\u2014and whether, when it comes to recruiting senior staffers, he looks for men and women with high T or high IQs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[43,42,2880,26],"class_list":["post-28068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-jd-vance","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}