JD Vance on Ukraine and Europe
if you want to have allies, you need to be an ally
Donald Trump recently nominated JD Vance as his running mate in the US presidential election later this year. Vance is famous for his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. In the past he has called Trump an "idiot" and "America's Hitler" but is now clearly a Trump supporter.
Earlier this year, Vance wrote a piece about the Russia-Ukraine war in the Financial Times. Since he may well become Vice President, it it worthwhile to examine his views. I'm therefore reproducing the article in full here, with my comments.
JD Vance: Europe must stand on its own two feet on defence
It is reasonable to ask if US support has made Europe neglect its security
The United States has provided a blanket of security to Europe for far too long. In the aftermath of the cold war, European nations made deep and lasting cuts to their defence budgets.
Indeed. As did the USA (where defence spending went from 6.6% of GDP in 1986 to 3.3% in 2018 -- the equivalent figures for the UK are 4.5% and 2.2%). This would have been OK if after 2014 Europe had started getting serious about defence again, but that didn't happen.
Estimates suggest the continent would have spent an additional $8.6tn on defence over 30 years had they maintained cold war levels of military expenditure. As the American defence budget nears $1tn per year, we ought to view the money Europe hasn’t spent on defence for what it really is: an implied tax on the American people to allow for the security of Europe.
There's an element of truth in that, but I would add that the USA has had the level of defence spending that it does in US interests not anyone else's interests.
I do think it's in Europe's interest to get serious about defence, both in terms of spending more money and also in developing structures for doing things cooperatively, such as a European military alliance.
Nothing in recent memory demonstrates this more clearly than the war in Ukraine. There is frankly no good reason that aid from the US should be needed. Europe is made up of many great nations with productive economies. They ought to have the capacity to handle the conflict, but over decades they have become far too weak. America has been asked to fill the void at tremendous expense to its own citizens.
It is true that Europe has about 10 times the GDP of Russia. However there is no mechanism for Europe to jointly meet and decide what to do (sure there are NATO and EU, but both organisations are hampered by their need for unanimity. That's why a new organisation is needed). It's clear from the article that mentally Vance just thinks of Europe as one entity, but it isn't -- it is lots of different countries with different languages, customs, governments, etc.
But taken together, European countries have given Ukraine more aid than the USA, despite USA having a larger economy. So, if anyone isn't pulling their weight on Ukraine, it's USA, not Europe (source):
Behind the price tag, this conflict has revealed the shocking weakness of the defence industrial base on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe and America, fragmented defence industries make limited quantities of the most advanced weapons on Earth, but struggle to produce heavy weaponry at the speed and scale needed to win a major conflict. For all the talk about who spends the most on defence by percentage of gross domestic product, Russia currently makes more than twice the amount of artillery shells each month than Europe and the US combined.
This is all true, and needs to be fixed.
Defence spending and defence readiness are two different things. For example, Germany spends considerably more than France on defence each year, with little to show for it. The French army includes six highly capable combined-arms brigades ready to deploy and perform combat missions, but the Bundeswehr can barely scrape together a single combat-ready brigade.
This is also correct: it's not enough just to spend money on defence, one also has to spend it wisely. E.g. UK has more people, GDP and defence spending than South Korea, yet the South Korean army is vastly bigger with 10-20 times the amount of soldiers, artillery and tanks than the UK. I have spoken about this before.
The question each European nation needs to ask itself is this: are you prepared to defend yourself? And the question the US must ask is: if our European allies can’t even defend themselves, are they allies, or clients?
These issues go beyond budgetary gimmicks and trilateral summit attendance. They demand tangible military capacity and industrial power. London is the banking centre of Europe, and perhaps the world. But wars are not fought with dollars, pounds and financial derivatives, they are fought with bullets.
Money can get turned into military capability but it takes time. We should have stated to get serious about this in 2022 (or better still 2014).
Germany is the most important economy in Europe, but it relies on imported energy and borrowed military strength. US leaders across the spectrum support Europe and see the value of generations-old alliances. But as we watch European power atrophy under an American protectorate, it is reasonable to ask whether our support has made it easier for Europe to ignore its own security.
It has. Europe after the end of the Cold war thought it was the End Of History and said to itself "no more war, let's put our feet up". Sadly war is interested in Europeans even if Europeans aren't interested in war.
Which brings us to Ukraine. In the press, the burden-sharing debate is often framed in monetary terms: who spends what, and how much should each nation spend? But this conceals the real resource constraint. Wars are won with men and materiel.
True enough.
Starting with materiel: we don’t make enough of it. At current production rates, it will take years to rebuild military stockpiles after this war — even if we stop sending critical defence stocks today, as we most certainly should. A firm commitment to western re-industrialisation, to training skilled workers and rebuilding production capacity is needed.
I totally agree here. Maybe the incoming Starmer government will commit to re-industrialisation. I know I would if I was in charge.
Ukraine also needs more men. The average Ukrainian soldier is about 43 years old. Its former top general, Valery Zaluzhny recently said he needed a mobilisation of fresh troops. Ukraine will only be able to continue at this rate for so long until western troops are asked to answer the call.
This is incorrect, because manpower is not the main constraint Ukraine is facing; equipment and ammo are, ammo especially so.
We owe it to our European partners to be honest: Americans want allies in Europe, not client states, and our generosity in Ukraine is coming to an end. Europeans should regard the conclusion of the war there as an imperative. They must keep rebuilding their industrial and military capabilities. And Europe should consider how exactly it is going to live with Russia when the war in Ukraine is over.
Here Vance gets to his point. But if America isn't going to help Europe defend Ukraine against Russia, why should Europe help America in any future war? They would have no incentive to do so.
Indeed, why would anyone want to be an ally of America? I am reminded of the 2023 conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, when Russia didn't come to Armenia's aid, despite Armenia being a member of the CSTO (Russia's equivalent of NATO). Following this, Armenia distanced itself from Russia and became more oriented towards the West. The motto of this story is if you want to have allies you have to be an ally.
Between 2001 and 2020 Britain spent about $45 billion helping America in its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. When Britain left the EU, and asked America for a trade deal both president Trump and president Biden refused. (They had every right to do so, of course, but I cannot help but think how ridiculous and contemptible British politicians are when they insist Britain has a "special relationship" with the USA, as if they are trying to pretend to themselves that Britain is still an important country in the world following its loss of the largest empire that ever existed.)
As well as Europe, the rest of the world is looking. If the USA withdraws help from Ukraine, China will think it is less likely that the USA will defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion, and will thus be more likely to invade. Taiwan might then seek to develop nukes, or might seek an accommodation with China -- and if that happens, then China will have won the massive prize of controlling a large part of the world's semiconductor industry, without firing a shot. Japan and South Korea will be making similar calculations, and may well also chose to be satellites of China if they think that's the best deal going.
In the US, justifications for the war often depend on a contemporary domino theory: unless we stop Putin in Ukraine, he won’t stop there.
Yes, because that's the truth: he won't. After conquering Ukraine, his next excursion might be Moldova, or the Baltic States, or Kazakhstan.
But the time has come for Europe to stand on its own feet. That doesn’t mean it has to stand alone,
Well is America going to help defend Ukraine or not? Here Vance seems to want to have his cake and eat it.
but it must not continue to use America as a crutch.
Trump is likely to win the presidential election. If he does, and withdraws support for Ukraine, what might happen? I can envisage a best-case scenario and an worst-case scenario.
The best-case scenario
It would be the impetus Europe needs to finally get its act together and be serious about defence and security. In practise this means things like European states:
spending 2.5-4% of GDP on defence
having large armies with lots of infantry and artillery, the two most important arms; this probably involves conscription
forming a European Military Alliance (EMA) to coordinate everything better
inviting countries outside Europe to join the EMA
This last would be a very good thing, since Europe has vast amounts of soft power, and could fairly easily become very powerful if it tried.
The worst-case scenario
Or alternately, it might embolden Russia and China, leading to them taking over large parts of the world while a demoralised West looks on hopelessly, and then 20-30 years later China develops AGI and then (if they're competent) the Chinese Communist Party led by the uploaded mind of its General Secretary, rules the universe forever, or (if they're incompetent) the universe gets turned into paperclips or something else that doesn't preserve human values.
What will actually happen
Probably something between the two. The stakes are rather high, which ought to concentrate people's minds.
The last great military leader that the US had, Dwight Eisenhower, was instrumental in forming NATO as it's first supreme commander, before becoming President. In February of 1951 he wrote "If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe have not been returned to the US, then this whole project (NATO) will have failed"
In January of 1961, as his second term as President ended, he warned of the military, industrial, Congressional and technology complex and its threat to world peace and the US economy. His speech is available on the internet, both in writing and a video clip. It should be watched or read by everyone who believes that the US should drain its treasury in the defense of the leeches who control Europe today and have controlled it since Eisenhower's warnings.
Those of us who served in Europe during the 60's were the pawns used by the politicians and the military industrial complex to waste trillions of dollars in the defense of those who refuse to defend themselves as evidenced by their defense budgets, unless you consider the five hairdressers that Belgium, home of NATO, sent as their contribution to the needless war in Afghanistan as something other than the insult it was meant to be.
There are a number of reasons why these criticisms of European behaviour are unfair and ahistorical, but here are a few off the top of my head:
1) The Ukraine was the place where the USSR kept most of it's nuclear arsenal. In order to persuade them to let go of that advantage when it became independent, Russia, the US and Britain signed a treaty in Budapest stating they would not militarily or economically coerce the Ukraine (or Belarus or Kazakhstan) in the future. And that if they were coerced, those countries would go to the UN to seek help for them. The EU and NATO were not involved in this.
2) After 1945, Germany was forcibly disarmed. In fact, I remember in the 1980s, right wing politicians were trying to get this over-ruled because it was felt that Germany had gained much of its post-war wealth because its economy was focussed on consumer manufacturing and engineering instead of the country's brightest and best being shoehorned into armaments manufacture, as they were in the UK and the US. The same had happened in Japan, and it's domestic manufacturing had similarly grown and thrived. (I was involved in CND and was following these arguments in the 1980s more closely than I do now).
Now, of course, no British politicians of any party care a damn about saving, let alone creating, manufacturing jobs.
3) The EEC was set up specifically to bring about co-operation and peace on a continent which had been ravaged by war twice between 1914 and 1945, but also many times in the 19th century. It was not set up as a military alliance for quite specific reasons, and if it had tried to create a military strategy, NATO - led by the US, which had troop bases all over Europe - would have been vociferous in its opposition, as would the US political establishment. Any suggestion of a common European army has been totally opposed in the decades since the end of WWII.
Now, we know that the MAGAts know little and care less about either history or truth, so of course Vance is just going to echo his master's voice. But the rest of us should remember how we got here and why.