Republican divisions over Russia’s security threat grow as Vance joins Trump ticket
There is a growing divide within the Republican Party regarding the U.S.’s global stance, particularly in addressing the Russian threat, as Sen. JD Vance joins the presidential race.
The calls to cease military aid to Ukraine represent a fundamental shift within the party, moving away from the traditional GOP neoconservative foreign policy approach that favored interventionism.
Ronald Reagan famously adopted a “peace through strength” strategy, emphasizing military power to maintain global stability, a policy embraced by both Bush administrations.
However, the policies implemented by Republican Party leaders from the 1980s to the early 2000s have led to a rise in a different GOP approach – isolationism, a strategy largely absent since before World War II.
“I do think that is a repudiation,” Victoria Coates, a former deputy national security adviser to Trump, told Digital, referring to the decades-long wars in the Middle East. “A rejection of the traditional establishment neoconservative stance, which favors military intervention to promote democracy.
“I just don’t think that that’s been a winning formula,” she said, noting that many Republicans today agree, including Vance.
In a May speech at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Vance highlighted the stark divisions within the GOP regarding foreign policy.
“We really have to get past the tired old slogans,” Vance said. “The way that American foreign policy has proceeded for the last 40 years — think about the wreckage and think about the actual results.
“People are terrified of confronting new arguments, I believe, because they’re terrified of confronting their own failure over the last 40 years.”
In his speech, Vance specifically targeted Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has been a strong supporter of Ukraine and who entered the Senate the year Vance was born in 1984.
“Nearly every foreign policy position he’s held has actually been wrong,” Vance claimed.
The effort by some within the Republican Party to reduce aid to Ukraine stalled military supplies to the war-torn nation for six months, revealing the extent to which Kyiv relies on the U.S. in its fight against Russia.
While many within the GOP view Ukraine’s victory over Moscow as crucial to U.S. security, Vance and Trump believe Europe should bear a greater share of the burden.
Concerns among NATO allies about the potential for discontinued aid to Ukraine under a Trump presidency have fueled speculation that European security, and even the alliance itself, could be jeopardized.
Headlines this week reported “concern,” “anxiety,” and a “nightmare” scenario for Ukraine as Vance has unequivocally opposed continued aid to Kyiv and instead advocated for a stronger stance against China.
“I think we should stop supporting the Ukrainian conflict,” Vance said in May. “I do not think that it is in America’s interest to continue to fund an effectively never-ending war in Ukraine.
“The second-biggest criticism I make about the war in Ukraine and our approach to it is that we are subsidizing the Europeans to do nothing.”
Trump initially led the charge to encourage more NATO nations to meet their 2006 defense spending pledges, and the war in Ukraine has ensured that 23 of the 32 nations are now meeting the 2% GDP threshold.
Some nations have not only reached their goals but have begun contributing significantly more, including Poland, which contributes 4.12%. Estonia, the U.S., Latvia, and Greece all contribute over 3%, and Lithuania contributes 2.85%.
Despite progress in international defense efforts, a fundamental division persists within the GOP concerning the U.S. and its relationship with NATO.
“They’ve done a great job, and that’s terrific,” Coates, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, said. “Unfortunately, their scale is not enough to really move the needle.
“We need the big economies,” she added, pointing to Canada, which still only contributes 1.37% of its GDP to defense spending despite being the world’s 10th largest economy. “That just can’t go on.”
Experts agree that it is unlikely Trump would fully withdraw from the NATO alliance. However, there are concerns that he could weaken the alliance by cutting aid to Ukraine or withdrawing U.S. troops from Europe.
While Vance has argued that “America can’t do everything” and therefore should focus on the threat posed by China, Hal Brands, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., argued that the situation is not that simple.
“U.S.-China competition is not simply a regional competition. It’s a global competition,” he said. “It involves things like control of advanced technologies, as well as things like the military balance of power.”
Brand, who is also the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, argued that the U.S. needs to maintain its European relations to leverage its influence “to choke off China’s access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing.”
“Even if you think that China is the overriding priority in U.S. policy, you won’t be effective in dealing with China unless you have some degree of influence that the transatlantic relationship provides,” he added.
Growing concerns exist among Republicans who support a broad U.S. international presence that isolationism is on the rise, and there are security threats that could arise from this approach.
“It has become all too easy to just assume that Europe would be fine after a U.S. departure. When history actually provides very little support for that idea,” Brands said. “There’s long been this tendency to try to remain aloof from problems in other regions, and we saw that before World War II.”
It has long been argued that U.S. reluctance to engage in European affairs in the lead-up to World War II emboldened Adolf Hitler to pursue his ambitions largely unchecked by the U.S. or its British and French allies, ultimately costing the Allies dearly.
“President Trump has said that the U.S. should not be involved in Ukraine because . And that’s very reminiscent of American involvement you heard from the anti-interventionists in the 1930s.”
Vance has rejected the “isolationist” label and said during his address at the Quincy Institute, “The fact that I oppose sending money that we don’t have to another country, or that borrowing money to send it is somehow, to me, that’s not isolationism.
“That’s just fiscal conservatism.”