What Trump-Vance Means for Ukraine
Victory for the GOP ticket would spell disaster for Europe.
DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of Senator J.D. Vance as a running mate is awful news for Ukraine. Even without Vance on the ticket, Trump has been no friend of the embattled democracy. His policy is predicated on animus toward its elected leaders, which seems to be rooted in his affinity for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and on lingering resentment over his own failed attempt to coerce the Ukrainian government into providing him with “dirt” on Joe Biden, an escapade that resulted in his first impeachment. His policy is also linked to his longstanding skepticism of NATO and his general disdain for international alliances. What is that policy? Nothing more than the blunt use of American coercive leverage—the threat to terminate economic and military aid—to force Kyiv to make concessions to Moscow. Trump has repeatedly said that he will end the war in one day, somehow even before he assumes office. As absurd as this is, it showcases his posture.
For Vance’s part, as he has done on other issues since overcoming his aversion to Trump and embracing the full MAGA agenda, he makes his case in the crudest and most extreme terms. To justify his opposition to aid for Ukraine, he has gone out of his way to paint the country as a den of iniquity and corruption. He has avidly spread the false—and Russian-inspired—story that President Zelensky’s wife, Olena, employing American military aid money, bought a rare Bugatti Tourbillon sports car for $4.8 million while visiting Paris for D-Day commemorations in June.
In the Senate, Vance played a leading role in the effort to kill off the Ukraine aid bill. After a six-month delay that may have cost the lives of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and innocent civilians, an aid package was finally enacted with strong bipartisan support in April. Vance was blithely indifferent to the consequences of his dilatory grandstanding. “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” said Vance on Steve Bannon’s podcast back in 2022. “I’m sick of Joe Biden focusing on the border of a country I don’t care about while he lets the border of his own country become a total war zone.”
Whatever else can be said of it, the selection of Vance for the GOP ticket is thus clarifying. It tells us that Trump means what he says. What Trump reportedly confided to Viktor Orbán at a meeting in Mar-a-Lago this past March will come to pass: America, under a Trump administration, is going to cut Ukraine loose.
FROM THIS STARK PROBABILITY, two large questions arise. What does the Trump-Vance position mean for the future of Ukraine and for the future U.S. role in the world? And what does it mean for the Trump-Vance presidential bid? Amid all the black clouds, is there a silver lining?
Should Trump win in November, it is conceivable that Ukraine will hang on, at least for a while, without American assistance. Already Europe, seeing Trump’s handwriting on the wall, is mobilizing to fill the military aid gap. But America currently provides a significant percentage of the Western aid flowing to Ukraine. For all of its efforts, Europe will not be able quickly to plug the hole left by a precipitous American departure.
Vladimir Putin’s warfighting tactics have been aimed at breaking the will of the Ukrainian people by hitting civilian targets such as energy infrastructure and even hospitals. The Russians have also shown what they will do in any territory they occupy: indiscriminate murder of civilians, mass rape and pillage, the barbaric torture and execution of prisoners, the kidnapping of children, and the deliberate annihilation of Ukrainian culture. In the face of such an onslaught—an attack on their very existence as an independent country and as a people—the Ukrainian will to fight will no doubt be strong. But in the absence of American support, and with Russia having revved up its war economy and mustered aid from China, North Korea, and Iran, sheer willpower will not suffice. Whether the collapse is slow or swift, it will be inexorable.
The fall of Kabul and Afghanistan to the Taliban in the summer of 2021 was an ugly disaster for the Biden presidency, one for which it has been rightly excoriated. The fall of Kyiv and Ukraine to the Russians, if Trump and Vance have their way, has the potential to be far uglier, and would be another lasting stain on America’s reputation as a reliable ally, a defender of human rights, and a stalwart friend of democracies faced with brutal authoritarian aggression. Unlike in Afghanistan, the horror show will unfold on television in the heart of Europe. Refugees will spill over European frontiers. The bloodshed and cost in human life will likely be staggering. So too will be the strategic implications for Europe and the United States. On Donald Trump’s watch, the world will have witnessed a strategic debacle more stunning than any seen since the fall of France at the onset of World War II.
WHICH BRINGS US TO the potential silver lining and the great debate that should now commence here over this pivotal foreign policy question. Matters of foreign policy are rarely front and center in American politics. But given the stakes, the attempt should be made to bring this question to the foreground. The selection of Vance opens the door for the Democrats to make the impending doom of Ukraine under a Trump administration a salient issue in the campaign.
According to a Gallup poll taken in March, “Fifty-five percent of Americans think the U.S. should continue to support Ukraine in reclaiming its territory, even if that requires prolonged involvement, rather than ending the conflict as quickly as possible.” Just as significantly, the Republican party is split over the issue. Nearly half of the Republican caucus in the House voted for the Ukraine aid package that House Speaker Mike Johnson finally brought to the floor for a vote in late April. Ukraine thus presents the Democrats with a classic wedge issue. Notwithstanding the isolationism on display at the GOP convention, a considerable fraction of the Republican party does not support the Trump-Vance position. And if the terrible implications of that position are forcefully spelled out, that fraction could grow. While their erstwhile champion has thrown in her lot with Trump, some of those Nikki Haley voters who rejected his “America First-ism” and continue to think of themselves as “Reagan Republicans” could still be up for grabs.
In waging a debate over the Ukraine question, Vance and company are certain to trot out the argument they have been making for some time: that Ukraine is a distraction from the main threat to the United States, namely, an aggressive China. But this is a masterpiece of illogic wrapped inside a red herring. Nothing could do more to call into question America’s strategic resolve and endurance, thereby encouraging Chinese aggression against Taiwan, than a failure to stand up for Ukraine. (Not that there is any evidence that Trump cares an iota about Taiwan’s security. “Taiwan took our chip business away from us,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek in a new interview. “I mean how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They’re immensely wealthy. . . . I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?”)
What’s more, pulling the rug out from under our European allies would also make it far less likely that they will join us in taking a tough line against Beijing on critical trade and technology issues, as well as on Taiwan. Such a blunder would make it easier to fragment the global coalition of democracies that Xi Jinping and Putin rightly fear could prevent them from achieving their ambitions. And what Trump and Vance are proposing could tempt other potential aggressors, like Iran and North Korea, to engage in adventurism of their own.
The stakes in Ukraine are thus global in scope, But the debate over whether to stand by it in its fight for survival also has important implications here at home. The Trump-Vance policy is founded on unsavory affinities and personal grievances dressed up in arguments that sound “realistic” and “hard-headed” yet collapse on even cursory inspection. This is a golden opportunity for Joe Biden—or, preferably, a younger substitute, more capable of raising the issue and making the argument—to set the Trump-Vance ticket on its back foot.
Aaron L. Friedberg is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is the author, most recently, of Getting China Wrong. @AaronFriedberg.
Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, is the author of Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law. @gabeschoenfeld.
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