In February this year, European political and foreign policy
elite heard directly from Senator JD Vance on his opposition to
military aid for Ukraine and his blunt warning that Europe will have to rely
less on the United States to defend the continent.
If those comments at the annual Munich Security Conference
were a first wake-up call, alarm bells are now ringing loudly across the
continent after Republican Donald Trump picked Vance as his vice
presidential candidate for November's US election.
"His selection as the running mate is worrying for
Europe," said Ricarda Lang, co-leader of the German Green party that is
part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government, who took part in a panel
discussion with Vance in Munich.
Vance stoked
fears in Europe that if Trump returns to the White House, he will drop, or
curb, US support for Kyiv and push Ukraine into peace negotiations to end
the war that would give Moscow a substantial slice of Ukraine and embolden
Russian President Vladimir Putin to pursue further military adventures.
That
view was bolstered by a letter to EU leaders from Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orban, who visited Trump last week. Orban, a Trump ally, said
the ex-president will be "ready to act as a peace broker immediately"
if he wins in November.
Lang said on X that Vance had made very clear in
Munich how quickly he and Trump would "deliver Ukraine to Putin".
At the
Munich conference, Vance said Putin did not pose an existential threat to
Europe, and Americans and Europeans could not provide enough munitions to
defeat Russia in Ukraine.
He suggested the United States' strategic priorities lay
more in Asia and the Middle East.
"There are a lot of bad guys all over the world. And
I'm much more interested in some of the problems in East Asia right now than I
am in Europe," he told the conference.
Speaking on a podcast with Trump ally Steve Bannon in 2022,
Vance said, "I don't really care what happens in Ukraine one way or the
other."
In Munich, he advocated for a "negotiated peace"
and said he thought Russia had an incentive to come to the table
That
stance is in stark contrast with the view of most European leaders, who argue
the West should continue to support Ukraine massively with military aid and say
they see no sign of Putin being willing to engage in serious negotiations.
Vance also voted against a US funding bill for Ukraine that
eventually passed in April. In a New York Times op-ed justifying his vote, he
argued Kyiv and Washington must abandon Ukraine's goal of returning to its 1991
borders with Russia.
Nils Schmid, the foreign policy spokesperson of Scholz's
Social Democrat party - said he had observed Vance in Munich and concluded the
senator saw himself as Trump's mouthpiece.
"He takes an even more radical stance on Ukraine than
Trump and wants to end military support. In terms of foreign policy, he is more
isolationist than Trump," Schmid told Reuters.
But some cautioned against jumping to conclusions about
Vance, who was born into an impoverished home in southern Ohio.
"JD Vance is a devout Christian and the circumstances
of his childhood give me great hope that he, like Speaker Mike Johnson, will
conclude that US support for Ukraine is the only option," said Melinda
Haring, a senior adviser for Razom for Ukraine, a US-based charitable organization
that advocates for Ukraine.
"While Vance has come out strongly against Ukraine, he
hasn’t been in a top job and as vice president I expect to see his views
evolve."
Some diplomats also cautioned that the US election was far
from over.
"We need to stop creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Trump hasn’t won and Biden hasn’t lost," said a French diplomat.
In Ukraine,
politicians were wary of criticizing Vance openly, as they may have to deal
with him as US vice president. But some acknowledged harboring concerns.
Oleksiy Honcharenko, a lawmaker from the opposition European
Solidarity party, said he had met Vance at the Munich conference and found him
to be "a very intelligent and cool-headed man".
"Is there any concern about Vance's statements? Of
course. The US is our biggest and most important ally," he told Reuters.
"We must remain allies and show the US that Ukraine not
only needs help, but can help itself."
Maryan Zablotskyy, a lawmaker for President Volodymyr
Zelenskiy's Servant of the People party, argued Russia was harming US interests
on many fronts. He said any US politician pursuing an America First agenda
"will never be positive towards Russia".
