How JD Vance sees the world

An argument in the White House has torn the US Union with Ukraine, shook European leaders and emphasized JD Vance’s key role in violent expression of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The Vice -President came out of the global stage – and what is it that moves his worldview?

The first major foreign speech of the Vance Conference in Munich’s Security Conference in mid -February surprised many.

Instead of focusing on the war raging in Ukraine, the US Vice President only briefly mentioned the bloodiest European conflict after World War II.

Instead, he uses his debut on the international scene to defeat the allies of nearby US allies for immigration and freedom of expression, suggesting that the European establishment is anti -democratic. He accused them of ignoring the will of their people and questioning what shared values ​​they were really associated with the United States to defend themselves.

“If you are running away from fear of your own voters, there is nothing that America cannot do for you, nor is there anything you can do for the American people,” he warned.

It was bold and perhaps an unexpected way to present itself in the world – by angry of European allies. But days later, he returned to the news, in the center of blisters with Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski, whom he accused of being ungrateful.

For those who study the rise of Vance, these two episodes were no surprise.

The Vice-President presented an intellectual wing of the conservative movement, which expresses the Trumpism, and in particular how his America’s first mantra applies beyond its borders. In the writings and interviews, Vance expressed an ideology that in his mind joins the points between American workers, global elites and the role of the United States in the broader world.

Along the path of the campaign with Donald Trump last year, Vance spent much of his time abruptly, criticizing the Democrats – the usual duties for attacks that traditionally diverge to run friends – and sparring with reporters.

And while the huge and unconventional role of Elon Musk in the Trump administration initially overshadowed him, this speech in Munich and the exhibition of the Oval Cabinet raised the profile of Trump’s deputy.

This has also led to questions about the meandering ideological journey he has done over his years in the conservative movement – and what he really believes now.

“He is much more pragmatic than an ideologist,” says James Or, Assistant Professor of Religion Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a friend whom Vance has defined as his “British Sherpa.”

“He is able to formulate what he is and is not in American interest,” OR said. “And the American interest is not the interest of some abstract utopia or a matrix of suggestions and ideas, but the American people.”

Vance has repeatedly returned to this “America First” – or perhaps “Americans First” – a topic in speeches, depicting a line between what he castes as Washington’s economic and foreign policy abroad and the struggles of the American working class in left -handed homes.

During the Republican National Convention last summer, for example, he mourned how in small towns in the United States, “jobs were sent abroad and the children were sent to war.” And he attacked then President Joe Biden, saying, “For half a century, he has been the champion of every individual political initiative to make America weaker and poorer.”

But Vance is also a person who, after a heavy upbringing in the Ohio family with Appalachian roots and sudden glory on the back of the best -seller’s memoir, has been tested by many different views.

Not only is he a former “never Trump,” which defined the US president in 2016 as “reproach” and “idiot”, his book puts much of the blame for the plight of the poor in rural choices made by humans.

Most recently, he transferred this guilt to the elites – a group that was defined differently as Democrats, conventional Republicans, liberals, corporate leaders, globalists and scientists.

In the statements, Vance regularly claims that “America is not just an idea … America is a nation.”

He linked this statement with an anecdote to the cemetery of his family in Kentucky, where he says he and his wife and their children will one day be buried, claiming that family and homeland are more important than some of the traditional basic ideas in America.

According to Vance, the Trump administration’s priority should be to make life better for Americans who have been in the country for generations, and yet they have little of the huge wealth of the nation.

The Gracher, a conservative American writer who is also a friend of the Vice President, said Vance’s thinking stems from believing that “moderate Republicans from norms … failed to offer anything to stop the so -called forever, and also failed to offer anything to the ordinary Americans, where they come from, who come from Fentanyl. “

“He was filled with red, so to speak, by Donald Trump,” Gorice told the BBC Radio 4 Today program this week.

“Red-filled” is an internet jargon to suddenly wake up to a well-hidden truth, as presented in Matrix films. It is usually used by those in the right online who believe that they have special access to reality and that people with liberal, centrist or establishments are non -critical thinkers.

And Vance is Vice President, who more than his boss looks extremely on the Internet. He is an enthusiastic user of X, often jumping directly into arguments instead of using it, as many politicians do, such as a messaging platform.

His appearances in the podcasts of the right fringe, while he was trying to gather support for the Senate running, provided a feed for his opponents, as well as the provocative Troline comments as that the United States was run by “childless cat ladies”.

Married to the daughter of Indian immigrants, he has rejected and rejected by the members of the Alt-now, even if he sounds some of their views. However, he has friends and allies both at the top of the Silicon Valley and in some of its less known angles.

After graduating from the Yale Law Faculty, he was introduced into the world of risk capital by the influential Silicon Valley conservative Peter Til, who later financed his Senate campaign in the US.

He has quoted people like blogger Curtis Yarvin, a key guru in the “neo -reactive” movement that dreams of fantasies of technologically supported hypercapitistic societies, led by powerful monarchs.

Getting acquainted with the eyelashes on the Internet was further demonstrated when he spread fake rumors about immigrants who eat pets and a statement about Ukrainian corruption – which BBC follows Moscow.

“He’s somehow ride in this online world,” says Katie Young, a writer of the conservative, Antimette Media The Bulwark.

At the same time, Young said, his anecdote for the family cemeteries and his homeland, implies another political tendency – “disturbing the implication of Nativism”.

“It bothers some people right,” she said. “Part of the American heritage is that we are an immigrant nation. (Former Republican President) Ronald Reagan talks about one of the distinctive things for this country is that anyone can come here from any part of the world and become an American.”

Vance’s “Americans first” clearly extends to the question of war in Ukraine. When he was a senator, he was often critical of America’s participation in the war and the huge sums spent on her, his former Senate counterpart Josh Holes, a Republican from Missouri, recalled.

“His position then looked a lot like what he was now … that the conflict should end,” Hooley told the BBC. “It must end in a way that is as profitable for the security of the United States and must end in a way that makes our European allies take increased responsibility.”

Vance regularly accused the Biden administration of being more interested in Ukraine than by the resulting illegal immigration. Writing in 2022, during his campaign in the Senate and after the Russian invasion, he said: “I will be damn if I will prioritize the eastern border of Ukraine at the moment when our own southern border is enveloped in human tsunami by illegal migrants.”

His views erupted outdoors during this dramatic argument with President Zelenski in the oval office. Vance accused Zelenski of lack of respect, sending politicians on a “propaganda tour” to Ukraine and for not grateful for the help of the United States.

“Offer some words for appreciation for the United States of America and the president trying to save your country,” he told the Ukrainian president.

The argument has left European leaders to overcome Zanski, while trying to maintain negotiations for a possible peaceful deal.

Then Vance caused widespread indignation from the Allies when he poured contempt on the idea of ​​guaranteeing security in the form of troops “from a random country that did not wage a war of 30 or 40 years.”

Later, he denied talking about the United Kingdom or France, the only two European countries that publicly stated their willingness to send peacemakers to Ukraine.

But the Vice President’s desire to step on the fingers of the Allies reflects a worldview, which, in his words, has little time for “moralism for” this country is good “,” this country is bad. “

“This does not mean that you need to have a complete morally blind place, but that means you have to be honest with the countries you are dealing with, and there is a complete failure to do so with the greater part of our foreign policy institution in this country,” he told the New York Times last year.

His tone has shifted from the two years he spent in the US Senate before being selected by Trump. Democrat Corey Booker remembered Vance as “very pragmatic and thoughtful”.

“That’s why some of these things surprise me,” Booker told the BBC.

Others find the same interruption.

David Froome, now a writer of Atlantic magazine, said Vance’s views had changed significantly when he first ordered the former Marine, who at the time visited Ohio State University to write about his website for conservative policy more than 15 years ago.

“He was by no means a culture warrior as he is today,” Froome said.

Froome, a former George -Bush speech, who is an unwavering critic of Trump, called Vance’s opinion about Russia “ideological admiration”.

In Munich, while he speaks of freedom of speech, he cites cases with conservatives and Christians in Western countries, but avoids any mention of Russia’s raw jumps in terms of expression.

But he and his defenders look at the situation through a different lens.

“It doesn’t mean that Russia is not a threat. It’s just to say that Europe and the UK are frankly having far more problems at home,” Greek said.

The rapid end of the conflict in Ukraine is that in Vance’s mind not only to stop billions of dollars spent thousands of kilometers.

He himself said that there are more problems on which the US and his friends should focus from Ukraine, namely the threat from China, which he called “our most important competitor … for the next 20 or 30 years.”

Vance’s views on Ukraine and his desire to broadcast them publicly provided a dramatic moment in the first days of Trump’s second presidential term.

But it also offers a vivid illustration of the Vice President’s ideology, his fame in the Trump administration, and how he looks at America’s place in the world.

Considering Rachel Search and Anthony Breaker in Washington and Lily Jamali in San Francisco