Ohio Senator Jay D. Vance, who was elected for a vice presidential candidate of the Republicans, is discussed mainly by the positions he expressed in 2016 on it Donald Trump and about your book Country elegy, which has been praised as an excellent social analysis of what is happening in the Rust Belt by both the left and the right.
What is more important, however, is his positions on key domestic and foreign policy issues. If there is one thing he has been absolutely consistent about since 2016, it is his opposition to any US involvement in foreign wars. He himself enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in Iraq. It was an experience that left its mark on him.
His opposition to American interventions abroad also explains why he is among the senators who have tried to block increased aid to Ukraine. He has stressed that the United States should encourage Ukraine to reach a peace agreement with Russia and that Kiev should be ready to make concessions, even territorial concessions, in order to end the conflict. the war. These positions cause terror in Zelensky, which sees the Trump-Vance duo speeding towards the White House.
The war cannot end without concessions
“It’s going to end the way almost all wars have ended: when people negotiate and each side gives up something they don’t want to give up,” Vance told reporters in December, adding: “Nobody can explain to me how this ends without any territorial concessions relative to the 1991 borders.”
Vance also dismissed concerns that Ukraine’s territorial concessions — an unthinkable idea for Kiev — would not be enough for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that the rest of Europe could be at risk. “If you look at the size of the Russian military, if you look at what it would take to conquer all of Ukraine, let alone go further west into Europe, I don’t think the guy has demonstrated any capability to be able to achieve those imperialist goals, assuming he has them,” Vance said, according to NBC News.
The security blanket
In February, Vance wrote an opinion piece for the Financial Times in which he argued that Europe was too dependent on the US and that the region should bear the burden of defending its neighbour Ukraine.
He also echoed Trump’s view that NATO members in the region do not spend enough on defense — a charge that was based on the past, but now the facts have changed considerably. Twenty-three of the 32 allies now meet the defense spending target of 2 percent of GDP.
“The United States has provided a security blanket for Europe for too long,” Vance wrote in the Financial Times. “As the U.S. defense budget approaches $1 trillion a year, we should see Europe’s unspent defense money for what it really is: a tacit tax on the American people for Europe’s security.”
“Nothing in recent memory demonstrates this more clearly than the war in Ukraine,” he said, adding that America was “called upon to fill the void at enormous cost to its own citizens.”
“God help Ukraine”
That was the response Timothy Ash, an emerging markets analyst at BlueBay Asset Management, gave to CNBC upon hearing the news that Vance had been chosen as Trump’s running mate.
Ash has previously questioned Vance’s stance on Ukraine. Responding to Vance’s Financial Times op-ed in February, Ash warned that “the stark reality is that without very immediate US military support and supplies, Ukraine could lose the war, or at least significantly more ground.”
“Vance and his supporters should ask themselves what this would mean for Europe and the US in terms of transatlantic security,” Ash added.