Where JD Vance stands on Ukraine, Israel and China

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), former President Trump’s newly announced running mate, has worked to establish himself as a key surrogate on the world stage promoting Trump’s “America First” global policy in recent years. 

Trump’s announcement Monday picking Vance as his vice presidential candidate adds new importance to his foreign policy speeches, interviews and meetings on Capitol Hill with foreign officials and advocates who have worked to influence the senator on U.S. support for Ukraine.

U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy met with Vance in May in his position as shadow foreign minister in the opposition.

Lammy referred to Vance as his “friend” and agreed with the Ohio senator that “we in Europe have a problem that we need to fix with higher defense expenditure.”  

Vance promoted Trump’s “America First” foreign policy at the Munich Security Conference in February, saying that European countries should shoulder more responsibility for military defense, in particular manufacturing, so the U.S. can pivot to putting resources in Asia against an aggressive China.

“We want Europe to be successful, but Europe has got to take a bigger role in its own security. You can’t do that without industry,” he said.

Trump has long hammered America’s European allies for not spending more on their own militaries, claiming they rely too much on the U.S. for protection. 

Vance has raised doubt that the U.S. can maintain military support to Ukraine, saying that the U.S. does not build enough munitions to sustain the level of assistance funneled to Kyiv.

And he’s called for engaging with Russian President Vladimir Putin to deliver for “American interests.”

“I’ve never once argued that Putin is a kind and friendly person. I’ve argued that he’s a person with distinct interests, and the United States has to respond to that person with distinct interests,” Vance said at the Munich Security Conference.

“But the fact that he’s a bad guy does not mean we can’t engage in basic diplomacy and prioritizing America’s interests. 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.”

Trump too has touted his own relationship with Putin, and promised to swiftly negotiate an end to the Ukraine war if he returns to the White House. That has spurred fears that Trump will pressure Ukraine to cede territory as part of a cease-fire deal. 

On the Middle East, Vance has echoed Trump’s call for Israel to “finish the job” against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, saying that ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia can only be established once Hamas is defeated in the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia has said it can’t establish ties with Israel until it sees a viable pathway to the establishment of a Palestinian State. 

“Our goal in the Middle East should be to allow the Israelis to get to some good place with the Saudi Arabians and other Gulf Arab states. There is no way that we can do that unless the Israelis finish the job with Hamas,” he said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” in May. 

“If they can’t even do that, the attitude in the Middle East will be: ‘You can’t trust these guys, they’re not pursuing their own national security.’ So we’ve got to let them finish this job, and I think hopefully, on the other end of it, get to a new era in the Middle East.” 

In a speech delivered at the Quincy Institute in May, Vance addressed the contradiction between his conditional support for Ukraine — “ I think we should stop supporting the Ukrainian conflict,” he said — and unconditional support for Israel. 

“A majority of citizens of this country think that their savior, and I count myself a Christian, was born, died, and resurrected in that narrow little strip of territory off the Mediterranean,” he said. 

“The idea that there is ever going to be an American foreign policy that doesn’t care a lot about that slice of the world is preposterous,” he said. 

“We want the Israelis and the Sunnis to police their own region of the world. We want the Europeans to police their own region of the world, and we want to be able to focus more on East Asia.”

Updated at 5:56 p.m.