Faced with Vance, it’s time for Europe to grow up

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

Already anxious about former U.S. President Donald Trump pulling off a return to the White House, European leaders have been given another major cause for alarm — his pick of Ohio firebrand Senator JD Vance as running mate.

Vance, of course, has famously changed his mind about Trump. Initially viewing him as a “cynical asshole” and “America’s Hitler,” the 39-year-old has morphed into one of the former president’s staunchest acolytes — a conversion that led Republican Senator Mitt Romney to ponder: “How do you sit next to him at lunch?”

Many European leaders may soon be scratching their heads, asking the very same question.

Vance’s foes charge that his conversion is a cynical bid to advance his political career. While it may indeed be so, the senator’s skepticism of post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy and American interventionism arguably predates his Trump conversion.

When serving as a U.S. Marine in Iraq, Vance said he realized he’d been lied to, “that the promises of the foreign policy establishment were a complete joke.” He isn’t the only younger-generation “America First” GOP lawmaker whose views have been shaped by seeing war firsthand, after serving in Washington’s so-called forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Vance was a strident critic of the $61 billion aid package for Ukraine, which eventually passed in April. The hour-long speech he delivered from the Senate floor during the weeks of squabbling over the legislation is worth revisiting as a roadmap of what his policy positions might be. Unfortunately for Europe, it makes for gloomy reading.

Overall, Vance’s presence in the White House is likely to supercharge Trump’s NATO skepticism. He’ll be no pro-NATO whisperer like Trump’s former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and he won’t be trying to ease the concerns of European allies while gently scolding them like former Trump VP Mike Pence.

Vance is as critical of “freeloading” European NATO members as is his boss. “Even if we assumed, and it’s wrong, but even if we assumed that NATO was carrying its fair share of the burden over the last 18 months, NATO has failed to carry its fair share of the burden for literally decades, ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a February speech. “Look just at how much money the United States has spent on defense since 1992, and compare that to our NATO allies.”

He’s also more broadly critical of American interventionism than Pence was, accusing America’s foreign policy establishment of consistently getting things wrong. “So many times in the last many decades have we been asked to listen to the experts. And yet we never actually ask what the track record of those experts is in matters of foreign policy.” The bipartisan consensus, he complained, got America into one disastrous failure after another — Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.

“And for what?” he asked. The experts now have “a new thing that American taxpayers must fund and must fund indefinitely. And it is called the conflict in Ukraine.”

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s tapping Vance as his running mate has exasperated the very experts he disdains. “Goodbye, NATO!” tweeted Swedish economist and former Atlantic Council fellow Anders Åslund, whose prediction may well be spot on — at least when it comes to the organization as we’ve known it.

In the run-up to last week’s 75th anniversary summit, outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg emphasized the importance of predictability, stability and unity. But a second Trump administration — which is likely to be emboldened and more knowledgeable than its first iteration — is unlikely to care about such things. Unless, that is, Europe does indeed step up and spend more on defense, and back the U.S. on Iran and China.

Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg emphasized the importance of predictability, stability and unity. But a second Trump administration is unlikely to care about such things. | Stefan Rousseau – WPA Pool/Getty Images

If it doesn’t, when it comes to NATO and transatlantic relations, a second Trump term is likely to be even rockier and more traumatic than the first.

Trump’s choice of running mate underlines that he hasn’t rethought his transactional views on NATO and Europe. It also suggests he’ll be no less abrasive, despite the desperate behind-the-scenes lobbying by European leaders and diplomats of Trump aides identified as likely appointees. To believe otherwise would be to choose hope over experience.

Still, some hope that a second Trump term can be weathered much as the first was. The NATO summit heard much crowing about how 20 of 32 member countries are now earmarking 2 percent of their GDP for defense. All the talk of how Europe is now pulling its weight wasn’t for President Joe Biden — it was for candidate Trump.

But that alone will hardly do the trick, with MAGA Republicans already moving on from the magic 2 percent figure. Earlier this year, former senior Pentagon official Elbridge Colby — who’s tipped for a major national security role in a Trump administration — told POLITICO that NATO’s European members should “absolutely” be spending closer to 3 percent to 4 percent of their GDP on defense, as most did during the Cold War. “That’s entirely realistic,” he said.

Much like others being tipped for high office in a possible Trump White House, Colby too warned against “staging photo ops promising in the future that they’re going to spend more.” Above all, he said, other NATO members must field “credible combat forces that can assume the primary burden of the conventional defense of Europe against the Russians.”

But Europe still seems in shock over a possible Trump sequel. EU leaders appeared to consign such a nightmare scenario to the back of their minds for the past two years in lieu of preparing for a Trump return. Last year, the former president’s legal woes allowed them to breathe a little easier, but now they’re scrambling once again to “Trump-proof” NATO, whatever that means — or whether it’s even possible.

Europe still seems in shock over a possible Trump sequel. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

In the worst-case scenario, it simply isn’t possible. Unless, of course, Europe gets far more serious about expanding its military forces, and stops treating its relationship with the U.S. like an à la carte menu — picking and choosing delicacies without paying the full tab.

While Europe can take control of funding Ukraine, NATO is ultimately a U.S.-led organization — without Washington’s full and active participation, it just isn’t NATO. That means Europe will need to be far more constructive than it was during the first Trump administration, shoulder much more of the burden m than it has — and it will need to cut down on the scolding. Europe’s had plenty of warnings, and the writing was on the wall even before Trump, with a succession of U.S. presidents urging it to boost defense spending. Left more to its own devices, it’s hard to see how the Continent will hold together and be effective.

The U.S. has left Europe to run things on the Continent before, and that didn’t go so well — think back to the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Then-U.S. President Bill Clinton had kept American involvement to a minimum, believing Europe should take the lead, only to be forced to step in after Serbian atrocities against Bosnian civilians.

That’s unlikely to happen again if Trump is reelected — especially with Vance at his side, reinforcing his NATO skepticism and demanding Europe do more than cry on Washington’s doorstep.

It’s time for Europe to grow up.