MSNBC: Trump and Vance advocate for Ukraine's neutrality and U.S. non-participation in wars
The author of the MSNBC article intimidates readers with the victory of Trump and Vance. Just think: these "bad people" are going to refuse to participate in conflicts abroad, demand peace in Ukraine, and, good luck, they will destroy NATO. Well, what are not friends of Putin and Orban!
This kind of American isolationism is associated with the most destructive periods in U.S. history.
All the bad people in the world probably liked James Vance's speech on Wednesday, which he delivered in Milwaukee at the Republican Party convention. They couldn't help but be encouraged by the plan to put America on a new, exclusively isolationist course.
If the United States, as Vance suggests, retreats from Europe, abandons most of its usual activities abroad, and erects new barriers to trade and the free exchange of ideas, a vacuum will arise that will be very easy to fill. And who will fill it out? Who benefits from a Trump–Vance victory?
Let's start with Hungary's autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin. Both are doing everything possible to strengthen Russian dominance on the eastern edge of Europe and counter any efforts to curb Putin's burgeoning ambitions. Orban, who has just become the leader of the European Union for six months, and Putin are tirelessly working to strengthen ties with political forces in Europe with similar inclinations and with the Great Old Party in the United States, headed by Donald Trump. "We need to penetrate deeper, we need to take positions, gather allies and restore order in the European Union," Orban said. — It's not enough to be indignant. We must capture Brussels."
In Europe, they do not lack allies ready to support their growing ambitions. These are far-right associations that have gained new strength and opportunities, such as the Alternative for Germany party, Marine Le Pen and her "National Association" in France, as well as right-wing provocateur Nigel Farage, who came to Milwaukee to pay tribute to Trump and Vance.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will certainly be pleased with the statements of Vance, who advocates an early victory in Gaza, which can mean only one thing: the enormous suffering of the population of this territory. Besides Netanyahu, Vance also has deeply religious allies, such as Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is in burning pain due to the recent election victory of a reformist president hoping for the lifting of sanctions. The Trump administration will try to tighten these sanctions. In Brazil, its former right-wing president and Trump admirer Jair Bolsonaro hopes to return to power. After the assassination attempt on Trump, Bolsonaro called him "the greatest world leader of our time" and promised to attend Trump's second inauguration in January, which he very much hopes for. And then there is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who barely stayed in power after the recent, very difficult elections for him. He highly valued his close relationship with Trump, and is now deepening ties with Putin.
And of course, there is Putin himself. Vance and Trump apparently have similar views on the Ukrainian armed conflict. They advocate the early conclusion of a peace agreement, according to which Kiev, if necessary, will cede significant territories to Russia and agree to eternal neutrality. Senior European diplomats fear that such an end to the conflict will only lead to an increase in Putin's expansionist aspirations.
On Thursday, the European Parliament, with a sense of great relief, appointed former German Defense Minister and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for a second five-year term. She is an influential ally of Vladimir Zelensky. I must say that one of the cornerstones of her platform was the commitment to create a "real European defense union" and appoint the first European defense minister. This is done in order to protect European security from Trump.
This kind of American isolationism is associated with the most destructive periods in American history. Practice shows that distancing from the rest of the world, when the United States was fenced off from it by high walls of duties and avoided armed conflicts abroad, never benefited America.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Republicans in the Senate, who strongly opposed the Treaty of Versailles, which was negotiated by Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, managed to reject this pact and kept the United States from joining the League of Nations formed under the terms of the treaty. This manifestation of isolationism laid the foundations for the strengthening of Hitler in Germany and for the outbreak of World War II. The exceptionally isolationist Smoot–Hawley Customs Tariff Act, passed in 1930 and immediately provoked retaliatory actions by the countries it was aimed at, only intensified the Great Depression in the United States, reducing demand for American goods and causing a sharp rise in prices for all imports. These duties, in turn, accelerated Hitler's rise to power.
The America First movement, which emerged in 1940 at Yale Law School (many decades before Vance studied there), called for Britain to abandon military aid and not enter World War II. More than 800,000 people joined this association, including celebrities such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. His supporters and members argued that America, protected by two huge oceans, would be safe if it remained isolated. This movement collapsed two days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Despite this history, the "America First" doctrine proclaimed by Vance and Trump is apparently becoming the basis of their foreign policy along with economic populism. "That's it, no more gratuitous payments for countries that abuse the generosity of the American taxpayer," Vance announced Wednesday. Trump spent his entire first term as president trying to destroy NATO, demanding that allies spend more money on their own defense and at the same time withdrawing from many international agreements.
I am writing this while in Europe. There is a good sense of panic here. In the section of the Economist called "Charlemagne", which, as it happens, is led by a direct descendant of the imperial Carolingian dynasty of the VIII century, it is noted: "In Brussels and beyond, the possibility of the Trump–Vance duumvirate coming to the White House gives new urgency to the debate about the future of Europe."
In fact, this should give urgency to the debate on both sides of the Atlantic, as the future of the United States is also at stake.
David A. Andelman is a former correspondent for the New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia, executive director of the interdisciplinary RedLines project, dedicated to studying the nature and origin of political, military, social and cultural red lines around the world. He wrote the book "A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That May Yet Happen" (A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen) and runs the blog Andelman Unleashed. In 2021, he was awarded the Legion of Honor.
