FILE – Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, arrives as the Senate prepares a procedural vote on an emergency spending package that would provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel, plus other items, at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 11, 2024.
“Vance’s strong support for Israel is a reflection of the importance of some conservative evangelical views in today’s Republican Party, as well as the stands of white Christian nationalist thinking that has grown under Trump’s grip on the party,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Vance has criticized the U.S. neoconservative approach that began with the Bush administration as “strategically and morally stupid.” However, while he is against American interventionism elsewhere, in the Middle East he has advocated for a similar strategy of spending U.S. military resources to shore up an alliance of Israel and Sunni Muslim states to deter Iran and maintain peace and stability in the region.
Katulis critiqued the Republican vice presidential nominee’s worldview as “a reflection of the confused hyperpartisan debate” from isolationist camps that emerged in the U.S. following the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, rather than an “actual coherent worldview about what it would take to protect America’s interest and values in the real world.”
Meanwhile, Katulis said that Middle East actors are “anticipating more unpredictability, incoherence and confusion” should a Trump-Vance ticket win in November.
Hawkish on China
Author of the best-selling memoir-turned-movie Hillbilly Elegy, Vance has lived experience with the social and economic harm that deindustrialization has inflicted upon some American communities.
He has echoed Trump’s accusation that China is stealing manufacturing jobs from the U.S., especially those jobs in the Midwestern part of the country from where he hails.
“Vance has supported more economic restrictions and tariffs on Chinese imports and investments,” said Dean Chen, a professor of political science at the Ramapo College of New Jersey. “I expect his position on China to be in line with Trump nationalists in their potential new administration,” he told VOA.
In the U.S. Senate, Vance introduced legislation to restrict Chinese access to U.S. financial markets and to protect American higher education from Beijing’s influence.
On Taiwan, “the thing that we need to prevent more than anything is a Chinese invasion,” Vance said last year during an event at the Heritage Foundation.
“It would be catastrophic for this country. It would decimate our entire economy. It would throw this country into a Great Depression,” he added.
That’s a much more clear-cut stance than Trump, who has suggested at various times that he may not come to Taipei’s defense should Beijing invade. Washington does not have a formal treaty with Taiwan but supplies the democratically self-governing island with arms to maintain a “sufficient self-defense capability.”
In a June interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump indicated he wants Taipei to pay the U.S. for its defense.
“You know, we’re no different than an insurance company,” he said. “Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.”
Taiwan policy aside, Ashford said the biggest shock in a Trump-Vance administration could be on trade policy, with “new tariffs on China or even Europe.”
“It could be quite extreme,” she warned.
Tatiana Vorozhko, Lin Yang and Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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Publish date : 2024-07-17 22:51:46
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