On Monday night, JD Vance appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox show to declare a Zeitenwende in US foreign policy: from the idealism of the neoliberal era to a structural realpolitik attuned to the constraints of American and European power.
The Vice President’s clash with Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office has dominated geopolitical conversations since Friday, and Vance emphasised throughout his Hannity appearance that he and Trump were not looking for fireworks with the Ukrainian leader. Vance also hammered home to the Fox host the necessity of some kind of peace deal.
But perhaps most revealing was the VP’s implicit argument for why some ceasefire had to be obtained. Geopolitics during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama was often seen through a normative lens: what should be done? In contrast to that normative approach, Vance insisted on the sheer practical unsustainability of the Ukraine conflict. For him, the war was not a question of “values” but instead blood, cash, and steel. As he put it: “Fighting forever with what? With whose money, with whose ammunition, and with whose lives?”
Contemporary populism has been forged in the fires of disappointment — from debacles abroad to a financial crisis at home — so populist leaders like Trump and Vance have often emphasised the limits of projecting American power abroad. Vance’s invocation of money, ammunition, and lives underlines some of the hard constraints upon both American and European policymakers. For decades, many Nato security partners have underinvested in their militaries. As recently as 2021, Germany was spending under 1.5% of its GDP on defence, while most Nato countries spent barely more than 2% just last year. The Biden White House projected that American defence spending as a percentage of the national economy would itself decline over time — even as it was committing the United States to open-ended support for Ukraine. Needless to say, that is not a sustainable trajectory.
The Ukraine crisis has exposed the vulnerability of defence supply chains for the United States and many of its allies. Policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly recognising the need to rebuild a domestic defence industrial base, and shortages of critical supplies and defence materiel loom. The new pause on American supplies to Ukraine shows how important the “whose ammunition?” question is — and escalates pressure on Zelensky to return to the bargaining table.
In addition to those hard constraints, Vance also alluded to a soft constraint: public opinion. For instance, some polling suggests a growing American desire for an end to the Ukraine conflict. Populism has thrived on a disjunction between elites and the public at large, and Vance argued that — behind closed doors — many European leaders admitted that somehow the war had to end.
As the Vice President noted, Biden’s moralistic denunciations of Putin did not stop the Russian leader from launching his Ukrainian invasion. Credibility in foreign affairs depends in part upon hard power, and the neoliberal era undermined its own idealism. Deindustrialisation and defence cuts chipped away at the pillars supporting the “rules-based international order”. Failed regime-change efforts abroad soured the public on sweeping programmes of ideological transformation.
Those foundations could be renewed. Nato partners could rebuild their militaries, reinforce their manufacturing ecosystems, and rebalance their security commitments in a time of geopolitical change. For proponents of structural realpolitik, the first step to that renewal is recognising the reality of limits.
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