Donald Trump’s new vice presidential candidate is quite the man.
A well-regarded author who became a liberal darling as the man who could explain Trumpism to city dwellers, he later warned that his new boss would become an “American Hitler.”
Now he’s on the march as his number two. Funny old world.
For all of JD Vance’s uniqueness, he is not a new archetype in American politics.
In one particular way, he leans into one of the country’s ever-present and least-appealing strands of thought; that of extreme, almost aggressive, isolationism.
That isolationist streak almost lost World War II.
Whilst Britain was fighting off Nazi bombers with the help of Polish and Canadian fighter pilots, Franklin D.
Roosevelt was fighting off Charles Lindbergh and his America First “third party” which stood four-square against the US’ potential involvement in the European conflict.
That itself played on sentiments first expressed by none other than the founder of the nation itself, George Washington. Having freed itself from the chains of empire, he said, America should do all it could to avoid “foreign entanglements.”
Had FDR not triumphed – frankly, had the Japanese not been quite so bold in bombing Pearl Harbour and Hitler quite so stupid in declaring war on the US – we would be looking at a very different world today.
Donald Trump is not one who believes in Pax Americana, but his isolationist sentiment at least comes with a pinch of dealmaking.
His ego requires him, in fact, to be the man who solves foreign policy dilemmas.
JD Vance is no such man.
He’s simply ignorant. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine,” he said recently.
Perhaps the JD Vance of 1939 wouldn’t have cared what happened to Poland, either.
There is an assumption afoot now that Donald Trump will be the next President.
If Vance’s vicious self-interest guides the country’s foreign policy, it will be Britain and Europe that need to step up in the fight against Vladimir Putin’s tyranny.