JD Vance certainly knows how to grab people’s attention. In a landmark address to the Munich Security Conference, he accused Europe’s leaders of being scared of voters and failing to defend democracy. In a fiery speech, he criticised Europeans for abandoning their roots as ‘defenders of democracy’ and of shutting down dissenting voices. Vance even went on to claim that the demise of free speech posed a far bigger threat to Europe than Russia. Harsh words indeed.
Vance’s criticisms came as something of a shock to his audience, who had been expecting to hear more from him about the US administration’s priorities for the transatlantic alliance, military spending, and President Trump’s approach to negotiations for ending the war in Ukraine. Vance only deigned to talk about Ukraine in passing – saying that Europe had to ‘step up’, but gave no defined goals for a negotiated settlement beyond a comment that the US administration ‘believes we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine’.
Instead Vance was much more eager to lecture Europeans on the continent’s own failures in living up to democratic ideals, scolding political leaders for not sufficiently upholding democratic values – an accusation ironically that many of them have thrown at the Trump administration. He told allies that the main threat to European security did not come from Russia.
‘The threat I worry most about vis-a-vis Europe… is the threat from within,’ he said. ‘The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values it shares with the United States of America.’ Vance singled out the suppression of free speech, citing the arrest of a man in Britain who broke a ‘buffer zone’ law against protesting at abortion clinics.
Vance also criticised Europe over mass migration, condemning the UK for betraying Brexit voters by opening ‘the floodgates to millions of inverted immigrants’. He insisted that of all the pressing challenges facing Europe and the United States, ‘there is nothing more pressing than migration’. Vance had a warning for those who tried to block hard-right parties from joining governments. ‘There’s no room for firewalls’ in elections, Vance observed. To cap it all, he had this chilling warning for Europe’s political elite: ‘If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you’.
It’s heady stuff but few in the audience appeared convinced. The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, was quick to condemn Vance’s remarks as ‘unacceptable’. Even so, outside the rank of dignitaries gathered in Munich, there will be plenty of ordinary voters who are tempted to murmur and nod in approval, thinking Vance is on to something when he cites worries about the process of shutting down dissenting voices and of leaders running scared of the electorate.
But who is Vance to lecture Europe’s politicians on their failings? It is easy enough to take the moral high ground at a podium in Munich but his own political record is far from perfect or consistent. Vance – like most politicians – has shown himself to be driven more by opportunism than any firm set of political beliefs or ideology. He once called Donald Trump ‘America’s Hitler’, ‘morally reprehensible’ and a ‘demagogue’ – but this didn’t stop him joining the presidential ticket when the call came. He simply went from self-described ‘never Trumper’ to fervent loyalist in one quick and easy step. During the recent US presidential election campaign, he called women without children ‘childless cat ladies’ uninvested in America’s future. He also promoted a baseless conspiracy theory claiming that Haitian immigrants were eating household pets in Ohio.
Vance can’t resist hogging the limelight by saying things that make easy headlines but amount to nothing more than that. Some voters in Britain may be tempted to think Vance, given his remarks on Brexit, is a shrewd observer of the political scene here. Yet only last summer he claimed that the UK under Labour might be the first ‘truly Islamist’ country with nuclear weapons. An absurd remark, unworthy of a serious politician. Even so, his fears of an Islamist nuclear-armed Britain (if he still holds that view ) haven’t stopped Vance from striking up a friendship of sorts with the foreign secretary David Lammy, another notorious political shapeshifter. It is hard to envisage the two men as political soulmates. That’s the problem in a nutshell: it is hard to be sure what Vance the politician really thinks and believes, beyond what suits at that particular moment. His headline-grabbing hectoring of European leaders should be seen in that light and nothing more.
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