In January 2023, JD Vance was a rookie officeholder. The Ohio Republican, who had never sought or held any elected position in government, had been a member of the U.S. Senate for roughly four weeks when he decided to write his first op-ed for The Wall Street Journal as a member of Congress.
The headline and subhead on the future vice president’s piece was memorable: “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars. He has my support in 2024 because I know he won’t recklessly send Americans to fight overseas.”
That, of course, came roughly three years before Donald Trump started a war and recklessly sent Americans to fight overseas.
Throughout the 2024 election cycle, Trump and his team went to bizarre lengths to present the Republican as the “peace” candidate who would “expel the warmongers” from the federal government and lead as a “peacemaker,” while rascally Democrats prepared to lead us into war. Common sense might have suggested that any thinking adult would know better than to believe such obvious nonsense, but some voters accepted these absurdities at face value and cast ballots accordingly, optimistic that the GOP nominee would pursue a foreign policy rooted in restraint.
Oops.
An Axios report summarized, “No president in the modern era has ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as Donald Trump.” That’s true: Though some foolishly expected the Republican to pursue a non-interventionist foreign policy, the president has spent the last year launching military strikes in Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria and Somalia, as well as dozens of attacks against civilian boats in international waters.
And then, of course, there’s Iran, which is now the target of Trump’s newest war, roughly eight months after his first round of pre-emptive military strikes.
What’s more, there’s no reason to assume the list won’t grow. The incumbent American president has threatened to overthrow Cuba’s dictatorship, while occasionally making comments about possible strikes in Mexico. He has even spoken, more than once, about possibly returning U.S. troops to Afghanistan, apparently because the administration wants to reclaim control over Bagram Air Base.
If you voted for Trump because you expected restraint on foreign policy and the use of military force abroad, I have some bad news for you. (And if you were involved in FIFA’s decision to give him a “peace prize,” I have some related news for you.)
As for Vance, with about a week to go before Election Day 2024, the vice presidential nominee told the public: “Our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran. It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.”
He has not yet explained why he no longer agrees with himself, though I’m looking forward to hearing Vance give it a try.
