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Ross Duthat
By Ross Douthat
Opinion Columnist
Over the weekend, Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio traveled to the Munich Security Conference to play an unpopular role: as a spokesman, at a meeting of the Western foreign policy establishment, for America’s populist grievance over Ukraine’s war effort.
If one key word had to be removed from his remarks, it would be “a world of scarcity,” which Vance used five times to describe America’s strategic situation: strained by our global commitments, unable to fight Ukraine, while maintaining our position in the Middle East.
In my column on Saturday, I wrote about tensions similar to the warmongering arguments related to U. S. spending in Ukraine, about the argument’s tendency to deviate from momentum (“We’ve got Putin on the ropes!”) to catastrophic judgment (“Putin is getting more powerful every day”!”) while describing the same strategic landscape.
Vance’s argument in Munich is more coherent, and his premises – not isolationist or even Asian, more involved with the Taiwan Strait than with the Donbass – have provided not uncommon ground for Republican critics of our Ukraine policy since the start of the war. It’s not the same as accuracy, and it’s worth reflecting for a moment on why this kind of argument is frustrating Ukrainian hawks so much.
Part of the suspicion is that some of the Asia-first proponents aren’t entirely convinced of it, that it’s simply a more respectable way to get rid of U. S. bonds, and that if the conservative base or Donald Trump makes a decision, he won’t. If Taiwan is worth fighting for, many hardline Chinese Republicans would find an excuse to justify inaction.
But assuming it’s an intelligent religion (and whatever the calculations of Republican politicians, many Chinese hawks are on the same spot) there’s also the challenge that this argument favors hypothetical aggression over actual aggression, prospective warfare over actual war, “unforeseen occasions in East Asia. “(to quote Vance again) about a truth in Eastern Europe. We can’t do everything we can to stop Vladimir Putin today, because Beijing can do anything tomorrow, that’s the fundamental statement, and you can see why other people are irritated by this.
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