JD Vance's Risk with Ukraine Aid Proved Successful
The vice president dedicated several years to efforts aimed at bringing an end to U.S. participation in the war.
TroibNews 
When Vice President JD Vance spoke up during President Donald Trump’s recent meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, he took a considerable risk. Typically, vice presidents refrain from interjecting in public discussions between heads of state, and his remarks threatened to disrupt the strategic role he had cultivated in the early stages of the administration as a supporting figure to Trump and a sidekick to Elon Musk.
However, this bold move has yielded results, at least in one significant aspect. Following Zelenskyy’s departure from the West Wing without finalizing a highly anticipated mineral rights agreement, the White House took a cue from Vance’s foreign policy agenda by placing an immediate halt on U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
This decision to suspend all aid may serve primarily as a negotiating tool in Trump’s strategy to encourage Ukraine to reconsider a cease-fire agreement, and it could be quickly reversed should Zelenskyy make further concessions. Nonetheless, this pause, regardless of its duration, underscores a noteworthy rise in the prominence of the non-interventionist foreign policy perspective that Vance has advocated—an outlook that, until recently, was largely marginalized within the Republican Party.
When he assumed his Senate role in January 2023, Vance was among a select few Republican figures who openly questioned U.S. support for Ukraine, uniquely among Senate Republicans in calling for a complete cessation of aid. “The thing that I’m most proud of is that we are on the cusp of radically changing U.S. policy towards Ukraine,” Vance remarked to me in late 2023 during an interview for PMG Magazine. “It’s taken a lot of work.”
Throughout his two years in the Senate, Vance endeavored to challenge the GOP’s traditionally hawkish stance with mixed success. In April 2024, after leading efforts to persuade his Republican colleagues in the House to oppose a $61 billion supplemental aid package for Ukraine, Vance faced a setback when a majority of Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, sided with Democrats in support of the measure.
Now, less than a year since many congressional Republicans rejected his call for drastic changes, the Trump administration has begun to implement Vance’s vision at a diplomatically critical moment.
This shift can largely be attributed to Vance's influence within the new administration. Following Trump’s election victory in November, Vance and like-minded associates have significantly contributed to staffing the administration's foreign policy team. Andy Baker, a senior adviser in Vance’s Senate office, played a crucial role in organizing personnel for Trump’s Department of Defense, which now includes Conservative “restrainers” such as Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and others like Elbridge Colby and Alexander Velez-Green, who have joined the Department of Defense from the Heritage Foundation.
These staffing choices illuminate a crucial distinction between Trump’s foreign policy orientation and Vance’s. In my reporting on Vance, several conservatives have indicated that while Trump tends to approach specific foreign policy matters transactionally, akin to a business negotiation outlined in The Art of the Deal, Vance adopts a more ideological stance, viewing these issues as part of a broader struggle over global power dynamics. In Vance’s foreign policy view, pausing aid to Ukraine isn’t merely a tactical maneuver at the negotiation table; it represents a fundamental step toward undermining what he perceives as a “rules-based international order” that has misused American power and weakened the nation’s economic and cultural strength domestically.
This worldview, which Vance elaborated upon during our interview last year, contrasts with the transactional nature of Trump’s approach. With Vance now occupying the vice president’s office, his perspective receives significant backing in the West Wing. His stance posits that the “rules-based international order”—and the array of U.S.-led multilateral organizations designed to maintain it—serves as a façade for an American empire that primarily benefits global elites at the expense of everyday Americans, particularly those from communities similar to Vance's own in Middletown, Ohio. Vance argues that the compromise during the Cold War aimed to extend liberal democracy and capitalism to countries like China. However, as he sees it, the failure to achieve this goal means the system now exists solely to perpetuate elite interests.
As Vance elaborated to me last year, “if that fundamental goal [of liberalizing places like China] has not materialized, then I think you have to rethink the entire project.”
This critique underpins the animosity that Vance’s supporters feel toward Ukraine. For conservatives like Vance, Zelenskyy symbolizes the nations that have benefited from the protection and generosity of the U.S.-led postwar order, representing those who have prospered at the cost of communities like Vance’s own.
Against this backdrop, Vance’s remarks in the Oval Office, where he admonished Zelenskyy for a perceived lack of appreciation toward the U.S.—“Have you ever said ‘thank you’ once?” Vance inquired—extend beyond current cease-fire negotiations. They echo comments he made at a campaign rally in Newton, Pennsylvania, last September. “You know what I wish Zelenskyy would do when he comes to the United States of America?” Vance posed to a gathering of supporters beneath an open barn in a remote field. “Say thank you to the people of Pennsylvania and everybody else.”
Mark B Thomas contributed to this report for TROIB News
However, this bold move has yielded results, at least in one significant aspect. Following Zelenskyy’s departure from the West Wing without finalizing a highly anticipated mineral rights agreement, the White House took a cue from Vance’s foreign policy agenda by placing an immediate halt on U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
This decision to suspend all aid may serve primarily as a negotiating tool in Trump’s strategy to encourage Ukraine to reconsider a cease-fire agreement, and it could be quickly reversed should Zelenskyy make further concessions. Nonetheless, this pause, regardless of its duration, underscores a noteworthy rise in the prominence of the non-interventionist foreign policy perspective that Vance has advocated—an outlook that, until recently, was largely marginalized within the Republican Party.
When he assumed his Senate role in January 2023, Vance was among a select few Republican figures who openly questioned U.S. support for Ukraine, uniquely among Senate Republicans in calling for a complete cessation of aid. “The thing that I’m most proud of is that we are on the cusp of radically changing U.S. policy towards Ukraine,” Vance remarked to me in late 2023 during an interview for PMG Magazine. “It’s taken a lot of work.”
Throughout his two years in the Senate, Vance endeavored to challenge the GOP’s traditionally hawkish stance with mixed success. In April 2024, after leading efforts to persuade his Republican colleagues in the House to oppose a $61 billion supplemental aid package for Ukraine, Vance faced a setback when a majority of Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, sided with Democrats in support of the measure.
Now, less than a year since many congressional Republicans rejected his call for drastic changes, the Trump administration has begun to implement Vance’s vision at a diplomatically critical moment.
This shift can largely be attributed to Vance's influence within the new administration. Following Trump’s election victory in November, Vance and like-minded associates have significantly contributed to staffing the administration's foreign policy team. Andy Baker, a senior adviser in Vance’s Senate office, played a crucial role in organizing personnel for Trump’s Department of Defense, which now includes Conservative “restrainers” such as Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and others like Elbridge Colby and Alexander Velez-Green, who have joined the Department of Defense from the Heritage Foundation.
These staffing choices illuminate a crucial distinction between Trump’s foreign policy orientation and Vance’s. In my reporting on Vance, several conservatives have indicated that while Trump tends to approach specific foreign policy matters transactionally, akin to a business negotiation outlined in The Art of the Deal, Vance adopts a more ideological stance, viewing these issues as part of a broader struggle over global power dynamics. In Vance’s foreign policy view, pausing aid to Ukraine isn’t merely a tactical maneuver at the negotiation table; it represents a fundamental step toward undermining what he perceives as a “rules-based international order” that has misused American power and weakened the nation’s economic and cultural strength domestically.
This worldview, which Vance elaborated upon during our interview last year, contrasts with the transactional nature of Trump’s approach. With Vance now occupying the vice president’s office, his perspective receives significant backing in the West Wing. His stance posits that the “rules-based international order”—and the array of U.S.-led multilateral organizations designed to maintain it—serves as a façade for an American empire that primarily benefits global elites at the expense of everyday Americans, particularly those from communities similar to Vance's own in Middletown, Ohio. Vance argues that the compromise during the Cold War aimed to extend liberal democracy and capitalism to countries like China. However, as he sees it, the failure to achieve this goal means the system now exists solely to perpetuate elite interests.
As Vance elaborated to me last year, “if that fundamental goal [of liberalizing places like China] has not materialized, then I think you have to rethink the entire project.”
This critique underpins the animosity that Vance’s supporters feel toward Ukraine. For conservatives like Vance, Zelenskyy symbolizes the nations that have benefited from the protection and generosity of the U.S.-led postwar order, representing those who have prospered at the cost of communities like Vance’s own.
Against this backdrop, Vance’s remarks in the Oval Office, where he admonished Zelenskyy for a perceived lack of appreciation toward the U.S.—“Have you ever said ‘thank you’ once?” Vance inquired—extend beyond current cease-fire negotiations. They echo comments he made at a campaign rally in Newton, Pennsylvania, last September. “You know what I wish Zelenskyy would do when he comes to the United States of America?” Vance posed to a gathering of supporters beneath an open barn in a remote field. “Say thank you to the people of Pennsylvania and everybody else.”
Mark B Thomas contributed to this report for TROIB News
