JD Vance denied that a rift had been driven between the United States and Europe despite the vice president’s own repeated broadsides against America’s traditional ally.
The vice president spoke in a moderated discussion with Wolfgang Ischinger, the head of the Munich Security Conference, on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., three months after he made waves at the organization’s conference in Germany.
“I think it's completely ridiculous to think that you're ever going to be able to drive a firm wedge between the United States and Europe,” Vance said. “It doesn't mean that Europeans won't criticize the United States, the United States won't criticize Europe, but I do think fundamentally we have to be and we are on the same civilizational team.”
The discussion came at a crucial moment for President Donald Trump, as the United States seeks to broker an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. So far, the United States has threatened to walk away from peace talks, while Trump has harshly criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“What I would say is, right now, the Russians are asking for a certain set of requirements, a certain set of concessions in order to end the conflict, we think they're asking for too much,” he said.
Ischinger mentioned Vance’s speech he made back in February in Munich, where he harshly criticized European immigration policy and accused Europe of “retreating from some of its most fundamental values,” questioning its commitment to free speech and its election integrity.
Vance further aggravated Europeans when in a Fox News interview, he criticized the idea of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. He said the best path forward to peace was to give the United States an economic upside in Ukraine, calling it “way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 20 or 30 years.”
His comments were widely interpreted as referencing Britain and France. Troops from both countries served alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan, and British forces also took part in the war in Iraq. France lost 86 troops in Afghanistan, while Britain lost 454 in Afghanistan and 179 in Iraq. Amid uproar in Europe – which saw British tabloids label him a “clown” and “JD Dunce” – Vance said it was “absurdly dishonest” to say he meant to insult the United Kingdom and France.
During his speech on Wednesday, the vice president stressed the need for the US-European alliance.
“I still think that this European Alliance is very important, but I think that for it to be important and for us to be real friends with each other, and I think that we are very much real friends, we've got to talk about the big question,” he said.
"I think that it means that all of us, frankly, on both sides of the Atlantic, have gotten a little bit too comfortable with the security posture of the last 20 years, and that, frankly, that security posture is not adequate to meet the challenges of the next 20 years.”
He also repeated Trump’s calls for European countries to contribute more to their own defense.
“It's not just spending money, as important as that is. It's making sure that the same economic engine that powered first world living standards is actually geared towards producing, God forbid, weapons of war, if those weapons of war are ever necessary,” he said.
“I think this is an area where we're fundamentally right, and I think it's gratifying to see so many of our European friends recognize that and recognize that Europe does really have to play a bigger role in continental defense.”
He defended Trump’s decision to levy across-the-board tariffs against Europe. “In the same way that American markets have been open to a lot of European goods, we'd like a lot of European markets to be open to American goods,” he said.
Vance said that Trump only enacted his “liberation day” tariffs that disrupted global markets 30 days ago. “So we are in the early innings of a very significant shift,” he said. “I think that shift is going to really endure to the benefit of both the United States, but also of Europe, but fundamentally it has to happen.”
Vance has served as something of Trump’s attack dog on the global stage, being one of the president’s point people on trade deals with Europe and the United Kingdom. At the same time, he also clashed with Prime Minister Keir Starmer about Europe’s free speech laws.
