For JD Vance, Europe Really Is the Enemy
Europe now faces a stark choice: abject dependence or radical self-invention.
No one who knows Donald Trump could have expected his second term in office to be a smooth ride for Europe. Even so, the extent to which the administration has set out to antagonize its longstanding allies on the other side of the Atlantic is astounding.
Trump has not merely shown reluctance to support Ukraine or pushed towards a ceasefire; he has dressed down Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a spectacular meeting in the Oval Office and made significant concessions at the outset of negotiations with Russia. He has not only pressed European countries to step up their defense spending; he has repeatedly threatened to violate Denmark’s sovereignty by effectively annexing Greenland. Finally, he has not even attempted to forge a consensus around tariffs on China that could help reshore key industries to the members of the Western alliance; instead, he has made clear his desire to impose similarly stiff tariffs on the European Union (and Canada).
So far, my favored explanation for these extraordinary developments has lain in Trump’s worldview. He is, I argued, the proud purveyor of a zero-sum mindset, in which one party’s gain must come at another party’s loss. And he sees the world as divided into spheres of influence, a mindset that can explain both his lack of interest in defending Ukraine (or Taiwan) and his willingness to use force to extract benefits for the United States in Greenland (and Panama).
On this view, Trump does not see countries like France or Germany as allies the way past American presidents did. But nor does he see these countries as enemies in any real sense. Rather, he sees them, simply, as potential sources of gain or profit.1
Yesterday’s bombshell news that the administration had inadvertently shared key intelligence information with a senior American journalist suggests that this view may be overly optimistic. For the internal policy debate contained in that group chat made clear that parts of the administration, spearheaded by Vice President JD Vance, take an even more hostile stance towards Europe.
The story of the most remarkable Signal conversation in the history of the app is already famous. By all appearances, Michael Waltz, Trump’s national security advisor, assembled some of the most senior decision-makers in the Trump administration in a group chat to discuss plans for strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. In doing so, he inadvertently included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and a longstanding critic of Donald Trump. The conversation didn’t just feature vague information or high-level debate; it included detailed attack plans of a kind that could have spoiled the operation and put American soldiers in harm’s way if it had been rendered public or surveilled by hostile adversaries.
This is notable because it suggests that it’s amateur hour over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Why do senior administration officials including the Vice President, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense conduct highly secret business over an insecure messaging app? How on Earth could they have inadvertently added a journalist famous for his deep dislike of the president to the group chat? And why did nobody notice?
But what I was most struck by in the group chat was the extent to which it reveals the hostility of the administration—and especially of Vance—toward Europe. When Waltz assembled the Signal group, the decision to attack the Houthis in order to restore the safety of a key trade route through the Red Sea had apparently already been taken. There had, later comments in the group by Trump advisor Stephen Miller suggest, already been a high-level meeting about the question in the Situation Room. The president had already signed off. But one person evidently wasn’t yet on board.
“3 percent of U.S. trade runs through the Suez,” Vance cautioned. “40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary … I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.” In other words, Vance didn’t just argue that America has no important self-interest to defend in the region; he seemed to suggest that it should count as an active reason against the operation that it would also happen to serve European interests.
At this point, other members of the group jumped in to advocate going forward with the plans. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, pointed out that restoring the freedom of navigation is a “core national interest.” Waltz, hewing closely to Trump’s apparent insistence that Europe must bear all the financial burden of American military assistance, backed up Hegseth: “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”
At this point, Vance conceded the argument. But it is clear that helping Europe in any capacity did not sit easily with him: “If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” Hegseth (possibly in part to soften the sting for Vance having effectively been overruled) echoed the sentiment: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”
It is hard to fully comprehend what drives Vance’s animus against Europe.
American displeasure at “European free-loading” is long-standing, bipartisan, and perfectly reasonable; Barack Obama and Joe Biden also tried to cajole America’s allies into doing more for their own defense. Even Vance’s infamous speech at the Munich Security Conference could, at a stretch, be interpreted as blunt but ultimately well-intentioned advice towards a wayward friend. (Europeans were rightly shocked that Vance barely addressed the Ukraine conflict, and the administration’s own crackdown on free expression gave the speech a strong stench of hypocrisy; but Vance did have a point in taking his audience to task for the extent to which many states in the European Union now censor the speech of ordinary citizens.)
Vance’s private comments feel qualitatively different to me. They suggest that his goal isn’t merely to animate Europeans to take responsibility for their own defense, nor even to strengthen the right-wing populist forces he clearly sees as Trump’s natural allies on the continent; it is to weaken and to punish Europe.
This should make Europeans very afraid. My fear is no longer that key members of the administration don’t see Europe as an ally; it’s that they may see it as an outright enemy.
If the Vice President of the United States is unwilling to carry out a comparatively simple airstrike against the Houthis to restore global trade flows, it is hard to imagine that he would advocate coming to the defense of NATO countries like Estonia if they were attacked by Russia. And if Vance is actively out to weaken Europe, even seemingly unimaginable actions like annexing parts of the territory of a longstanding ally—as Trump is clearly tempted to do in Greenland—can no longer be dismissed as fanciful.
The remarkable group chat demonstrates that Vance, for now, is not calling the shots in the administration. Though he was clearly reluctant to support the strike on the Houthis, other members of the administration ultimately prevailed. The attack went ahead, hewing closely to plans laid out in the group.
But it would be very dangerous for Europeans to underestimate either Vance’s current influence or his future prospects. For the most part, Vance has clearly decided to align himself with Trump as closely as possible, and his boss seems to appreciate his loyalty. (The infamous Oval Office meeting with Zelenskyy went off the rails in part because Trump appeared keen to defend Vance against veiled criticism from his guest.)
More broadly, Vance is at this stage more likely than any other single person to succeed Trump. Sitting vice presidents usually have a huge leg-up in fights for the nomination. And though Vance was widely mocked on social media during the 2024 campaign, he was actually quite popular with the American public; on the day of the election, he had higher approval ratings than Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, or even his own boss. While the 2028 Republican primaries will likely attract many candidates—and it is always possible that Trump will ultimately give his endorsement to another candidate, such as his own son—Vance must at this stage be considered the presumptive nominee. (And given Trump’s advanced age, there is always a possibility that Vance may become President of the United States before January 2029.)
At a minimum, this means two things for Europe. First, the continent urgently needs a Vance strategy. Just as European statesmen have long strategized about how to manage Trump, they now also need to think about how to manage Vance.
And second, the continent may soon find itself on its own to an even greater extent than European voters and policymakers have come to realize. At this point, any Europeans who still assume that this administration is sure to come to the continent’s rescue in an hour of need are simply deluding themselves.
If there is any silver lining to all of this, it is that the White House’s evident hostility towards the continent may finally focus the minds of its leaders. As I argued a few weeks ago, Europe needs to remember a simple lesson: Either you shape history or history shapes you. If European countries want to avoid becoming the plaything of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping—or, for that matter, of JD Vance and Pete Hegseth—they must make fundamental changes.
Europeans won’t just need to spend more money on the military; they also need to make radical economic reforms, build world-class universities, and turn themselves into genuine centers of global innovation in key technologies like artificial intelligence. That is not by any stretch of the imagination going to be an easy task. But at least the choice for Europe is now clear: abject dependence or radical self-invention. If European leaders—and voters—still deny this stark reality, they will ultimately have but themselves to blame.
Recent polling by More in Common suggests that many Europeans have a similar assessment of the situation. In the United Kingdom, about half of respondents still saw the United States as an ally a few weeks ago; but about a third said that the country was neither an ally nor an enemy. In Germany and France, a plurality has now taken the more pessimistic view: they have come to see America as neither one nor the other. In all three countries, less than one in five respondents thinks of the United States as an enemy.
I agree that Trump and his MAGA movement are best interpreted through a transactional lens. Using a mafia framework also seems to fit their deference to Xi and Putin (and lessor dictators) while shirking less threatening allies who are perceived as weak.