JD Vance’s primary win in Ohio represents a fulcrum moment for the America First movement, because it validates that a populist nationalist approach to foreign policy can prove decisive with 2022 voters. In fact, Vance’s insistence that America reverse course and de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine provided the most crucial policy differentiator against his opponents.
Consider the backdrop of a highly contentious primary in Ohio, one where JD faced a constant barrage of attacks, from both the leftist corporate media as well as from Republican operatives and organizations. The globalist Club for Growth poured the gargantuan resources of multinational big business into saturation TV advertisements maligning Vance. In total, his primary opponents and related groups outspent Vance by more than five to one.
JD pushed back against the globalists on trade, but also on military policy.
The Beltway foreign policy complex clearly identifies Ukraine as next opportunity to rev up Washington’s war machine. They envision the next Iraq, or a new Afghanistan. Nothing empowers the permanent political class more than war. It swells budgets, rewards giant contractors, elevates lobbyists, and allows the effete dilettantes of Foggy Bottom and D.C. think tanks to treat the world like some game of globalist chess. Only, in this corrupt version of the game, the deplorables are always the pawns, the suckers who pay the price in American blood and treasure for needless warfighting and constant nation-building.
JD stood athwart this latest tide of interventionist madness and yelled “stop!”
As a Marine veteran who was deployed to Iraq, he knows too well the destruction of war and the massive costs – human and financial – incurred for our homeland. Vance courageously distinguished himself in a crowded and well-funded field in Ohio by declaring his total opposition to escalation in Ukraine, particularly the folly of a NATO no-fly zone.
Two of his major competitors advocated for the imposition of a no-fly zone in Ukraine, with the weak caveat that our European partners should perform the military enforcement. Vance correctly pointed out that such policing by NATO country planes and personnel would quickly lead to actual combat between Putin’s forces and our allies. America would then be treaty-bound to intervene on behalf of the forces of Poland, or Germany, creating a WWIII-scenario in a hot second: American forces in a shooting conflict with Russia.
Vance elucidated that the war in Ukraine, while incredibly tragic, involves no discernible vital US national security interest. Putin’s invasion cannot be justified, and his forces inflict cruel pain on innocent civilians. But rather than let emotionalism drive his policy prescriptions, this America First fighter dispassionately insisted that American interests drive our foreign policy.
President Donald Trump, whose endorsement of Vance proved vital in the race, concurred. He issued a powerful statement calling for de-escalation, observing: “it doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement.”
In contrast to Trump, too many Republicans and pretenders clinging to the America First label have been willing to effectively outsource American foreign policy to the wishes of executives at Raytheon, NATO bureaucrats in Brussels, and the globalist moguls of the Davos set.
Ukraine’s sovereignty and border insecurity may represent a threat to Europe. If so, then those advanced countries should be more than capable of confronting the challenge on their own, without the training wheels of Uncle Sam acting as a sugar daddy to these spoiled countries. For far too long, countries like Italy and Germany have failed to live up to their NATO defense spending promises and, after 75 years of full-time, massive US military presence on the Continent, it is high time for Europe to effectively mind its own defense.
In addition, the media and political class fixation with the eastern border of Ukraine in recent months forms a giant diversion from the reality of a border crisis that matters far more to every American, the teeming vaporization of our own southern border. Right here at home, we have literally millions of uninvited and unvetted illegal migrants trespassing into our country, with the tacit permission and invitation of the Biden administration. This human tsunami demands immediate action and, unlike a Ukraine conflict 6,000 miles away, presents systemic peril for America’s national and economic security.
Thankfully, the motivated and informed citizens of Ohio realize this reality. They prioritize problems here at home rather than obsess over a very unfortunate regional battle on the other side of the globe. These good deplorables from the Buckeye State rallied to Vance’s vision of an America First foreign policy of realism and restraint. Now, JD will take this case to the entire Ohio electorate and this stance will distinguish him markedly from the globalist Democrat opponent, Tim Ryan.
Once he prevails in the Fall, Ohio will send a true America First warrior to Washington, a brave Marine unafraid to buck the bellicose Beltway bloviators.
