There’s at least one mainstream European politician JD Vance is a fan of: iconic French postwar leader Charles de Gaulle.
In an interview with British news and opinion website UnHerd, the U.S. vice president said that de Gaulle — who led the French World War II resistance against the Nazis and was president from 1959 to 1969 — had it right when it came to European military independence.
De Gaulle “loved the United States of America,” Vance said, “but [he] recognised what I certainly recognise, that it’s not in Europe’s interest, and it’s not in America’s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States.”
Vance’s comments land as President Donald Trump’s administration repeatedly hammers European capitals over their overreliance on American military might for their own defense, while hinting repeatedly that the U.S. would not come to the aid of NATO allies who don’t invest in their own security. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also warned American military presence in Europe is not “forever.”
Trump wants NATO countries to spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense — a sharp increase from the alliance’s current 2 percent target, which is set to increase at a summit in The Hague this summer.
“I don’t think that Europe being more independent is bad for the United States — it’s good for the United States,” Vance said. “Just going back through history, I think — frankly — the British and the French were certainly right in their disagreements with Eisenhower about the Suez Canal.”
In the 1950s, U.S. leader Dwight Eisenhower forced London and Paris, before de Gaulle became president, to back down from a military intervention to regain control of the Suez Canal from Egypt, which was key to the countries’ economic and colonial interests.
With the exception of Britain, France and Poland, “most European nations don’t have militaries that can provide for their reasonable defence,” Vance argued. “The reality is — it’s blunt to say it, but it’s also true — that Europe’s entire security infrastructure, for my entire life, has been subsidized by the United States of America.”
De Gaulle, whose thinking was shaped by Suez, frequently warned that Europeans should be more independent from the U.S., and worked to make the French military more autonomous, including by developing nuclear weapons and a powerful defense industry. He inspired a decades-long push for what current French President Emmanuel Macron now calls “strategic autonomy.”
It’s all love
Vance also had thoughts about the European response to the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which he said turned into a “strategic disaster.”
As the U.S. prepared to invade Iraq in 2003, many European nations including France and Germany opposed an incursion, while Britain backed the U.S. The vice president said the skeptical Europeans could have spoken up more forcefully, though.
He said that “a lot of European nations were right” to have misgivings about the Iraq war and argued with scant evidence that Europe could have stopped it if it “had been a little more independent, and a little more willing to stand up.”
The vice president — who has previously launched blistering attacks on the old continent over migration and free speech — tried to temper some of his criticism by stressing his “love” for Europe.
“I love European people. I’ve said repeatedly that I think that you can’t separate American culture from European culture,” he said. “We’re very much a product of philosophies, theologies, and of course the migration patterns that came out of Europe that launched the United States of America.”
But, Vance added, “European leaders have radically underinvested in security, and that has to change.”
He also took a shot at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the latest salvo in a war of words between the two politicians, which began with their testy Oval Office exchange in February when Vance lashed Zelenskyy as “disrespectful.”
In an interview with American news program 60 Minutes on Sunday, Zelenskyy accused the vice president of “somehow justifying” Russia’s invasion and falling prey to Moscow’s disinformation.
Vance hit back, calling it “sort of absurd for Zelensky to tell the [American] government, which is currently keeping his entire government and war effort together, that we are somehow on the side of the Russians.”
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