Both VP candidates have unorthodox views on foreign policy — and one of them may actually get a chance to be influential.
Neither of this year’s presidential candidates is known for deep expertise in world affairs. When Donald Trump and Kamala Harris speak about foreign policy, they rarely do more than repeat weatherbeaten cliches. Their running mates, however, are bolder. Both JD Vance and Tim Walz hold startlingly unorthodox foreign policy views. In office, either one might seek to change America’s approach to the world in profound ways.
Would he succeed? Presidents rarely turn to vice presidents for national security advice. In foreign policy terms, though, both the Republicans and Democrats have nominated “kangaroo tickets,” with the stronger legs in back. Vance and Walz have thought seriously about geopolitics. Trump and Harris, less so. The next president will have a daunting domestic agenda. That could give the vice president unusual sway over foreign policy.
Vance is among several dozen Republican members of Congress who make up an informal caucus opposed to US intervention abroad. He and the others want to cut off military aid to Ukraine — a jarring challenge to the bipartisan consensus in Washington. Trump seems to agree with them. Vance, however, has gone beyond platitudes to specifics. He argues that the Ukraine war must end with Ukraine surrendering territory to Russia. In February, he shocked the Munich Security Conference with a speech asserting that no amount of military aid will turn the tide of war in Ukraine’s favor and that the West should instead seek “some negotiated peace.”
Hours after Vance’s speech, Harris took to the podium and asserted the opposite. She vowed that the United States would uphold Ukraine’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” and that she would “work to secure critical weapons and resources that Ukraine so badly needs.” To do less, she said, “would be a gift to Vladimir Putin.”
This contrast suggests that the outcome of November’s election could be decisive for Ukraine. Harris asserted in Munich that continued military aid to Ukraine is vital “to stop an imperialist authoritarian from subjugating a free and democratic people.” Vance argues that Russia poses no serious threat to US interests and could even join us in confronting China, which he sees as America’s true enemy. Based on their dueling speeches, a Trump-Vance administration would seem likely to push Ukraine toward compromise with Moscow; a Harris-Walz team would be less likely to do so.
Walz has been out of Washington politics since the Ukraine war broke out and has said little about it. In one recent interview, however, he warned that Republicans “want to take away our alliances and leave Russia to do whatever they want.” While Vance envisions partnership with Russia to confront China, Walz would prefer the opposite.
Anti-China rhetoric has risen to a fever pitch in Washington. Politicians compete to accuse China of ever more lurid forms of perfidy and warn of the immense danger it poses to the United States and the world. In this climate, it is startling to hear Walz dismiss the threat from China as “hyperbole” and suggest that the United States and China have shared interests.
No American politicians understand the world better than those few who have actually lived abroad. They have seen the United States as others see us. The last national figure with this experience was Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia. Walz would be the first to have lived in China. That makes it difficult for him to see China as a cartoon enemy.
Walz majored in East Asian studies at Chadron State College in Nebraska. After graduating he moved to China for a year, supporting himself by teaching English. Later he spent his honeymoon there, helped run a company that sponsored student trips to China, and visited more than a dozen times. He would be a rarity in Washington: someone who actually knows another country well — and a vitally important country at that.
Walz has criticized China’s human rights record and met publicly with some of Beijing’s most outspoken adversaries, including the Dalai Lama and the now-imprisoned Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong. Yet he has also called the Chinese “such kind, generous, capable people” and insisted that the US-China relationship need not be “adversarial.”
As vice president, Walz would be the first major national figure in this century to promote partnership with China. Vance would be among the first to suggest partnership with Russia. Each position would outrage many in Washington.
The next vice president may be as powerless as most before him. But if that changes, either Vance or Walz could upset America’s foreign policy applecart.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
