Why J.D. Vance should care about Ukraine

Someone who thinks "China is the real enemy" should care about alliances

Vance and Trump standing together during the first night of the 2024 Republican National Convention, Public Domain (via Wikipedia)

The declaration of J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, that he „does not really care what happens to Ukraine” and that America needs to focus on “the real enemy”, China - sent many shivers in Eastern Europe. Personally I think it was dangerous and irresponsible, but since J.D. Vance could be the next vice president, we will need to find some modus vivendi with him, like it or not.

So if I am blessed with the presence of any Trump voter, let me try to present my polite refutation. I will try to explain why I think he should care, and so do you.

The argument “we have enough problems locally, let’s fix them instead of being engaged in conflicts overseas” is close to my heart. I’m a bit of a pacifist myself - before 2022 I considered myself a fan of Roger Waters!

So many US citizens died on Lusitania that by sheer statistics it is nearly certain at least one of them voted for the policy of neutrality (we have enough problems in USA, let’s steer clear of this pointless European brawl…)

The problem with being a great power is that you can’t avoid engagement. In 20. century the USA tried twice to steer clear of the world wars - and failed twice.

You can say “I don’t care what is happening in Europe”. But you end up with German U-Boots killing American citizens (1915), or Japanese planes destroying Pearl Harbor (1941).

America had the choice of joining the war on its own terms or on the terms set by the enemy. The latter choice was obviously worse. Do you want to repeat the same mistake for the third time?

A country like Switzerland might have the luxury of being neutral, but not a superpower like the USA. The only way for America to get this luxury is by ceasing to be great. The logical opposite of “MAGA”!

(via “Hearts of Iron 4”)

This is because a superpower needs friends, allies, vassals, client states or “foederati”, like in Ancient Rome. Some superpowers in history indeed tried to isolate themselves from the world by building a great wall and focusing on internal problems - that’s ancient China.

The wall did not protect them from the Manchurian invasion, the internal problems spun out of control during Qing dynasty, they ended up attacked from literally all sides and suffered greatly. This is an unambiguous lesson from history, that “isolated superpower” is a bad idea. Nobody would want to repeat it today, especially not China, building its own chain of friends, clients and “foederati” right now, as we speak.

I spent my youth under communism, so it would not be hard for J.D. Vance to convince me that China is “the real enemy”. For argument’s sake, let’s assume it is true. So what are the logical conclusions?

First, we all agree that the best way to fight a war is to establish your war goals without actually fighting a war. To paraphrase the great Bruce Lee: the best combat style is “fighting without fighting”.

“My style? You can call it the art of fighting without fighting” (from “Enter The Dragon”, 1973)

The only plausible scenario of a full scale Sino-American war would be a China attempt to reconquer Taiwan by force. American war goal here is to protect Taiwan and I think J.D. Vance would agree with me that the best way to achieve this war goal is “the Bruce Lee way”: deterrence.

China perceives Taiwan as its province, but the world is full of countries seeing “lost provinces” in their neighbours. For instance, a number of Latin American states are former provinces of the Bolivarian Gran Colombia.

The World War II was a painful lesson that nothing good comes from “reclaiming lost provinces”, so the whole post-1945 international order was based on the principle of discouraging everyone from doing so. It is explicitly outlawed by the UN Charter, among other documents.

In a way, it worked. Wars of annexation - a common thing in 19. century and before that - became a rare thing after 1945.

To certain extent it was creative accounting - Soviet invasions were presented as “brotherly help”, American invasions were about “protecting human rights”, etc. - but as Rochefoucauld famously said, hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue. Everybody accepted that “annexation” is not a valid war goal, even those who had to invent elaborate justifications to bypass this principle.

Russian annexation of Crimea and other parts of Ukraine is the first open violation of the UN Charter in decades. If it goes unpunished, we open a Pandora’s box of similar annexation wars worldwide. In particular, China might feel encouraged to solve its own border conflicts with their neighbours (it’s not only about Taiwan).

So if you consider China “the real enemy”, you should care about what happens to Ukraine. Quod erat demonstrandum. I think I already proved my point, but there are more reasons.

Like I said, ever since Bronze Age, you need good alliances to dominate. Therefore, if you perceive China as “the real enemy”, you don’t want them to have strong allies.

Since Sino-Russian alliance is already a thing, if you think of war with China, you don’t want strong Russia. Therefore, you should care what happens to Ukraine. QED - again.

The same reasoning goes the other way, of course. America cannot handle China on its own, it needs to persuade its European allies to die for Taipei.

“Karbala” (2015) - and actually pretty decent Polish movie about Polish troops in Iraq

This is not impossible - after all, not so long ago we were convinced to die for Baghdad and die for Kabul, and we sent our troops to help George W. Bush invade Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither, may I add, seemed like a particularly good idea at the time and certainly not in retrospective, but we helped our American friends because that’s what friends do.

If Russia wins, we will need our troops and resources domestically, because we will have a hostile superpower directly at our borders. So this time it could be different: America might call us for help again, but we might say “look guys, we send your our thoughts and prayers, but that’s all we can do in this situation, maybe you should have cared what happens to Ukraine after all…”

QED for the third and final time.