A Closer Look at Why J. D. Vance’s Stance on Ukraine Is Unpopular

Yesterday, I published an article about how Ohio GOP Senate candidate J. D. Vance got on the wrong side of Republican voters and even some of his donors over his stance on Ukraine.

In response to my article, Michael Brendan Dougherty argued that Vance’s position on Ukraine is actually popular, so let’s take a closer look at the issue.

Here is what Vance said on February 19, a few days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion:

“I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” Vance said on Steve Bannon’s podcast. “I’m sick of Joe Biden focusing on the border of a country I don’t care about while he lets the border of his own country become a total war zone.”

Vance’s position that he didn’t “care what happens to Ukraine one way or another” was deeply unpopular — so unpopular that even some Vance donors (who clearly don’t have a problem with populism) called him to complain.

Vance is now pretending that all he said was that he wanted to avoid nuclear war with Russia or that Ukraine isn’t in the “vital” national-security interest of America. But that is not what he said, and if you play a video clip of Vance uttering that single sentence — “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another” — most Republican voters will recoil.

Vance’s statement wasn’t merely a matter of sentiment, of course. If Vance really didn’t “care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” then the logical policy based on that belief would be to do nothing — no arms for Ukraine, no sanctions against Russia.

While Republicans overwhelmingly support military aid to Ukraine and harsh sanctions against Russia, Vance has flailed around on both issues.

At first, Vance basically defended the isolationist position he staked out on Steve Bannon’s podcast. Before the invasion, Vance did not call for the United States to lift a finger to help Ukraine.

On the eve of war, prominent populists scoffed at the notion Americans were interested in aiding Ukraine. Michael Brendan Dougherty laughed at the idea that it would be popular for Republicans to support sending weapons to Ukraine: “If people want to buy weapons, that’s something to discuss. But the idea that GOP voters have some deep passionate attachment to this conflict is insane. This is a debate for insiders.”

In an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show the night of February 23 — after Vladimir Putin had delivered his speech announcing the “special military operation” in Ukraine — Vance dismissed “this Ukraine crisis that has nothing to do with our national security. . . . We would be much better served, Tucker — our people would be safer — if we declared the Mexican cartels a terrorist organization, focused on them, and let Ukraine and Russia figure out what’s in Russia and Ukraine’s business.”

But on February 24, after the horror of Russia’s full-scale invasion had begun to unfold, Vance changed his tune on Ukraine.

“Russia’s assault on Ukraine is unquestionably a tragedy,” he wrote in a statement released just five days after he had said he didn’t “care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

Vance said in his February 24 statement that “Trump deserves an incredible amount of credit for the strength and diplomatic engagement that kept Putin in check.” But if Vance didn’t care about Ukraine one way or another, why did Trump deserve credit for deterring an invasion of Ukraine?

“Russia has earned sanctions, but whatever sanctions we apply will have little effect,” Vance wrote, coming out in favor of sanctions for the first time. But if Vance believes America has literally no national-security interest at all in Ukraine and that sanctions will have little effect, then why would he support any sanctions on Russia?

In his February 24 statement, Vance’s only mention of U.S. military aid to Ukraine was a condemnation of it: “We spent $6 billion on a failed Ukrainian army.”

By March 3, after Ukraine’s military proved far more resilient than most experts had expected, Vance was willing to concede on Tucker Carlson’s show that he was “fine with sending aid — you know, food, medicine, other supplies” on the condition that Congress approved $30 billion to build the wall on the U.S.–Mexico border. Vance again pushed the idea of “predicat[ing] aid to Ukraine” on funding of the border wall in a March 23 Federalist article.

Is it popular, after Russia invaded Ukraine, to hold military aid to Ukraine hostage in order to achieve any particular domestic-policy goal — whether it’s building the wall, banning abortion, passing the Green New Deal, or Medicare for All? I’m very skeptical. Just look at the behavior of House Republicans who cosponsored a bill to ban aid to Ukraine until the border wall is built: 

In other recent comments, Vance has flatly opposed aid to Ukraine. On March 19, he said on Steve Bannon’s podcast that the United States shouldn’t pour “money into the war sinkhole” of Ukraine.

“I don’t care enough about what’s going on over there that I’m going to step in it, get a bunch of our citizens killed and pour more and more money into the war sinkhole while we’ve got our own problems here at home,” Vance said.

To sum it all up: Vance’s February 19 statement that he didn’t “really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another” — a statement that reflected his do-nothing pre-invasion approach to Ukraine — is deeply unpopular. It was so unpopular that Vance got blowback from his own populist-friendly donors. After the invasion, Vance came out in favor of some unspecified sanctions without giving a clear explanation of why any sanctions make sense in light of his beliefs that sanctions “will have little effect” and that America has no national-security interest in Ukraine. After the invasion, Vance opposed military aid to Ukraine unless it was tied to $30 billion in funding for a U.S.–Mexico border wall (a domestic policy goal that President Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress could not achieve). On March 19, Vance told Steve Bannon the United States should not pour “money into the war sinkhole” of Ukraine.

So, Vance’s position on Ukraine by itself is unpopular, but Michael Brendan Dougherty objects that I did not discuss the Ukraine stance of two of his Republican rivals.

In the Ohio GOP Senate race, two candidates (Mike Gibbons and Josh Mandel) were polling at about 20 percent, while three candidates were polling at about 10 percent (Vance, Jane Timken, and Matt Dolan) in the most recent Fox News poll from a month ago.

Michael notes that Gibbons and Mandel recently came out in favor of a no-fly zone enforced by our NATO allies, and that policy would likely lead the United States into war with Russia. I agree that a no-fly zone over Ukraine enforced by NATO allies would be a terrible policy on the merits. The policy still has almost no support in Congress (and the outcome of the Ohio GOP primary is not going to cause the Biden administration to support one).

As for the politics of supporting a no-fly zone? Michael notes that top-line polling results have shown that Americans support a no-fly zone, but support fades away when the likely consequences of a no-fly zone are explained to voters. It’s not clear to me whether the top-line result or the “let me explain that to you” result matters more when it comes to electoral analysis. As the political saying goes: If you’re explaining, you’re losing.

One final point: Michael writes that hawks who criticize Vance are acting “on behalf of” Gibbons and Mandel, but I personally hold no brief for either candidate. Both Vance and Mandel have been running extremely online and performatively deplorable campaigns. Mike Gibbons’s claim that there were 5 million more votes than registered voters in 2020 is bonkers.

At the end of the day, of course, one of these five Republicans is going to win the nomination and then face a Democratic nominee who is a liar who supports taxpayer-funded abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. One million or so Ohio Republican primary voters will make their choice about who they want to face Democrat Tim Ryan, and I’m doubtful the online scribblings of Michael Brendan Dougherty or myself will affect the views of more than a handful of those GOP voters.

During the 2020 election, telling the truth about Joe Biden did not mean one was acting as an agent on behalf of Donald Trump, and telling the truth about Donald Trump did not mean one was acting as an agent on behalf of Joe Biden. The same is true when it comes to telling the truth about the 2022 Ohio Senate candidates, and I’ll have more to say about all of them soon.