The selection of Senator Vance as President Trump’s running mate is likely to energize the “realist” school of foreign policy and be seen as a setback to the hawkish neoconservatives that have played a leading role in the GOP for decades. 

Holding that American power should only be used within a narrowly defined national interest, this brand of statecraft seeks to quickly end the war in Ukraine, bolster support for Israel, and, most importantly, quell the threat of Communist China. 

“America First” is how the Trump-Vance ticket describes that agenda. “Isolationist” is how critics deride it. Yet its adherents are more than just one man, its priorities extend beyond the current global crises, and none of the current labels capture its complexity. Whatever one calls it, a Trump-Vance victory in November could send “realism” soaring into the conservative stratosphere for decades to come. 

“A brilliant choice” is how political scientist Graham Allison describes Mr. Vance to the Sun. “Smart, savvy, articulate, under 40, realist, conservative.” Mr. Allison himself is a “structural realist,” which he says responds to the world as it is and, rather than accept it fatalistically, nudges it toward what the world should be.

Though neither explicitly call themselves “realists,” Trump and Mr. Vance each approach policy making like businessmen. A real estate mogul and a venture capitalist, they are eager to broker peace and make deals. Their goal is to ease tensions in the international system so that America can focus on issues at home, like illegal immigration on the southern border, or the loss of manufacturing jobs that has strangled the American middle class.

A vice president, of course, doesn’t decide foreign policy, but there is reason to think that the enthusiastic 39-year-old senator from Ohio could yield more power from the West Wing than his predecessors. 

“Vance has run a very tight ship as a senator,” a researcher on US-China relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, Jasper Boers, tells the Sun. “I think hopefully the vice president will be empowered to do more in terms of legislative affairs, and he seems like the ideal pick for that.”

On the issue of the Russia-Ukraine war, Mr. Vance is poised to support a negotiated armistice. Mr. Allison observes that the senator is prepared to settle the war now, with Russia continuing to hold about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, and Ukraine still not a member of NATO.

Mr. Vance has voiced concerns that renewed support for President Zelensky’s fight against President Putin would deplete America’s industrial capacity — and that American arms and treasure won’t do enough to change conditions on the battlefield. At the Munich Security Conference in February, the senator made his case that if Mr. Putin is an existential threat to Europeans, they ought to do more to defend themselves. 

“Why is the U.S. assuming any of the burden of defending Europe? And why is the U.S. willing to risk nuclear war to defend Europe? Some of us have been asking these questions for over 40 years,” a professor of intelligence and national security at Texas A&M’s school of government, Christopher Layne, tells the Sun. He says such concerns reflect not “isolationism” but “strategic self-discipline.”

To other observers, even in the conservative camp, Mr. Vance’s coolness toward calamity in Europe is alarming. 

“Mr. Vance has opposed aid to Ukraine, while spreading crude calumnies about Volodymyr Zelensky’s government…” the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board writes, citing his claim that American funding will fill Zelensky’s pockets. “Perhaps he will shed his isolationist impulses in office, but they’re worrisome.”

Regardless, a Trump-Vance victory could turn the American foreign policy establishment away from “peace through strength,” a concept popularized by President Reagan that traces back to President Washington’s 1793 State of the Union address. “To be prepared for war,” America’s first president declared, “is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”

 “Perhaps Vance is capable of moving past foreign policy old think,” Mr. Layne says, “and spark a true debate about updating U.S. foreign policy.”

On the question of Israel and its efforts to defeat Hamas, Mr. Vance has emerged as an outspoken supporter. Yet he’s suggested that it’s up to Middle Eastern partners to achieve their own security. He echoes the approach of Mr. Trump’s senior adviser, Jared Kushner, the 45th president’s son-in-law who helped broker the “Abraham Accords,” a set of diplomatic normalization agreements between Israel and regional Arab countries. 

Above all, Mr. Vance has argued, America must focus its attention on deterring a war with the People’s Republic of China over Taiwan. Mr. Vance declared at Munich that East Asia “is going to be the future of American foreign policy for the next 40 years, and Europe has to wake up to that fact.”

It’s unclear exactly where a Trump-Vance administration would land on China. “On the one hand, Trump is a trade hawk and frequently critical of China on that score,” a professor of international relations at Notre Dame, Michael Desch, a self-described “card-carrying realist,” tells the Sun. “On the other, he has directed criticism at Taiwan, too, and also doesn’t seem as supportive of whatever democratic opinion in Taiwan decides in terms of its future status.” 

Mr. Vance, the analysts say, seems sympathetic to pursuing alliances with leaders in Asia, who might in turn be receptive. “In China, there’s a lot more willingness to sit down and talk with Republicans than there historically has been with Democrats,” Mr. Boers says. When hard-nosed Republicans sit down at the negotiation table with Chinese leadership to normalize diplomatic relations, or broker a trade deal, or discuss Taiwan, it could appear more sincere. 

It might turn out that Mr. Vance, the youngest vice presidential nominee of a major political party since President Nixon ran with President Eisenhower in 1952, is ideologically malleable. He’s served as an elected official only since 2022. Yet he could prove indispensable to a Trump 2.0 foreign policy — and to an electorate that increasingly wants America to come first.