Republican leader Donald Trump and his possible vice president at the White House JD Vance have repeatedly expressed critical positions on Ukraine, even opposing the shipment of weapons. They are also very close allies of Israel (and sworn enemies of Iran).
Interview with Marco Di Liddo and Giuseppe Dentice
Respectively director and analyst of CeSI (International Studies Center)
Donald Trump e J.D. Vance
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Donald Trump has decided: JD Vance will be his vice president if he is elected to the White House on November 5. The Ohio senator, A 39-year-old former Marine and Yale graduate, he represents the hard wing of the Republican Party and in recent years has particularly stood out for his harsh tones towards Joe Biden – and once also towards Trump himself, whom he did not hesitate to call “the American Hitler”. Vance has acquired more and more authority above all thanks to his ability to raise funds in Silicon Valley, in an area traditionally linked to the Democrats, that of high technology. His story, the bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy”, in which he recounts a life of redemption starting from a poor white working-class family, has made him a symbol of the American Dream and the desire to fight against economic insecurities.
Vance, however, has also distinguished himself for some foreign policy positions: the 39-year-old, in fact, was one of the main opponents of the new military and financial assistance package to Ukraine last spring and expressed indifference to Kiev’s fate. “In choosing Vance as his running mate, Trump has made a very clear choice on foreign policy,” Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, told the Guardian, adding that the Trump-Vance duo would be happy to embrace autocrats around the world, starting with Putin.
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a 2019 meeting
What will Trump’s strategy be in Ukraine?
As Professor explains to Fanpage.it Marco Di Liddodirector of CeSI (International Studies Center), in planning the war in Ukraine the Russians certainly took into account the European elections and especially the American ones. “The management of the conflict took into account not only the military dimension but even of the political oneand it is no coincidence that information warfare operations were put in place to direct the vote in a very specific direction, favorable to Moscow’s interests”. Di Liddo adds that Russia is heading, in 2025, towards a particularly complex phase of the conflict: “In addition to the human losses, there are the losses of thousands of vehicles, and their replacement is proving increasingly difficult because the industry is unable to keep up. Field operations demonstrate this clearly: Moscow is unable to break through the Ukrainian lines not only because of Kiev’s resistance, but also because the pace of production of military vehicles is not adequate”.
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It is in this context that the American presidential elections arrive. “If we go back and read the statements made by Trump and Vance on Ukraine, instinctively we would say that Things could go badly for Kiev. And our instincts are not betraying usat least this time. The first one said he would easily solve the issue accepting some Russian claimswhile the second admitted that he doesn’t care about Ukraine at all”, Di Liddo recalls. Everything would suggest that in the event of a Republican victory, Kiev would face a debacle, however there are also other aspects to consider, first and foremost “image”. “If the Americans were to cut off aid to Ukraine without negotiating a politically dignified compromise, the image of the United States and the West would be seriously damaged, causing them to lose credibility, legitimacy and influence”.
Granting Ukrainian Territories to Moscow and Joining NATO: What Trump Might Decide
The US “deep state” is well aware of all this, and will consequently ensure that a solution is found that does not look like a new American defeat after the abandonment of Afghanistan. “The concession of Ukrainian territories to Moscow is extremely problematic: the concept would pass that in 2022-2024 you can invade a country, take a part of its territory and leave without suffering consequences. Which could even be accepted, if the US were able to drag Russia to their side in an anti-Chinese function. But it is highly unlikely that Putin will ‘betray’ China, after the military, political and industrial aid he has received from Beijing”. The biggest risk, at this point, is that Trump and Vance decide that the Ukrainian crisis is a exclusively European problemand that Europe is unable to make important decisions in the absence of American leadership.
And what about theUkraine’s entry into NATO? Donald Trump has never closed the door to an enlargement of the Atlantic Alliance, but has always set the condition – for the member countries – of 2% of GDP in military spending. “Kiev’s entry into NATO and the search for an agreement with Russia to end the war cannot coexist in any way. If in Europe and the USA there is a particularly ‘creative’ leader, it will be possible to find an acceptable solution: for example, one could think of multilateral pacts that in content closely resemble Article 5 of NATO, but which do not provide for an official entry into the Atlantic Alliance by Ukraine”.
In any case, a victory for Donald Trump would greatly complicate Kiev’s position, which realistically will be forced to severely scale back his expectations. In short, talking about a total “victory” against Russia will be much more difficult for Zelensky in the future.
Trump and Vance, Israel’s “Super Friends”
And what about Israel? As Al Jazeera recalls, on the occasion of the attack of October 7, 2023, Vance blamed the Biden administration, accusing it of having favored the Palestinian group. “Americans must face the harsh truth: our tax dollars funded all of this.” The senator also firmly opposed any idea of limiting Israel’s actions in Gaza, despite the countless war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Tel Aviv. In short: Trump and Vance will be as pro-Israel as Biden and would never dream of abandoning their main ally in the Middle East, for any reason in the world.
On the other hand, Trump has already led the United States and given ample proof of closeness to Israel. How can we forget his statement in December 2017, when he said that the time had come to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish Stateinfuriating the Palestinians and Arab allies? “Nothing will change compared to the Trump of a few years ago,” he explains Joseph DenticeCeSI analyst specializing in the Middle East. “The Republican leader will be strongly anti-Iranian and strongly pro-Israel. It is no coincidence that many are talking about a policy of maximum pressure against Tehran, the same one that risked starting a war in 2019 between Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, we also know that Trump is unpredictable and that despite his aggressive tones, he can be very pragmatic and careful to avoid military conflicts in the strict sense”.
In the current context, while Israel is pushing to create a war front also in the north against Hezbollah and Iran, Tel Aviv may not find a supporter in the USA, precisely because of Trump’s policies and his – for many surprising – capacity for moderation. “The Republican leader’s foreign policy in the Middle East should not differ much from what he has already shown us in his first presidential term”, adds Dentice.
What will Trump do if Israel is convicted of genocide in Gaza?
But how will Donald Trump behave if Israel is convicted of the crime of genocide in Gaza by the International Court of Justice in the future? It is a possibility that cannot be ruled out given the scale of the massacre of Palestinians. The CeSI analyst explains: “There is no certain answer to this question. If Trump were to support an action by Israel against the UN, he would go against the idea of a multilateral and liberal international society that the US itself founded after the Second World War. Trump, therefore, would disavow the United States itself. The feeling is that President Trump would willingly push to support Israel, aware however that there would be strong pressure in the State Department and in the White House itself to not grant Te Aviv all the freedom it desires: in short, the president could be induced to moderation. But if this were to happen, the US would end up being strongly distrusted in the eyes of the world and the gap, already very wide, would also grow between the global south – of which Russia and China are acting as spokespersons – and the West”.
Source: www.fanpage.it
