Why It Matters: Trump, Vance, Hegseth, the Munich Security Conference, and Ending the Russia-Ukraine War

A Chaotic and Damaging Week for U.S. National Security and Foreign Relations

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Hi there, welcome to Why It Matters.

I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on this past week and maybe concentrate on the foreign policy aspects of it.

It continues to trouble me watching the weaponization of government.

The fact that is most Americans don't necessarily see the US government in action, the services it provides on a regular basis. We will see the absence of the services and the chaos being wrought by the Trump administration,

breaking down, removing professionals from Health and Human Services, from the NIH, National Institute of Health, our nuclear safety enterprises. It's really cross-cutting.

But I think this last week had a lot of foreign policy-related revelations about the direction of the Trump administration. And I think most of that could be embodied in JD Vance's speech, roughly 20 minutes in front of the Munich Security Conference.

And there, I might just spend a few minutes thinking through the effects on both our adversaries and our friends.

Certainly both adversaries and friends see the turmoil being caused. The fact is that the U.S.—it's hard to envision the U.S. being a leader—let's say, in the in the vanguard of fighting infectious diseases with the way.

RFK juniors ready cutting enterprises or the US being able to play a constructive role in aid and development to meet the various crises and challenges, everything from climate change to food shortages.

I think that's clear and certainly our adversaries are going to fill the vacuum with strings attached delivering something in the way of aid, but extracting significant concessions, including from those vulnerable countries that really have little recourse in order to serve some basic needs for their own citizenry.

A role that the US could fill really quite well, just because we're the largest economy in the world, we could afford it.

Small investments to yield large returns, in both US influence and the humanist ability to kind of improve lives.

JD Vance, in this Munich Security Conference, an opportunity to talk about common threats.

Taking a step back. One of the things that we share with our allies is common interests, common threats, and common values. And what we see in J.D. Vance's speech is a departure from shared values, different threat perceptions about what really matters.

It's this basic notion that it's not a militarily aggressive Russia or China, but the fact that somehow extreme right forces are being abused that that is a divert a huge divergence in threat perceptions and interests uh where do our interests lie do they lie in purely transactional um engagements or do they lie in functioning alliances and long-term stability so what JD vance basically lays out in his Munich speech um for those that didn't listen.

It's not these shared values, interests, and threat perceptions. It is frankly an attack on the democracies in Europe attempting to fend off authoritarian regimes, foreign influence campaigns… taking a very critical line on the fact that, for instance, in Romania, after a extremely aggressive influence campaign from Russia, the Supreme Court in Romania overturned the elections that will be rerun or that there is an effort by Germany, the UK, numerous different countries to try to push back against extremism within their country.

And this is where JD Vance lands.

He couches it as a protection.

Really, frankly, if you knew nothing else, if you were listening to this for the first time, you might even take a benign view of it.

He's talking about free speech protecting free speech but understanding the context understanding where we are in the united states that the this is that this is not a conversation about free speech it's about uh stifling opposition it's about um somehow rewriting history and addressing trump's grievances that you you end up in a scenario where we look we certainly now start to look not just unreliable, but potentially as a bad actor, driving Europe to go it alone.

Maybe a benefit, a silver lining here is that Europe starts to share the burden of security more, invest much more in its own defense, increases defense spending from two to 3%, but it is one in which we are no longer part of that picture.

And for our adversaries, it's a scenario in which Russia is emboldened, China's emboldened and gleeful about the absence of US influence.

And in my book that's coming out in just over a week, I talk about what the consequences of this kind of behavior were.

You know, not in this climactic way it's playing out now under a second Trump administration where there's a high degree of transactionality over the course of six presidential administrations that emboldens our adversaries to engage in malign influence, election interference, and ultimately military aggression.

Now, playing out in the most kind of excessive manner where we forget all the lessons of history and look to see if there's a way to engage with Russia when they have such divergent views and divergent interests.

So, it's forgetting about all the lessons that got us to this acute place, especially with Russian aggression and starting from scratch. Pretty disturbing developments.

I think you could see the rhetoric from European leaders fighting back rejecting this notion of treating the AFD, the kind of fascist, Nazi party in Germany that's looking to gain seats in the upcoming election, maybe gain a majority.

I don't think that's going to happen.

Zelensky doubling down on looking for support from Europe because Ukraine is part of European security, Europe's future.

And we could see those lines being drawn much more starkly.

And the US is on the sidelines.

We'll see what ends up happening with these peace talks.

We've seen some very wild swings with Secretary Hegseth talking about Ukraine no longer changing policy abruptly, and obviously without consulting with the rest of government, talking about Ukraine no longer being invited into NATO, that Ukraine is going to give up territory, then backpedaling really quickly, and Trump initially supporting that line, but then being convinced by his more professional national security practitioners that this would grant a win to Russia.

And then Trump himself saying something, frankly, much more constructive, saying that Russia can't be given a win.

This is a very thoughtful way of approaching Trump.

He wants to be the winner.

He doesn't want Russia to be the winner so that the U.S. will continue to support.

But we have this idea of peace negotiations starting in Saudi Arabia shortly.

Keith Kellogg talking about negotiations starting in the next 180 days, maybe the war being over.

I think that's if we pursue the path of appeasement, we pursue the path of Russia first policy that's been consistent among six administrations, but now in like the most excessive of being implemented in the most excessive way in the Trump administration will not have peace.

But if the US recognizes that an America first approach entails supporting our alliances and maybe increasing burden-sharing, ensuring that the most aggressive adversaries don't score wins, we might be able to get there.

A lot of unknowns.

I'm not optimistic.

I think a lot of harm was done to US standing, US national security, but that is where we are at the moment.

Anyway, looking forward to continuing on this conversation.

That's a quick review, mainly focused on foreign policy over the past week and more to come.

Thanks.