Shakespeare’s Iago is a smooth talker. He knows just the words to nudge Othello, his boss, into a jealous and ultimately self-destructive fury. Less clear, however, are Iago’s motives; the whisperer’s intrigue ends in his own destruction. Samuel Taylor Coleridge defined Iago as a figure of “motiveless malignity,” an agent of chaos for chaos’s sake.
Watching the blow-up in the Oval Office between Presidents Trump and Zelensky and Vice President JD Vance—whose unasked-for intervention set everything spinning out of control—I smelled Iago. The vice president knew just the words to say—wasn’t that Zelensky in Pennsylvania shaking hands with…Democrats?—to push his boss into a fury. For a second, I wondered if we shouldn’t take another glance at Mr. Vance’s birth certificate to be sure we weren’t living in a reboot of “The Americans.”
The vice president’s interests are perhaps not so opaque as Iago’s. Before being chosen as Mr. Trump’s No. 2, Mr. Vance’s accomplishments in public service—a third of a Senate term—were thin. But he drew media attention—and Mr. Trump’s eye—for his jarring position against Ukraine. “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” the future senator said during his campaign. When it comes to American foreign policy, at least we’re safe from overthinking.
To be fair, I once found much to like in JD Vance. I enjoyed his book Hillbilly Elegy and the account of his 2019 conversion to Catholicism. His speech at a security conference in Munich a week before the Oval Office meltdown turned heads here in Europe in ways that needed turning. He raised issues like the growing intolerance for Christian beliefs on the continent, the West’s demographic crisis and the hypocrisy of a ruling elite willing to use undemocratic means to protect democracy. An establishment quick to paint any challenger as a new Mussolini, like crying wolf at every kitten, has left huge swaths of the continent’s voters alienated and distrustful. Mr. Vance, it seemed to me, might be one of few politicians to have thought through the deeper dynamics behind what has become a self-destructive malaise.
On the left, concern for injustices—past, present and occasionally confected—has morphed into hateful rhetoric so sweeping in its condemnations—of America, Christianity, Western civilization—that it seems to leave nothing good upon the earth. When motherhood is out and “inseminated persons” are in, when being anti-racist means tearing down statues of Abraham Lincoln, we’re somewhere between Alice in Wonderland and collective suicide. A great deal of President Trump’s political success has come from harnessing revulsion at this nihilistic turn.
But here’s the rub: The same tendency is present in MAGA as well. I’d say, in fact, that a divide runs through the movement. Some supporters—let’s call them Patriotic MAGA—have probably been made fun of for old-fashioned values and using words like “patriotic.” Mr. Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, is a slightly tragic exemplar of this tendency, though we’re also talking about conflicting forces within individuals as much as groups within the movement. Patriotic MAGA is disturbed to see a culture embodying ideals like work, faith and family dismembered. In happier cultural circumstances, Mr. Trump probably wouldn’t hold much appeal to such people. But he’s not the one who fought the Little Sisters of the Poor.
There is a more cynical strain of MAGA, however, a mirror of the deconstructivism of the left, which jeers at woke hypocrisy but is not for much of anything—certainly not anything requiring faith or sacrifice. Think of the guy dressed like a Viking at the Capitol riot. Nihilistic MAGA, in fact, seems to reject much of what Patriotic MAGA seeks to save. They will trade law and order for blanket pardons. If Ronald Reagan vowed to fight the evil empire today, they would deride him as a chump on X. J.F.K. promising to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship” to assure the survival of liberty? Forever wars. Honoring treaties? For suckers. Unconstitutional means to protect the Constitution? Anything to stop the libs.
Mr. Vance’s “I don’t really care” could be the movement’s anthem. In the debate over Ukraine funding that played out last year, variations on the question “Why should we care about Ukraine’s borders when we can’t secure our own?” were bandied about, though there was never any logical connection between the two. Russia overrunning Kyiv would not have secured the Rio Grande. Not caring about others—no matter how loudly one does it—doesn’t actually make American lives better.
American values
One of the things that irked me about the vice president shivving Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office was just how un-American it all was. Living abroad, I have had plenty of time to reflect on the particular characteristics of my countrymen. Americans tend to be generous and practical, direct and not too formal. George Washington opted to be called “Mr. President” instead of more regal formulations. Adding gold braid to uniforms is for Peronist generalissimos, and fretting over protocol for European princesses. Americans don’t have time for that.
A European friend recently returning from the States remarked on how Americans are generally happy to see others succeed—where he is from, success provokes suspicion—because Americans imagine there is enough success to go around. This isn’t necessarily a mark of altruism; we are generous because nickel-and-diming folks is bad for business. We can act big because we are, literally, big. But the vice president melting down over not being thanked fulsomely enough was more banana republic than big. Like Eric Cartman of “South Park” shouting, “You will respect my authority!” To be sure, Mr. Zelensky made some missteps in the conversation—the man does have a few worries on his mind—but khans and satraps make their allies grovel. You are the vice president of the United States. You can act like an American.
The problem is that disillusionment and defeat and the echo-chamber dynamics of social media mean Patriotic MAGA has tended to bleed into Nihilistic MAGA. When it started, the war in Ukraine had such resonance because the West had become—as Ross Douthat has argued—so decadent. The sight of a people willing to fight for something—willing to sacrifice—jolted Western consciences grown jaded. Mr. Vance’s challenge to a driftless West in Munich was similar: “What is it that we’re defending in the first place?”
But Nihilistic MAGA is nothing if not suspicious, and the fact that even the mainstream media seemed to support Ukraine aroused suspicion. If Joe Biden was for it—whatever it happened to be—then it couldn’t be all that good. And one can always find hypocrisy on a bandwagon; if the Ukrainians had folded early, the West might well have been content with a little tut-tutting and gone back to guzzling cheap Russian gas, as they had in 2014. At a certain point, one becomes so used to being against the media/the left/the swamp/the elites that one forgets one was ever for anything to begin with.
Vladimir Putin—more cunning than our leaders—has exploited this dynamic masterfully. He has tried to position himself as a defender of traditional values by criticizing Western decadence and occasionally making the Sign of the Cross on TV. He is not wrong in everything he criticizes, but that does not make him right about anything else. The idea that Putin is some paladin of Christian civilization is blasphemous. Kidnapping children, torture, assassination, corruption and launching wars against one’s neighbors are not City of God material.
Obligations
The renewal of American aid to Ukraine, thankfully, has been announced, and continuing that support is imperative. A peaceful resolution of the war is to be earnestly desired, but foreign policy has to be based in realism, and the likelihood of President Putin honoring any peace treaty unless he is compelled is nil. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. If the Russian dictator comes out of the war a victor, he has every incentive to try the same again.
Ukraine will not win the war in a quick American-style blitz—as last summer’s futile offensive shows—but, with creativity and patience, even great powers can be defeated. It happened to America in Vietnam and Afghanistan; the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; and just recently to Russia’s puppet regime in Syria. Sober analysis, not bombast and wishful thinking, indicates that Russia will not be able to sustain its current war-making effort through 2025.
Moreover, the consequences of an “I don’t really care” policy are potentially catastrophic. If America doesn’t really care, why wouldn’t Russia use a nuclear weapon on Kyiv? Or take a crack at a NATO member (one of the little ones)? A signing ceremony and declaration of peace may mean that Western news coverage of Ukraine changes, but it doesn’t mean that Vladimir Putin will stop killing Ukrainians, especially those in conquered territories. The administration’s coercive behavior toward Ukraine makes little sense from a coldly realpolitik point of view, let alone considering what is spiritually at stake.
Facilitating a Putin triumph in Ukraine would be disastrous for America in every way. When a nation’s interests and ideals are subordinated to short-term political gain, when allies are abandoned and dictators rewarded, we have taken the plunge into nihilism. If there is to be a way out, it will have to come from deciding to put deeper values—American, Western and, yes, Christian—ahead of short-term partisan wins. Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance might have to occasionally pass on owning the Dems on social media in order for the United States to fulfill its treaty obligations because a nation’s long-term stability is worth more than an election cycle.
Our ideals—justice and fair play, keeping one’s word—are not for suckers. In his speech to the Republican National Convention last year, then-Senator Vance was right to take issue with President Biden’s awkward contention that “America is an idea.” No nation is a Platonic form, and loving an idea is no substitute for loving the reality—even those “deplorables” who might not fit the idea. But the vice president’s subsequent actions have underplayed America’s uniqueness. More than for any other nation, our ideals are woven into our identity. Geography plays a part, sure—as do our stories and traditions and our history, the good, the bad and the ugly—but America’s greatness comes most of all from embodying something worth believing in.
Embodying those ideals—human dignity, ordered liberty—also comes with responsibilities. When “I don’t really care” becomes our anthem, we are not so American anymore. The vice president made headlines last month with his use of a Catholic concept—the ordo amoris—to justify some of his positions. He even got the pope’s attention.
The idea acknowledges that we have greater obligations to those with whom we share certain bonds than to others. We owe more to family members, for instance, than to strangers. And Vice President Vance is right that a government’s first responsibility is to its citizens. But the ordo amoris is not a caste system with untouchables on the bottom. We owe everyone some degree of decency and respect.
When it comes to Ukraine, the vice president’s own concept does not quite yield the results he wishes. Ukraine is Christian, pro-Western and pro-American; it is not a brutal autocracy; it was wrongly attacked; and America once coaxed the country into giving up its nuclear arsenal with promises of peace. Ukraine ranks higher on his ordo than the vice president thinks.
The country that gave us the Gettysburg Address and F.D.R.’s Four Freedoms can do better than “I don’t really care.” For a better slogan, the vice president does not even have to leave MAGA. The song on repeat at the movement’s rallies—“God Bless the USA”—will do. It might strike some as a bit sentimental; but so what? There is a line in Lee Greenwood’s song that I would encourage those tempted by Nihilistic MAGA to take a bit more seriously, especially as they contemplate the chaos their actions risk unleashing in Ukraine and around the world. The line goes simply, “The flag still stands for freedom.”
Right now, a lot of people across the globe, including those who love both America and freedom, are doubting if that line is still true. Carry on down the dark path you are on, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President, and you just might end up remembered as the ones who took that away.
