U.S. Vice President JD Vance says the “era of uncontested US dominance” has ended, with the United States facing serious threats from China, Russia, and other nations.
In a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy on Friday, Vance dissected the new approach to foreign policy by the Trump administration that could potentially reshape the U.S. Republicans’ view toward global affairs over the next four years.
The US official said Trump’s recent trip to West Asia “signified the end of a decades-long approach to foreign policy.
“What we’re seeing from President Trump is a generational shift in policy with profound implications for the job that each and every one of you will be asked to do.”
Vance confessed that the U.S. was a “superpower without any peer” for a brief time following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the global stage has since changed.
“The era of uncontested US dominance is over. Today we face serious threats in China, Russia and other nations determined to beat us in every single domain; from spectrum to low earth orbit to supply chains to even our communication infrastructure.”
The U.S. Vice President further said that the current administration in the US is focused on widening “the technological edge” between the U.S. military and adversaries, adding that the US cannot assume military engagements will “come without costs” and that the military must send troops to war “with the right tools.”
“We stopped making things; everything from cars to computers to the weapons of war, like the ships that guard our waters and the weapons that you will use in the future.”
Vance also acknowledged his country’s failure to extend its political ideology among West Asian nations, saying, “How hard could it be to build a few democracies in the Middle East? Well, almost impossibly hard, it turns out, and unbelievably costly.”
Experts assess that the politician’s remarks may be the “clearest articulation” of the administration’s isolationist foreign policy doctrine.
“While aligning U.S. national security to America’s core interests has been expressed by other presidents, including during President Trump’s first term, the events of the last 100 days upon his return to office indicate a markedly different direction and higher velocity of change,” said Javed Ali, a professor at the University of Michigan and former senior director for counter-terrorism at the US National Security Council.
He further noted that Trump’s “national security framework” also entails pressuring allies to increase military spending, potential troop withdrawals, plans to build a new missile defense system, and considerations of “territorial expansion” in Greenland or Panama.
Vance’s comments were made a day after Trump threatened a 50% tariff on goods from the European Union, citing a lack of progress in current trade negotiations.
