U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, the most prominent national conservative in American politics, has built his ideological brand on defending national sovereignty and distinct cultural identities - yet has consistently treated Ukraine's fight for those very things with scorn.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing a Foreign Policy analysis by Adrian Karatnycky of the Atlantic Council, Vance's record on Ukraine reveals a stark contradiction at the heart of the national conservative project.
At the 2025 Munich Security Conference, Vance delivered an impassioned plea to preserve the distinct identity of Europe's nation-states, denouncing liberal internationalism and open immigration as threats to these identities. He made no mention of Ukraine's suffering or the threat to European nations posed by Russia - the one power actively destroying a nation-state's sovereignty by force.
Throughout his political career, Vance has oscillated between dismissive indifference - captured in his infamous "I don't care" remark about Ukraine - and outright hostility, most dramatically on display during his confrontation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. He has opposed both military and financial aid to Kyiv.
Vance's intellectual framework draws heavily on Yoram Hazony's "The Virtue of Nationalism," which envisions a world of independent nation-states where each "judges its own interests on the basis of its own understanding." Hazony himself once praised Ukrainians for the "bonds of loyalty" driving them to sacrifice for their people. Yet the movement's most powerful political figure has turned this philosophy into a justification for abandoning the very nation-state under existential threat from imperial conquest.
The paradox has not gone unnoticed. Ukraine's story over the past 35 years has been one of national revival - reclaiming identity, language, and sovereignty after centuries of Russian and Soviet domination. It is precisely the kind of cause national conservatism was built to champion, yet its leading political voice treats it as an inconvenience.
Also read: US-Initiated Ukraine Talks Postponed Amid Iran Crisis