A few weeks ago, J.D. Vance gave an interview in which he used a phrase that, in all the years of following international relations, I’ve never run across. Vance, commenting on what he imagined to be Charles de Gaulle’s “love” of the United States, claimed that de Gaulle “recognised what I certainly recognise, that it’s not in Europe’s interest, and it’s not in America’s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States.” This particular three-word phrase – “permanent security vassal” – is curious, not least because even if we put aside politicians’ tendency to exaggerate temporal terms like “permanent,” the mashup of a quintessentially modern term (it was the French Revolution that gave us the meaning of “security” as pertaining to the protection of the public and/or the state) with a quintessentially medieval one (“vassal,” of course, refers to retainers or tenants who pledge fealty to a lord) is a bit jarring.
Now, Vance majored in political science and philosophy, so there’s no reason to expect that he’ll be well-versed in medieval history (the French Revolution is kind of a bigger deal), but I would expect someone who at various times has been a writer to use words in such a way that his readers would understand what he meant. But, surprise, surprise, that’s not true of “permanent security vassal.” If one reads a bit further in the interview, Vance seems to be counterposing “independent” to “security vassal,” citing with approval the French and British “disagreements with Eisenhower about the Suez Canal” and claiming, about “our invasion of Iraq,” that “if the Europeans had been a little more independent, and a little more willing to stand up, then maybe we could have saved the entire world from the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq.” Vance finished this part of the interview by saying “I don’t want the Europeans to just do whatever the Americans tell them to do.”
I’ll talk in the next paragraph about the weird semantics at work here – linking “independent” to “disagreement,” “standing up” to the U.S., and not doing “whatever the Americans tell them to do”; as well as the equating of acting in this way with not being a “security vassal” – but do need to do a bit (well, actually, a lot) of factual cleanup first. To start with, the Suez Crisis had nothing to do with France and Britain simply “disagreeing with Eisenhower about the Suez Canal”; rather, the “disagreement” was a) that the leaders of those states plotted with Ben Gurion for Israel to invade the Sinai and for Britain and France then to “protect” the canal by interposing their military forces between Egypt and Israel; b) that at no point during the plotting did any of the three countries inform the United States; and c) that after the intervention occurred, Eden actually lied to Eisenhower as well as to Parliament (which were two reasons that led to his resignation). To leave out these actions and, I might add, Israel’s involvement falsifies the core of the crisis; to qualify them with the bland word “disagreement” is something like calling domestic violence a “spat.”
On Iraq, many European states “stood up” to the U.S., starting with France and Germany; another NATO ally, Canada, also refused to go along with the U.S., as did Mexico. Perhaps Vance remembers that this led to a crisis in U.S.-French relations, with diplomatic snubs, symbolic revenge on, of all things, foods (French fries were renamed Freedom fries; expensive bottles of Bordeaux were poured down the drain), and a desperate attempt by Chirac’s successor, Sarkozy, to repair relations with Bush, going so far as to vacation within flying distance of the Bush family compound in Maine. It will, of course, be recalled that these actions had not the slightest effect on Bush who, along with a number of other European leaders, created a “coalition of the willing” to go to war and, for good measure, was subsequently able to induce the Security Council to lend political support to the U.S.-installed government. I am not sure what Vance is imagining here: that, for example, if Tony Blair had not been Bush’s “poodle,” the U.S. would have called off the war? If so, then I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn he might be willing to buy.
But enough on facts. Let’s grant Vance his gloss on Suez and Iraq and look, first, at what he means by “independent.” It seems to be, at the minimum, having a different viewpoint on certain policies than the United States; perhaps acting in a way contrary to what the U.S. wants; and perhaps even preventing the U.S. from doing what it wants. Let’s put aside the Neverland he is positing as the third possibility (can one really imagine Vance looking sanguinely on Europeans blocking U.S. policies that he, Vance, supports?) and focus on the first one. If a U.S. ally merely expresses a view on a security-related issue different from the view of the U.S. on that issue, this is “independence.” This is both ludicrously stingy and alarmingly broad. It is stingy because Vance is implying, for example that the 13 colonies were already independent at the time they started petitioning the British Crown for redress, and that the Declaration of Independence, the war, and so forth were only optional add-ons. But this use of the term is also broad because Vance is implying that merely expressing a view different from that of the United States is a major accomplishment and a sign of the Europeans not being afraid of consequences. A Freudian might say that there’s a certain amount of displacement going on here, with Vance thinking of certain White House gatherings in which putatively powerful officials engage in Olympic feats of bootlicking.
This latter condition, in which Europeans dare not disagree with the United States, is presumably what Vance means by being a “security vassal.” Of course, that condition has nothing to do with the nature of the actual relationship between the U.S. and its European allies. As I have mentioned in other posts, that relationship operates simply: the U.S. proposes, the Europeans do or don’t go along (while often speaking their views quite loudly), and then the U.S. does what it wants with or without European participation. See from Washington (and London, and Paris, and Berlin, and Brussels), this kind of sequence shows that the U.S. is a leader with genuine, voluntary followers. The U.S. has never wanted vassals, whether in the strict medieval sense or in the Vance sense of keeping one’s mouth shut.
Eppur si muove. In the discussion until now, I’ve largely elided the third word in the “vassal” formulation, namely, “permanent.” If we assume that Vance is actually choosing his words carefully, albeit in a sense wildly different than that found in Webster’s or the OED, we might infer that what he is opposed to is not that Europe be a “security vassal” silencing any disagreements it may have with the U.S., but that this condition be “permanent.” Since, as Vance puts it, the United States is providing a service, namely “subsidising” Europe’s “entire security infrastructure,” the Europeans should not only reimburse the U.S. for that service but add interest to the payment in the form of silence, if not enthusiastic assent. Recall Vance’s repeated hectoring (five times, by my count) of Zelenskyy, during the infamous Oval Office meeting with Trump, for not having said “thank you” to Trump. Some day, to continue Vance’s thought process, when the Europeans return their spending levels to the good old days of 25 years ago, then, like de Gaulle, they’ll recover the right to speak their minds. Until then, Vance is perfectly fine with them being what he calls vassals.