Vance’s truth bombs

It has been a few days, but still the reverberations are being felt from US Vice-President JD Vance’s whistlestop tour of Europe this week. I’d have thought that the biggest shock was the joy all should have experienced at there being a US leader who could communicate in coherent sentences for the first time in a decade (let alone give policy-rich, philosophically and intellectually informed speeches with sound themes as I will contend Vance did). 

But others apparently didn’t like having obvious truths spoken at them in settings that are supposed to be cosy, insular affairs where attendees can hide from reality. It was, after all, only a month ago that the Munich Security Conference’s former Chairman, Wolfgang Ischinger, suggested at Davos that Chinese troops be invited into Europe to provide security guarantees in Ukraine, because Germany couldn’t possibly be expected to stoop to do so.

Vance, however, was in no mood to join the fairies with which the Europeans are away. He delivered what the young call “truth bombs”. Their payload was not aimed at Europe, as facile analysts such as the BBC and, alas people like Rory Stewart (of whom I always expect better. He always lets me down). No, these truth bombs were aimed to shake the continent’s elites out of their suicidal reverie.

Specifically, Vance said:

The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values

These values mostly focused on upholding democratic norms, and free speech. Democracy was important because listening to voters would allow governments to be elected who could actually take security, growth, and culture seriously. Instead, Vance pointed out EU commissars boasting of annulling Romania’s elections. Similarly, free speech suppression wasn’t just bad in itself; it prevented states from responding to the legitimate concerns of its citizens.

Europe has been content to let the American taxpayer pay for their own protection, whilst we grow old and soft

So far, so bracing. But Vance’s real crime in the eyes of the European establishment was to slip in a few lines about the most sacred priority of all European political leaders. You guessed it, letting in infinity more migrants.

He said:

Of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration … No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. 

But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. And agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they are voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. Now, I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don’t have to agree with me.

I just think that people care about their homes. They care about their dreams. They care about their safety and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children.

Breaking the sacred omerta that mass migration has been a security, economic and cultural disaster approaching the existential for Europe was too much for continental elites. 

But Vance is right.

The day before he spoke, Munich suffered a horrendous attack when 37 people were injured by a 24-year-old Afghan so-called asylum seeker drove a car into pedestrians. Even German authorities admitted there was a “religious motive”.

On the same day, a man the BBC described as being “from Derby” tried to murder someone staging a Koran-burning protest with a knife in broad daylight on the streets of London. He entered his not-guilty plea through an interpreter of course, despite being “from Derby”. (Whilst he was released on bail, his victim was remanded in custody for causing offence).

In Greece the night of Vance’s speech, two Israelis were stabbed in Athens by a Gazan asylum seeker. He had heard them speak Hebrew and stabbed them while screaming “Allahu Akbar”. What he lost in originality of catchphrase, he made up for in brutality.

In neighbouring Austria a few days later, a knife attack resulted in the death of a 14-year-old boy and injuries to five others. The attacker was a 23-year-old Syrian national with a residence permit.

And even in the rival imperial capital to Vance’s new home of Washington DC, Brussels, there have been multiple shootings in the past week, with Kalashnikov wielding attackers spotted marauding about. I doubt they were Wallonians of Flemish.

This is on top of some stabbings in Dublin, the grenade attack in Grenoble, and the more than 30 bombings in Sweden in January that led the Government there to admit they were “not in control” of the country anymore.

I imagine the Vice-President’s security detail were relieved when Air Force Two’s wheels left the tarmac.

Even if Vance was wrong, and this “enemy within” was less of a threat to Europe than Russia, the Europeans have not even taken the threat of Russia seriously either. Where is the full-scale rearmament? Europe has been content to let the American taxpayer pay for their own protection, whilst we grow old and soft. And weak.

JD Vance is none of those things. He is young, and he knows that his young children, like so many, will be growing up in a world that is growing more dangerous. And far from talking down to Europe, he is doing what good friends should do — giving us a good talking to and demanding we sort ourselves out. 

If we did all that Vance suggested, Europe would be richer, stronger, safer, and would be able to answer the main challenge of his speech: “what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for. What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?”

The New World, with all its power and might, stepped forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old once before. JD Vance might be the man to do this again, if only we listen to the advice of our friend across the sea.