He also rejected comparisons to the war in Iraq, where he was deployed as a military journalist in 2005, claiming that the U.S. was in that country with “no clear mission, no clear definition.” But this time, Vance argued, “the President has clearly defined what he wants to accomplish.”
By contrast, Vance has previously strongly criticized America becoming involved in, or starting, wars abroad.
In October 2024, weeks ahead of the presidential election, he said “our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran.” He argued such a move would be a “huge distraction of resources” and “massively expensive.”
Months earlier, in 2023, Vance authored an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.”
Championing Trump’s proposed America first policies, he said: “My entire adult lifetime has been shaped by Presidents who threw America into unwise wars and failed to win them… In Mr. Trump’s [first] four years in office, he started no wars despite enormous pressure from his own party and even members of his own Administration. Not starting wars is perhaps a low bar, but that’s a reflection of the hawkishness of Mr. Trump’s predecessors and the foreign-policy establishment they slavishly followed.”