There have been things to like, even on the international stage, about JD Vance’s tenure as vice president thus far. And he hasn’t sounded off that much (at least so far) on the big-government themes of his prior domestic policy record. But in trying to put my finger on what’s so grating about Vance’s approach to foreign policy debates, I find it’s not just that I disagree with the substance of a lot of his opinions and worldview. It’s Vance’s constant instinct to go swiftly to the ad hominem argument whenever anyone is in his way on foreign affairs. It’s a habit that we normally associate with left-wing positions on foreign and national security policy, and it bespeaks a profound lack of confidence in the strength of his own arguments.

Today’s Oval Office blowup with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was typical. Vance immediately reached for telling Zelensky not that he was wrong but that he was “disrespectful.” My lengthier essay earlier this week on his comments about a Ukrainian-American’s arguing for aid to “my country” touched on another example of Vance’s habit. He personally attacked the man and his approach, which he found “offensive” — and in so doing, implicitly denounced any American with sympathies to the land of his or her ancestors. He characterized the arguments of Niall Ferguson as “moralistic garbage, which is unfortunately the rhetorical currency of the globalists because they have nothing else to say.” Most egregiously, he said of Mike Pence during the 2024 campaign, “I think that the idea that the reason Mike Pence isn’t on board with Donald Trump is over the election of 2020 . . . I think in reality that if Donald Trump wanted to start a nuclear war with Russia, Mike Pence would be at the front of the line endorsing him right now.”

Politics ain’t beanbag, but Vance has always acted as if anyone who disagrees with him on foreign policy is a personal enemy — even when that’s a significant share of the voters and elected officials in his own party.