VP JD Vance: America's Current Security Posture Is Insufficient To Meet 2030 Challenges

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in Washington on Wednesday, U.S. Vice President JD Vance stated that America's security posture of the past 20 years is no longer sufficient for the challenges of the next two decades. He emphasized the need for the U.S. to rethink and modernize its national defense strategy to address emerging global threats, including a world fracturing into a bipolar state and the weaponization of supply chains by foreign adversaries.

During a question-and-answer session at the Munich Security Conference, Wolfgang Ischinger—the former German ambassador to the U.S. and longtime chair of the conference—asked VP Vance whether the Trump administration sees the U.S. as a continued "European power."

The vice president's response reaffirmed that the U.S. and Europe remain fundamentally aligned, describing them as part of the same "civilizational team." While acknowledging that he's often labeled a "hyper-realist" focused on transactional foreign policy and emphasized that his view of the U.S.-Europe relationship goes beyond mere interests—highlighting shared cultural and historical ties. 

He noted that disagreements are inevitable but stressed the need for transatlantic cooperation, particularly in rethinking defense strategies for the next 20 years, well into the 2030s. Vance also called for greater European burden-sharing, arguing that the current security posture is outdated and must evolve. 

Here is Vance's full, unedited response: 

And, yeah, I do still very much think that the United States and Europe are on the same team. And I I think that this is, you know, sometimes I've been criticized as a hyper realist, right? I think of foreign policy purely in terms of transactional values.

What does the America get out of it? What do the you know rest of the world get out of it? And and try to you know focus so purely on the transactional value of it that we ignore sometimes the humanitarian or the moral side of it. And I think at least with Europe that's actually not a full encapsulation of my views because I think that you know European civilization and American civilization, European culture and American culture are very much linked and they're always going to be linked and I I think it's it's completely ridiculous to think that you're ever going to be able to drive a firm wedge between the United States and Europe.

Now that doesn't mean we're not going to have disagreements and of course you know you brought up the speech earlier. It doesn't mean that Europeans won't criticize the United States or the United States won't criticize Europe.

But I do think fundamentally we have to be and we are on the same civilizational team. And I think obviously there's a big question about what that means in the 21st century. I think you know obviously the president and I believe that it means a little bit more Europe European burden sharing on the defense side. I think that it means that all of us frankly on both sides of the Atlantic have gotten a little bit uh too comfortable with the security posture of the last 20 years and that frankly that security posture is not adequate to meet the challenges of the next 20 years.

So there are a lot of ways in which this alliance will evolve and change in the same way that the alliance evolved and changed from 1945 to 1975 and from 1975 to 2005. I do think that we're in one of these phases where we're going to have to rethink a lot of big questions, but I do think that we should rethink those big questions together. 

Vance is signaling a pivot in defense policy, suggesting that the post-9/11 era focus on counterterrorism and regional conflicts (like Iraq and Afghanistan) has now pivoted towards state-driven threats, particularly from China, Russia, Iran, and non-traditional domains such as:

• Cyber warfare

• Artificial intelligence

• Space militarization

• Supply chain vulnerabilities

• Nuclear and hypersonic weapons

The worldview that President Trump has is for greater coordination of national and hemispheric defense across the Americas, hence the push for stronger economic integration between the U.S. and Canada, coupled with a hardened defense perimeter stretching from the Arctic to the Panama Canal. 

Steve Bannon previously said it's all about "hemispheric control," noting that a new era of hemispheric defense across the Americas will begin once Trump delivers peace in Eastern Europe.

Bolstering hemispheric defense may involve President Trump's proposed "Golden Dome" defense system. A recent Congressional Budget Office report states that developing this missile defense network could cost $542 billion over 20 years. 

Arthur Herman recently penned in the National Interest how "pooling US-Canada resources from energy to AI to defense would be a boon for global and hemispheric security." In other words, a US-Canada "superstate" could emerge in the 2030s that will be enough to handle all the threats the world throws at it.