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Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance served in the U.S. Marine Corps. He is the first veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan to appear on a presidential ballot. But unlike many Republican war veterans in the past, Vance is now a leading voice against U.S. military intervention abroad or even military aid to Ukraine. NPR’s Quil Lawrence reports.

QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: In Congress, military service can be a key credential for talking about U.S. foreign policy, especially war, like when Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw, a combat-wounded Navy SEAL, sums up the Republican establishment view on Ukraine.

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DAN CRENSHAW: It’s not really about Ukraine. It’s about Russia, and it’s about stopping a world that we used to live in prior to World War II, where countries just invaded other countries and caused global chaos. The only way that world comes back is if America pulls back.

LAWRENCE: But JD Vance, who served in Iraq with Marine Corps Public Affairs, took a different lesson.

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JD VANCE: I served my country honorably. And I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to.

LAWRENCE: That’s Vance in April after the Senate passed $61 billion of new aid for Ukraine. And Vance essentially accused his colleagues of getting fooled just like he was on Iraq.

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VANCE: My excuse is that I was a high school senior. What is the excuse of many people who are in this chamber and are now singing the exact same song when it comes to Ukraine? Have we learned nothing?

LAWRENCE: Vance says he wishes the Iraqis and the Ukrainians well. He just doesn’t think Ukraine is a vital national interest worth major military aid. He says countering the rise of China should be the priority. The Vance nomination swings the Trump ticket toward Republicans who call their approach realism and restraint.

WILLIAM RUGER: The battle for the future of American foreign policy, particularly within the Republican Party, is definitely on.

LAWRENCE: William Ruger is an Afghanistan veteran who was nominated by former President Trump as ambassador to Afghanistan. He says it’s natural that resistance to U.S. involvement in Ukraine within the Republican Party is led by veterans like Vance, who saw the cost of recent wars but no benefit. Ruger rejects the labels of isolationism or appeasement, words loaded with history from when the U.S. dithered about the rise of Nazi fascism in Europe.

RUGER: And it’s not always 1938. There are times when leaders or countries that are doing things that we don’t like – that abstention is really the better scenario.

LAWRENCE: But Ruger says that veterans hold a range of views and politics. In fact, some who feel disillusioned by their service in Iraq, just like JD Vance, come to an opposite conclusion.

MATT GALLAGHER: I’ve stood in an Iraqi living room with a gun strapped to my chest, apologizing for going on the wrong raid.

LAWRENCE: Matt Gallagher is an Army vet.

GALLAGHER: I know what being on the wrong end of American foreign policy looks like.

LAWRENCE: But Gallagher co-founded American Veterans for Ukraine. He’s trained Ukrainian troops and met all kinds of Americans volunteering there, Republican, Democrat, and independent. Ukraine seems to him like a just war, and Gallagher thinks it is a vital American interest.

GALLAGHER: NATO countries like the Baltic states and Poland, if Russia’s advance is not stopped in Ukraine, they know they will be next. And you best believe that – even if a Republican is in office that if a NATO state is invaded by Russian military forces that we’re going to get involved. And then American sons and daughters will be directly fighting this war.

LAWRENCE: Pro-Ukraine Republicans say JD Vance’s philosophy of restraint is not necessarily going to be Trump’s policy. Democrat Kamala Harris supports Ukraine funding. And she, too, is apparently considering a military veteran as her vice presidential pick. Quil Lawrence, NPR News.

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