Vice President JD Vance attends a cabinet meeting at the White House, in Washington, D.C., March 24, 2025.
The most interesting and consequential revelation in The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece revealing that he was accidentally privy to secret plans for imminent U.S. military action against the Houthis is the revelation itself. It’s embarrassing enough that the journalist was included in a Signal app chat along with senior members of the administration where sensitive intelligence was discussed — and not just because the secretary of defense emphasized the need for “100% OPSEC” on that very chat. It’s not just mortifying; it was inexcusably reckless.
The second most interesting detail in Goldberg’s item is the extent to which Vice President J.D. Vance seemed perplexed as to what U.S. national interest the mission was designed to advance:
The account labeled “JD Vance” responded at 8:16: “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.” (Vance was indeed in Michigan that day.) The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”
The Vance account then goes on to make a noteworthy statement, considering that the vice president has not deviated publicly from Trump’s position on virtually any issue. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”
Vance is not wrong to ask what the stakes are for the United States, distinct from (although not opposed to) America’s European allies. He was wrong to resent the degree to which U.S. action against the Houthis constitutes “bailing Europe out again.”
Indeed, the EU relies directly on the Suez Canal for more of its trade than the United States. It’s also true that the E.U. and the United States are each other’s largest trading partners, and American imports constitute the largest share of foreign goods in many EU member states. It isn’t bailing out Europe to preserve the EU’s capacity to import and export goods efficiently and at low cost if the proceeds from that activity yield more capital to spend on American goods. Less trade makes everyone poorer, and a poorer, less interconnected world is unlikely to be a peaceful world.
That’s the other thing: allowing, as the Biden administration did, a ragtag band of pirates whose names are only known in the West because they’re financed and supplied by America’s enemies in Iran to choke off key strategic sea lanes has broader implications. The Houthis’ marauding was directed at the West and its allies. The terrorist outfit often took conspicuous care to avoid targeting America’s enemies, like China. Indeed, some commercial enterprises saw fit to shadow Chinese naval vessels in the effort to navigate the Bab el-Mandeb Strait out of necessity. In that, we can see the outlines of a post-American world in which free maritime navigation is guaranteed by powers that are not aligned with America and do not follow its rules.
If America bucks its hegemonic obligations, other aspiring great powers will fill the vacuum a retreating United States leaves in its wake. The People’s Liberation Army Navy would not be a scrupulous steward of American interests on the high seas. And those who seek to badger Europe into standing up an indigenous defense force that can meet the measure of the international threat environment should be cautious about doing so in a way that limits U.S. influence over European affairs. We should not create a confident Europe with an independent foreign policy from our own. If you think Europe would rather confront China than sue for peace to access its own vital trade lanes, you’re only kidding yourself.
Vance is right that the strikes send an unambiguous message to, for example, the Houthis’ sponsors in Tehran. But that message will have to be heeded by its intended recipients, and it will only be heeded if it is a component within a broader strategic commitment to preserve American global hegemony — keyword: “global.” The spheres of geopolitical influence that withered away at the end of the Cold War will not make a comeback overnight. They will be rebuilt piecemeal as revisionist powers take small bites out of the U.S.-led world order based on our stated level of commitment to our interests on the frontiers of American power. Just as Dean Acheson inadvertently gave Stalin the green light to inaugurate the Korean War by carelessly excluding the peninsula from the “perimeter” of U.S. interests, America’s enemies can draw disastrously wrong conclusions from the careless comments of America’s ruling elite.
Of course, this conversation was not meant to be public, but it is public now. Since we have no assurances that the flip mishandling of confidential communications will not happen again, Trump administration figures should be more disciplined when setting U.S. policy in internal deliberations.
Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. He is the author of *The Rise of the New Puritans
: Fighting Back against Progressives’ War on Fun* and Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America. @NoahCRothman