Conservative radio host Erick Erickson pulled no punches on Friday in lambasting Vice President JD Vance’s approach to foreign policy, arguing that American “retreat is the design” underpinning Vance’s worldview.

“There is a coherent worldview behind the Vice President’s foreign policy, and that is exactly the problem. J.D. Vance does not stumble into the outcomes he produces,” Erickson wrote on social media, sharing his latest Substack post on the topic.

“He believes in them. He sees a tripartite world with America secured in its own hemisphere, Russia dominant across Europe, and China supreme in Asia. He appears willing to trade away seventy years of American primacy to build it. The retreat is the design,” added the veteran conservative pundit.

Erickson has been a sharp critic of President Donald Trump’s Iran deal in recent days and warned that the president is emboldening and paying off one of America’s most-dangerous geopolitical foes in order to end an unpopular war quickly.

In his article, Erickson accuses Vance of being naive about Iran’s ideological fervor and slams the vice president for poorly communicating the actual details of the deal.

“Vance made himself the public face of a memorandum of understanding that reopens the Strait of Hormuz toll-free, lifts the naval blockade, and dangles sanctions relief, frozen assets, and a reconstruction fund before the regime we had just spent months bombing,” Erickson wrote, adding:

He told CBS the $300 billion fund would be “funded by the Gulf coalition,” volunteering the wealth of allies who were never asked. Our Secretary of State had to contradict him publicly, insisting no such request had been made by allies.

Israel, which fought beside us, struggled even to obtain the text. Gulf officials privately complained they were sidelined and that the deal does nothing about Iran’s missiles.

“We went to war to weaken Tehran. Vance is selling the settlement that finances its recovery and calling capitulation a peace. Also, Iran says it will charge a ‘fee’ to ships, making the nation richer with no restrictions on funding terrorism,” charged Erickson.

He went on to fume that Vance wants the “Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps member to hang out with a CENTCOM member in Qatar to settle disputes. He says it is ‘cool’ that Iran decided after 47 years they want a new relationship with us.”

Erickson jabs Vance for not understanding that “the IRGC is a designated terrorist group whose leadership embraces Mahdism, a cult like belief that Iran should lie, cheat, steal, destroy, and do anything else necessary to bring about the destruction of the United States and Israel so the Mahdi comes back.”

Erickson concludes by doubling down on his premise that Vance wants America to “retreat” from the world stage. “American global leadership was earned by men who understood that the alternative to it is not peace but a vacuum. That vacuum is always filled by someone worse. The Vice President is busy manufacturing that vacuum. The least the rest of us can do is refuse to call it statesmanship,” Erickson concludes, offering an ominous warning about Vance’s end goals.

Read the full article here.

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