Vance’s Kissinger?

Andrew Baker and the future of GOP Foreign Policy

Politico ran a lengthy profile of Deputy National Security Adviser Andy Baker, who had previously been the Senate aide and Vice President’s National Security Adviser (VPNSA) to JD Vance. Baker’s rise and his close relationship to Vance illuminates Vance’s position within the Trump administration, Vance’s worldview, and the potential future of GOP foreign policy.

Baker’s Roles

Like Vance, Baker came from a working-class background, acquired academic credentials (doctorate at Oxford). and served the U.S. overseas (13 years as a Foreign Service Officer). Baker’s research along with his experience at the State Department in Afghanistan and at NATO HQ in Brussels, made him skeptical of the traditional worldviews shaping American foreign policy. An anonymous quote about Baker in the Politico article states:

He really took the view that U.S. foreign policy was a sort of plaything of the elites which was not being used to benefit the American people—especially the sort of people that he came from.

Baker left the State Department in 2023 and found a kindred spirit in the newly elected Ohio Senator, JD Vance. In the Senate, Baker helped shape Vance’s stand against aid to Ukraine, which both saw as part of extricating the U.S. from global commitments that do not serve the interests of the American people.

Broadly grouped with the Trump administration foreign policy faction variously dubbed the realists, restrainers, or prioritizers, Baker (along with Vance) urge careful consideration of where and how the United States makes its global commitments—with a general preference for doing less.

In the White House, Baker reportedly encouraged Vance’s criticisms of Europe, helping to draft Vance’s 2025 speech at the Munich Security Conference, which shocked European attendees, and draft the new National Security Strategy. Both the speech and the strategy emphasize that Europe’s departure from the values of Western civilization is the real security threat.

By all accounts, Baker is an engaging person who provides intellectual heft to MAGA foreign policy. Therefore, representatives from other countries seek Baker out to try to understand what the United States is doing and where it is going.

VPNSA to Deputy National Security Advisor

Baker is not the first national security advisor to the vice president to become Deputy National Security Adviser (NSA). Both roles can be important, but Deputy National Security Adviser is becoming increasingly prominent.¹

As the National Security Council has expanded from a small staff supporting the president to a mini agency, the role of the Deputy NSA has expanded. The Deputies Committee is the real working level of the U.S. government where the number two or number three officials of the relevant agencies try to hash through key issues before taking them to the top.

The move from VPNSA to Deputy NSA is not unprecedented. When Carter revamped the vice presidency, he also made David Aaron, who had been Mondale’s national security adviser in the Senate, the Deputy National Security Adviser. This was an important move in strengthening the vice presidency. Aaron’s presence ensured that Mondale was always in the loop on foreign policy issues. On issues where Mondale took the lead, such as intelligence reform, Aaron was able to provide staff support and expertise.

More recently, Tony Blinken moved from being VPNSA for Joe Biden to being Obama’s Deputy NSA. By this time, the vice president and their staff were well-integrated into the foreign policy process. Blinken had already become an adviser to the president in his own right. But the move strengthened Biden’s hand in foreign policy and highlighted how an insider vice president can bring experienced staff that fills gaps for outsider vice presidents.

Vance opposed the Iran war and lost the internal debate. Nonetheless, with Baker in a key position in the White House national security apparatus, it is safe to assume that both Vance and Baker will remain factors in the administration’s decision-making.

Intellectual Past and Looking Ahead

For some PhDs their dissertation shapes much of their future work (such as yours truly), but for many it is one project among many. Baker went on to teach and then serve in the U.S. Foreign Service. This experience was probably far more consequential than his early research, it is still interesting and useful to examine.

Dr. Baker published his PhD dissertation as a book, Constructing a Post-War Order: The Rise of US Hegemony and the Origins of the Cold War. Baker argues that after World War II, the United States did not establish a global empire, not because of some anti-imperial traits in American culture, but because the nations of the British Dominions (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) were able to leverage their strategic locations and develop professional diplomatic corps to protect their sovereignty and in the process establish a U.S. led order operating on that basis.

Baker begins by outlining how aviation transformed both strategy and diplomacy. New areas of the world became critical to superpowers who needed access and facilities for aviation. Rapid air travel spelled the end of the old style of diplomacy, dominated by a relatively small number of statesmen who travelled long distances from their countries for lengthy private meetings. With air travel, statesmen could quickly join a conference, without risking their political position at home by their absence, while delegating the details to professional staff. Diplomacy shifted from the classic concert of statesmen to committees of technocrats. The Dominions benefitted from being nearly independent, but under the British Imperial bumbershoot. They were experienced at protecting their sovereignty from, managing their relations with, and extracting intelligence out of a great power. Further, the Dominions observed and collaborated with the British diplomatic corps and were able to build their own foreign policy bureaucracies.

I hope to give this book some time and a full review soon (any takers?)

Baker’s dissertation undermines the premise that he could be the Kissinger to Vance or some other GOP figure.

A vision from a world that no longer exists in which statesmen settle the fates of continents in a drawing room. This 1856 painting, The Congress of Paris by Edouard Dubufe, now hangs at Versailles.

Kissinger’s dissertation, later published as A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22, is a study of great power relations in Europe, in the heady days of great man diplomacy. Kissinger sought to emulate the larger-than-life statesmen of that era. Baker’s world gives less scope for that sort of greatness but still speaks to the value of smart diplomacy.

Whether or not Vance’s rise continues and Baker becomes his consigliere, it is likely that Baker will play a prominent role in shaping GOP thinking on foreign policy. Many may disagree with Baker’s policies, but his appreciation for the technocratic aspects of diplomacy and its role in shaping the world are a sign that a mature GOP foreign policy establishment may emerge.

Baker ends the introduction to the book with these stirring words:

Our goal, in understanding the origin of post-war order, will be to recover the creativity that went into the task, and the distinct historical novelty of the order that emerged.

1. I dream of writing a book about the Deputy National Security Advisor and the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council. It can sit alongside my late advisor’s book on the NSA, In the Shadow of the Oval Office, co-authored with Ivo Daaldar. I write on vice presidents and now on the Deputy National Security Adviser—am I obsessed with number twos? What would Freud say?