Vance once wrote op-ed claiming Trump's best foreign policy during first term was 'not ...

Rumors that U.S. Vice President JD Vance once wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal titled "Trump's Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars" circulated online in early 2026.

A popular Reddit thread appeared in late February 2026 and appeared to spark interest in the rumor, which spread to other platforms such as Facebook (archived) along with a purported screenshot of the headline. The rumor circulated as the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran, increasing tensions about escalation of war in the Middle East.

The claim that Vance wrote an op-ed for the WSJ that said Trump's best foreign policy was not starting any wars was true.

The piece was published Jan. 31, 2023, and can be read in its entirety on the Wall Street Journal website (archived). The article is also included in WSJ's digital archive for stories published on Jan. 31, 2023.

The op-ed's subheadline reads: "He has my support in 2024 because I know he won't recklessly send Americans to fight overseas." In the piece, Vance describes how his "entire adult lifetime has been shaped by presidents who threw America into unwise wars and failed to win them," referring to George W. Bush's campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Barack Obama's campaign in Libya.

The vice president's office did not respond to Snopes' request for comment as of this writing.

Vance's piece said that "not starting wars is perhaps a low bar," but that Trump "started no wars despite enormous pressure from his own party and even members of his own administration."

The piece appeared to be inspired by a missile explosion in Przewodow, Poland, that killed two people in November 2022. On Nov. 15, 2022, The Associated Press initially reported the explosion to be a result of a Russian attack, but an investigation later revealed a lack of evidence to support that claim.

Vance's op-ed isn't the first time Snopes has fact-checked remarks Trump and Vance made about each other that didn't appear to align with their professional relationship in 2026, including Trump once calling Vance "incompetent" and Vance stating Trump was unfit to be president.