Vice President JD Vance is heading overseas on a trip combining diplomacy and sports, leading President Donald Trump’s delegation to the 2026 Winter Olympics and afterward stopping in Armenia and Azerbaijan in a show of support for a peace agreement brokered by the White House last year, AP reports.
The weeklong trip may be one of only a few international trips Vance makes this year. Trump and his Cabinet members are taking a tighter focus on domestic issues — and domestic travel - heading into the November midterm elections, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said last month.
At the opening ceremony of the Milan Cortina Winter Games on Friday, the vice president will lead a U.S. delegation that includes his wife, second lady Usha Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador to Italy Tilman Fertitta.
After Italy, Vance heads to Armenia and Azerbaijan, where Trump has tasked him with building on a deal aimed at ending four decades of conflict between the two countries.
The peace agreement boosts the position of the U.S. in the region at a time when Russia’s influence is declining. The two former Soviet republics, Armenia and Azerbaijan, agreed under the deal to reopen key transportation routes and bolster cooperation with the United States in energy, technology and the economy. The deal also calls for the creation of a major transit corridor dubbed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. It is expected to connect Azerbaijan and its autonomous Nakhijevan exclave, which are separated by a 32-kilometer-wide (20-mile-wide) patch of Armenian territory.
Vance’s mission on the trip to further the peace effort is similar to an assignment he took on in October, when he traveled to Israel weeks after a ceasefire was negotiated in its war with Hamas in Gaza, reiterating the Trump administration’s commitment to the effort.
For vice presidents, foreign trips are partly “a function of what the president likes to do- and not like to do,” said Marc Short, who was chief of staff to Pence during Trump’s first term. “The reality, obviously, is the president has a lot of other responsibilities,” Short said, “So it’s often important that the United States be represented by the highest official available. In many cases, that’s just the vice president.”
