By Wayne Allensworth
As I wrote earlier this week, Trump 2.0 seems to have learned some things from his first term: Team Trump is far more organized than previously and appears to have a plan of action. Trump announced he would not bring in hawkish neoconservatives like Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley for positions in his administration, which seemed to be a good sign. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, was apoplectic about “The Pompeo Ban.”
I had hoped Trump would listen to Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s slamming neocon Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Unfortunately, after some delay — was a heated debate going on over this? — Rubio is his pick as secretary of state. Apart from that, Trump named other hawkish types to important posts — Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York as U.N. Ambassador and Florida Representative Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor. Waltz even opposed Trump’s efforts to withdraw from Afghanistan. On the plus side, Waltz has written that he believes that the war in Ukraine will end with a diplomatic solution, that Ukraine can no longer have a blank check from the United States with which to fight Russia; i.e., that NATO nations must increase their funding of the war. He also wrote that “Trump is right about NATO burden sharing,” meaning it’s time for those nations to pay more for their own defense. Stefanik and Waltz have been stalwart Trump defenders. Moreover, Donald Trump, Jr. and people close to the Trump team like Tucker Carlson are also very much in the anti-neocon/interventionist camp.
Trump’s choice of former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe as CIA director is better. As DNI, Ratcliffe slammed the Russian collusion hoax in the strongest possible terms and shot down the fake news story regarding the content of Hunter Biden’s laptop, supposedly another Russian disinformation campaign. The Deep State and its Information Ministry squelched that major story, which could have upended Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. Indeed, the suppression of the story helped Biden win the election. The anti-Russian propaganda campaign was, of course, an integral element of the war hawks’ program.
So, what are we to make of this mixed bag of appointments? Podcaster Glenn Greenwald believes that Trump doesn’t want to be seen as operating under the thumb of any one faction — and that it’s pointless to spend too much time trying to interpret every move as a definitive political signal. Trump operates on instinct: He has clearly said that he wants to end the war in Ukraine and has said he wants peace in the Middle East, even as the Rubios and Waltzes and Stefaniks have beat their war drums. Trump is making Miriam Adelson, a major campaign donor, happy with these choices, and disappointing his anti-interventionist supporters.
But as Greenwald observed, the people Trump appoints don’t necessarily tell us which way he may go on foreign policy. With Kamala Harris, we knew very well what we would get. With Trump, the potential for deviating from the D.C. foreign policy consensus is much greater. Trump tends to be a “circuit breaker” regarding the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. He dissents from important parts of the interventionist camp’s worldview, following his instinct to avoid war, which was borne out in his first term. That’s a point both he and J.D. Vance made repeatedly during the campaign. What did Trump actually do in his first term? He talked tough, but we didn’t get into another war. He met with “Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un and calmed down the game of nuclear chicken with the North Koreans. His “Abraham Accords” were at least intended to calm down the volatile Middle East.
A few more points for the anti-interventionist camp to consider before despairing: Trump’s “Art of the Deal” involves bluster and implied threats. When he spoke to podcaster Joe Rogan, Trump referred to his then National Security Advisor John Bolton, a major war hawk, as a “nutjob,” but Bolton’s presence kept foreign leaders a bit off balance. That’s Trump’s style. The all-but-dead legacy media narrowly focuses on Trump’s bluster and ignores his actual record, claiming that the man who did not initiate any war as president is a dangerous loose cannon. And they say this as they support politicians who have actually been willing to risk a war with the Russians, one that could go nuclear.
Trump values personal loyalty and is rewarding people he considers loyalists. As he acknowledged to Rogan, he is aware of the mistakes he made in his first term, which included trusting establishment figures who then went about sabotaging his presidency.
Let’s be patient and see what happens.
Late breaking news: Trump has named Tulsi Gabbard as his nominee for Director of National Intelligence, and Representative Matt Gaetz as Attorney General—he is taking aim at the Deep State and the Swamp’s managerial system in a big way with both of those appointments. Gabbard is very good choice to help Ratcliffe reign in the Deep State and has strongly opposed the Biden administration’s foreign policy. These last two appointments are very encouraging.
Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood. For thirty-two years, he worked as an analyst and Russia area expert in the US intelligence community.
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Lessons learned, fingers crossed!