By Wayne Allensworth
The usual suspects are at it again, claiming that anyone who deviates from the globalist neocon-neoliberal foreign policy agenda is a Russian agent. As Glenn Greenwald said on his System Update podcast, an indispensable source in this election year, the loathsome David Frum, one time George W. Bush speechwriter, is sneering at Trump’s nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Frum wrote on “X” that Trump may as well have nominated Putin. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz did everything but call her a Russian spy.
Gabbard, who, unlike Frum, served in the Iraq war, is a strong opponent of “regime change” wars. She rightly sees the West’s support of the war in Ukraine as a costly and futile attempt to overthrow Vladimir Putin. She learned something from her time in Iraq and is acting accordingly. Frum and his ilk have learned nothing.
Like a lot of us, Greenwald is unhappy about Trump’s choosing Marco Rubio as his nominee for secretary of state. But, like longtime Trump loyalist Michael Waltz, tapped by the president-elect as his National Security Advisor, Rubio has gradually come around to positions more in keeping with an America First foreign policy. In a surprisingly even-handed article, The New York Times pointed this out [Once They Were Neocons. Now Trump’s Foreign Policy Picks are all ‘America First’):
“The Republican Party used to have a label for the kind of foreign policy hawk that President-elect Donald J. Trump named on Tuesday as his national security adviser and is considering as his secretary of state: neocons.
But while they once were neoconservatives, over the past few years Representative Michael Waltz and Senator Marco Rubio, both of Florida, have gradually shifted their positions. Sounding less like former Vice President Dick Cheney or John R. Bolton, who served as Mr. Trump’s third national security adviser, they no longer talk about foreign interventions or the prospects of regime change. Instead, they speak the language of the ‘America First’ movement.”
The shift in views of those two reflects “the broader marginalization of neocons throughout the Republican Party after the disaster in Iraq and the rise of America First.”
Waltz and Rubio had been enthusiastic supporters of the Ukraine war, but, as the Times observed, both voted against the last major aid package to support Ukraine. Likely channeling what he was hearing from his constituents, Rubio said that the U.S. could not afford such aid while illegal aliens were streaming across our southern border. Rubio has changed his tune:
“Today Mr. Rubio makes a different, more pragmatic and more Trumpian case: that the way to keep America out of wars is to build up its strength, invest in key technologies and domestic supply chains for critical materials, and use tariffs to block threatening imports.”
The Times also noted that Trump favors pragmatic dealmaking over ideology in foreign policy. The gray lady found that “erratic,” but I think most of us find that a welcome relief from dogmatic interventionism.
Waltz and Rubio aren’t the only appointees who have adopted Trump’s America’s First ideas, The New York Times reported:
“Mr. Trump’s loyalists, and much of the party, have now made a full conversion to that worldview, few more enthusiastically than Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host who was chosen as defense secretary on Tuesday…
Mr. Hegseth, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, described his own conversion to America First to The New York Times four years ago:
“‘I think a lot of us who were very hawkish and believe in American military might and strength were very resistant to how candidate Trump characterized the wars,’ Mr. Hegseth said. ‘But if we are honest with ourselves, there is no doubt that we need to radically reorient how we do it. How much money have we invested, how many lives have we invested and has it actually made us safer? Is it still worth it?’”
Writing at Foreign Affairs, Daniel Drezner believes that Trump’s appointees will not, as some members of his previous administration did, actively seek to undermine the president’s policies:
“Over the past eight years, he has collected enough acolytes to staff his foreign policy and national security team with like-minded officials. He is far less likely to meet resistance from his own political appointees. Other checks on Trump’s policy will also be far weaker. The legislative and judicial branches of government are now more MAGA-friendly than they were in 2017…
For the next few years, the United States will speak with one voice on foreign policy, and that voice will be Trump’s.”
Like Greenwald, I’m still wary of some of Trump’s nominees, but remain hopeful.
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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