Trump Didn’t Invent Isolationism

A similar debate within the Republican Party is coming to a head in the U.S. Congress. The Make America Great Again (MAGA) wing of the party is seeking to use pending defense legislation to slash aid to Ukraine, weaken commitments to other U.S. allies and partners, and advance a conservative social agenda on issues such as abortion and so-called wokeism. In the face of this effort, Republican internationalists in Congress are aligning with Democrats to try to maintain a defense policy centered on robust alliances, military modernization, and competition with China and Russia.

While the push by MAGA Republicans to make U.S. foreign and defense policy more inward-looking reflects former President Donald Trump’s outsize influence in Republican circles, it would be wrong to see these debates solely as a result of Trump. The reality is that an isolationist streak has existed within the Republican Party for more than a century, competing with a long-standing internationalist impulse. National security crises and presidential leadership have at times moved the needle toward greater Republican support for internationalism, while periods of relative calm and populist politicians have at other times shifted GOP attitudes in the opposite direction. But this contest of foreign-policy ideas within the party has never been resolved.

In the years ahead, election outcomes and world events will shape the direction in which the Republican Party moves on issues ranging from Russia to China to trade. A resounding victory or defeat for Trump or another GOP presidential candidate, the rise of a new star in the party with a different foreign-policy message, the outbreak of a new overseas conflict or national security crisis, or a major shift in the United States’ economic trajectory could move the GOP foreign-policy pendulum in either direction, toward greater internationalism or greater isolationism. But if history is a guide, any such swing is likely to be temporary, and this fundamental debate over the United States’ role in the world will continue in one of its two governing parties.

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy raises his hand to indicate that he would not support an increase in U.S. funding to Ukraine during a Republican debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Aug. 23. He is flanked by other Republican candidates who did not raise their hands.Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

The broader MAGA movement espouses the same inward-looking worldview, and Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters in Congress are now seeking to embed isolationist ideas into U.S. national security policy. In July, they forced votes in the Republican-led House of Representatives on a number of controversial amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a key annual bill that authorizes all U.S. military programs.

Several of these amendments targeted U.S. military aid for Ukraine but did not get nearly enough support to pass. One proposal, introduced by Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, would have suspended all U.S. aid to Ukraine. When introducing it, Gaetz argued, “America is in a state of managed decline, and it will exacerbate if we continue to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars toward a foreign war.” Gaetz’s amendment was backed by 70 Republicans and opposed by 149 Republicans and all 209 Democrats present.

The debate over aid to Ukraine is far from over, however. The Biden administration recently requested from Congress more than $24 billion in new aid for Ukraine. Whereas many MAGA Republicans have come out in opposition to this request, other Republicans on Capitol Hill support it. Some prominent voices in the party have even been criticizing the Biden administration for not providing Ukraine with more potent weapons systems. The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the most senior Republicans on the Senate Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees issued a joint statement this summer arguing that the Biden administration’s “misguided fear of escalation in providing critical weapon systems … has only served to prolong the war, embolden [Russian President] Vladimir Putin, cost Ukrainian lives, and, indeed, put the entire Ukrainian counteroffensive at risk of failure.”

Republicans are also split over calls from the MAGA wing of the party to curtail the U.S. commitment to NATO. In July, the House voted on a proposal by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to cut the U.S. contribution to NATO’s military facilities by $73 million, and the Senate voted on a proposal by Sen. Rand Paul stipulating that Article 5 of the NATO treaty does not obviate the need for Congress to declare war before the United States can use military force in support of a NATO ally. The Greene and Paul amendments were backed by 37 percent of House Republicans and 33 percent of Senate Republicans, respectively, and did not gain the support of any Democrats.

Aware that Greene, Trump, and some other MAGA Republicans have even floated the idea of the United States withdrawing from NATO, a bipartisan group of internationalist senators, led by Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Marco Rubio, introduced an amendment to the Senate version of the NDAA that would prohibit the president from pulling out of the alliance unless two-thirds of senators agree to do so. When proposing it, Rubio said, “NATO serves as an essential military alliance that protects shared national interests and enhances America’s international presence.” Eighteen Republicans, 44 Democrats, and all three independent senators voted for this amendment in July, while 28 Republicans voted against it.

Read More

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Foreign Policies Raise Eyebrows in Washington

The GOP’s rising star offers up a grab bag of ideas cribbed from Eminem to Richard Nixon.

Report

|

Jack Detsch

The GOP’s Debate on Ukraine Takes Center Stage

Even without Trump in the room, the Republican Party’s biggest foreign-policy fight is over Ukraine.

Report

|

Jack Detsch

DeSantis Is Out to Prove He’s the GOP’s Top China Hawk

The Florida governor looks to correct his slide in the polls with a major China speech.

Report

|

Jack Detsch

Meanwhile, MAGA Republicans are seeking to attach a conservative social and cultural agenda to defense legislation. The House version of the NDAA includes provisions eliminating all Defense Department diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; prohibiting reimbursement for service members who travel to a different state to get an abortion; and denying health care coverage for hormone treatments received by transgender service members. These additions resulted in the legislation being passed by the House almost entirely along party lines. The Democratic-led Senate approved a more centrist NDAA by a large bipartisan majority, and House and Senate negotiators must now attempt to reconcile the competing versions.

The right-wing social agenda is also generating an intensifying clash over military personnel. Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville is holding up the confirmation of hundreds of appointments and promotions of senior military officers, insisting that he will not lift these holds until the Pentagon stops reimbursing the expenses of troops who travel to obtain an abortion. Some Republicans are defending Tuberville’s tactic as an appropriate way to pressure the administration, while other Republicans argue that it is harming military readiness and hurting military families.

Yet isolationism has roots that even predate the Republican Party’s formation in the 1850s. George Washington, the nation’s first president, declared in his 1796 farewell address that the United States should “steer clear of permanent alliances.” In keeping with this mantra, the United States did not enter into an alliance for the next century and a half.

When Democratic President Woodrow Wilson sought to bring about international cooperation after World War I by creating a League of Nations with a mandate to punish military aggression, Senate Republicans drew on the party’s go-it-alone tradition to challenge him. In a stinging defeat, Wilson’s proposal to establish the first international organization with a mandate to preserve peace was voted down by the Republican-led Senate.

During the 1920s and 1930s, isolationist sentiment dominated the Republican Party, contributing to the enactment of U.S. laws restricting immigration and prohibiting the provision of military aid to countries at war. This was also the period when the term “isolationist” first became commonly used, to describe the view that the United States should not get involved in overseas conflicts. This attitude, along with a desire to avoid international commitments, remains the core of isolationism today.

An anti-World War II propaganda poster by the America First Committee titled “War’s First Casualty” from 1940. Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, followed by U.S. victory in World War II and the start of the Cold War, fostered an enhanced sense of overseas danger and national power among Americans, leading internationalist sentiment to gain sway in the Republican Party in the middle of the 20th century. Republican presidents such as Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan reinforced this shift by advancing internationalist foreign policies as the means of competing with the Soviet Union. But even during the Cold War, isolationism and unilateralism remained part of the Republican landscape. Most Republican senators opposed a number of treaties that were signed by U.S. presidents during this era.

The end of the Cold War contributed to an upsurge of isolationist sentiment within the Republican Party during the 1990s. In 1992 and 1996, Pat Buchanan sought the Republican presidential nomination on an isolationist platform, gaining each time more than 20 percent of primary votes. Around the same time, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, likened foreign aid to throwing money “down foreign ratholes,” held up U.S. funding to the United Nations, and threatened that the United States might withdraw from the institution.

The 9/11 attacks, followed by then-President George W. Bush’s launching of the war on terrorism and major global health and democracy initiatives, made internationalism ascendant again within the Republican Party. But the United States’ failure to pacify Iraq and the tremendous cost of that war gave new life to conservative proponents of limiting America’s overseas commitments. When Congress considered authorizing U.S. intervention in Syria after the mass killing of civilians with chemical weapons by the government of Bashar al-Assad in 2013, most Republican lawmakers came out in opposition to military action. Libertarian Republicans such as Rand Paul also called in the early 2010s for scaling back U.S. defense spending and pulling out of Afghanistan—all of this before the rise of Trump.

The MAGA worldview, in other words, is far from new. In pressing to scale back overseas commitments and reduce immigration, MAGA Republicans are reviving ideas that have been part of U.S. foreign-policy discourse for generations. Even the term “America First” long predates Trump, as the term was used more than eight decades ago by the America First Committee, an 800,000-member advocacy organization that sought to keep the United States out of World War II.

Audience members put their index fingers up to symbolize America First while Trump speaks at a rally to support Republican candidates running for state and federal offices in Youngstown, Ohio, on Sept. 17, 2022.Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

Yet even after seven years of Trump being their party’s leader, many Republicans continue to value security alliances and partnerships. By the time Trump leaves the scene, he will have altered the Republican Party and U.S. politics in countless ways, none of them for the better. But on foreign policy, his mark on the GOP and the United States may be surprisingly fleeting. When it comes to the next swing of the Republican foreign-policy pendulum, the world will also have a vote.