The Neocons vs. Donald Trump
By Jacob Heilbrunnmarch
Commentary by
Julio Severo: Because of a lack of
pro-life and pro-family credentials, I do not think Mr. Donald Trump is the
best presidential candidate. But, because of a lack of credentials against neocons,
I think that Mr. Ted Cruz should learn from Mr. Trump and his theoretical
stances against neocon insanities. Different of Cruz, who cares about
pro-family values, neocons under Obama have been able to expand an American
hegemony with a homosexual imperialism. Yet, Bush also cared about pro-life
issues, but he was unable to oppose neocon ambitions and foreign intrusions,
greatly benefitting radical Muslims and their crimes and greatly harming
Christian minorities in Muslim nations. What would Cruz do? I like Trump’s
attitude of confronting neocons, but this attitude would only be helpful, and
splendid, if he opposed the current U.S. abortion and homosexual imperialism
around the world. Only Cruz could do it. But he needs to be much more “Trump”
on foreign policy — much more anti-neocon and more like an original Republican,
not meddling in the affairs of other nations, especially to benefit Islamic
oppressors and harm their Christian victims. Only such a Republican, with
Christian principles, can give America, which became the biggest powerhouse of
global abortion and homosexuality promotion, including Islamic propaganda, a
better course.
Their campaign began with an impassioned essay in The American Interest last month by Eliot A.
Cohen, a former Bush State Department official, who depicted Mr. Trump as
symptomatic of the broader “moral rot” of America. Then, in an open letter, more than 100 Republican foreign policy
mavens, including neocons such as Mr. Cohen and Robert Kagan, as well as more
traditional Republican foreign policy figures like the former World Bank president
Robert B. Zoellick, announced they were “united in our opposition to a Donald
Trump presidency.”
Now, in a last-ditch effort, leading neocon thinkers
have established what they call the National Security Advisory Council to
support Senator Marco Rubio. And many are announcing that if push comes to
shove, they will support Hillary Clinton over Mr. Trump. Indeed, in the
magazine Commentary, the neoconservative historian Max Boot wrote,
somewhat hyperbolically, that Mr. Trump is “the No. 1 threat to American
security” — bigger than the Islamic State or China.
The neocons are right that a Trump presidency would
likely be a foreign policy debacle, not least because of his unpredictable
personality and penchant for antagonizing foreign leaders and publics. But they
are wrong in asserting that he is somehow a danger to the traditional
principles of the Republican Party. On the contrary, Mr. Trump represents a
return to the party’s roots. It’s the neocons who are the interlopers.
The extent to which the neocons and their moralistic,
crusading Wilsonian mission overtook the Republican foreign policy
establishment, beginning in the 1970s, was so nearly complete that it can be
hard to remember that a much different sensibility had previously governed the
party, one reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s own positions: wariness about foreign
intervention, championing of protectionist trade policies, a belief in the
exercise of unilateral military power and a suspicion of global elites and
institutions.
Consider the 1919 League of Nations debate, the
crucible in which much Republican foreign policy was forged. In leading the
charge against United States membership in entering the league, the Republican
senator Henry Cabot Lodge argued that intervening abroad would undermine
American security: “If you tangle her in the intrigues of Europe, you will
destroy her power for good and endanger her very existence.”
By the 1920s, the Republicans took Lodge’s logic a step
further. So-called mossback Republicans supported the punitive Immigration Act
of 1924, which included provisions barring Asians and restricting African
immigrants. The party also backed protectionism: In June 1930 Herbert Hoover
signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which worsened the Great Depression and stoked
nationalism around the world.
The party’s embrace of outright isolationism culminated
in opposition to aiding Britain once World War II began in 1939. Liberal
Republicans like Henry Stimson and Frank Knox were drummed out of the party at
the 1940 convention for joining the Roosevelt administration, the first as
secretary of war and the second as secretary of the Navy. At the same time, The
Wall Street Journal editorial page argued for “realism” toward Hitler, who, it
assured its readers, had “already determined the broad lines of our national
life for at least another generation.”
After World War II, the right remained suspicious of
militarism. It denounced Harry S. Truman’s sweeping alliances in Europe. In
1950, Herbert Hoover created a national uproar when he declared that America
had to acknowledge limits to its power. Meanwhile, Senator John W. Bricker of
Ohio proposed
constitutional amendments aimed at destroying the president’s ability to
conclude foreign treaties. And in 1951, another Ohio senator, Robert A. Taft,
announced, “The principal purpose of the foreign policy of the United States is
to maintain the liberty of our people.”
One can hear echoes of this Republican past in Mr.
Trump’s own positions. His animating credo on foreign policy seems to be to
farm out the heavy lifting to other countries whenever possible. Speaking on
“The Hugh Hewitt Show” last August, he made his distaste for intervention
clear: “At some point, we can’t be the policeman of the world. We have to
rebuild our own country." Since then, to the consternation of the party
establishment, he has also forthrightly denounced the Iraq war, declaring that
the Bush administration’s case for it was based on a “lie.”
The Trump doctrine, if that term can be employed, is
reminiscent of basic foreign policy realist tenets. In fact, as Thomas Wright
of the Brookings Institution first pointed out in Politico, Mr. Trump has a
“remarkably coherent and consistent worldview.” Mr. Trump, you could even say,
is a spheres-of-influence kind of guy: Europe should take care of Ukraine,
Russia should handle Syria. “When I see the policy of some of these people in
our government,” he said on MSNBC this month, “we’ll be in the Middle East for
another 15 years if we don’t end up losing by that time because our country is
disintegrating.”
At the same time, he’s rejected the idea of repudiating
the Obama administration’s Iran deal, and says that it’s important to remain
“neutral” in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians — two points that
strike at the heart of Republican neocon orthodoxy. And he seems to have little
use for alliances: He’s demanding that countries like Germany, Japan, South
Korea and Saudi Arabia pay more for the United States to defend them. At the
same time, he’s ready to slap high tariffs on Japan and China — something that
could trigger a global depression.
Mr. Trump’s position can resemble realism on steroids.
At bottom, he doesn’t want America to lead the world; he wants the world to get
out of its way. Even many die-hard realists are unwilling to follow him: Last
Friday his sinister advocacy of torture, which he has since disavowed, prompted
not only neocons but prominent realists like Andrew J. Bacevich and Richard
Betts to sign a letter called “Defending the Honor of the U.S. Military from
Donald Trump” in Foreign Policy.
None of this seems to antagonize the Republican base,
which appears less ideological on taxes and foreign policy than the party
elite. Once George W. Bush and the neocons led us into Iraq, it was probably
only a matter of time before the neocons were called to account. Maybe the
surprising thing isn’t that the party is starting to morph back into its
original incarnation, but that it took this long.
Jacob Heilbrunn is the editor
of The National Interest and the author
of “They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons.”
You can see the Portuguese
translation of this article here: Os
neocons versus Donald Trump
Source: The
New York Times
Divulgation: Last Days Watchman
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