When Donald Trump won the 2016 Republican primary, he didn’t just beat the field of opponents; he brought down the dynasty.
For nearly three decades, the Bush family and its vassals ruled red America. This administration Republican style reflected the unique interests and aspirations of country club conservatives: tax cuts, free trade, and mass immigration at low corporate costs and regime change wars to strengthen America’s global dominance (and/or Israel’s interests)
But the forgotten men and women of America had little investment in this globalization agenda. They wanted taxes to protect their jobs, taxes on the rich to fund their entitlement benefits, sealed borders to protect their culture, and an isolationist foreign policy to keep their children from dying in perpetual war — and this is exactly what Trump would deliver.
Alas, the idea that Trump’s policies all come from a a solid guiding philosophy of any kind (more below supporting work) was lies in the past. However, some pro-Trump supporters managed to keep the faith – until the Iran War.
For almost a month now, Trump has been making it a priority subjugated (if not overthrown) of the Middle East government the health of the US economyand he has done so in the name of preventing the situation from obtaining weapons of mass destruction and to free his people – the same reasons Republicans used to sell the 2003 Iraq War.
For Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlsonand Various populists scholarsall this is painfully known. Christopher Caldwell of the Claremont Institute has declared War on Iran “the end of Trumpism.” Micael Lind, a fellow traveler on the right, goes further, argue that Trump has proven to be George W. Bush and “the most interesting person.”
The alt-right is not wrong to feel disillusioned with déjà vu, but Lind makes his case. Trump is not Bush in the fanciest package.
Even if we ignore the obvious differences between the two presidents. immigration agenda and fully consider their foreign policies, clear differences emerge. Trump has taken a new approach to geopolitics; not quite what the far-right was hoping for.
Where Trump and Bush overlap
Before examining the differences between the foreign policies of Trump and Bush, it is worth reviewing the many areas of continuity between them. Like his Republican predecessor, Trump has:
- Launched early war of choice for violating international law against governments that did not attack the United States.
- He tried to topple the anti-American regime of the Middle Eastern country.
- It is managed a big increase in defense use.
- It is maintained almost all over America military deployments around the world.
- He championed America’s global dominance, even when it angered allies. (Bush invaded Iraq without the support of key NATO allies. Trump threatened invade a NATO ally.)
- It has authorized a war crimes commission. (Bush did this quietly but on a large scalewhile Trump clearly has been approved torture and target innocent people in the campaign and removed military protection for civilians in his second term.)
However, each president’s military was based on a different concept of geopolitics.
Neoconservatism, he explained briefly
Bush subscribed to an extreme version of international liberalism, often described as “neoconservatism.” Deeply shaped by the Cold War, this ideology held that America needed it both maintain military rule in the world and facilitate the spread of democratic capitalism to protect its security and interests.
The basic idea was to fix hostile freedoms in America’s image and then integrate them into our traditional network of alliances and businesses.
Like Bush he explained the doctrine“The world is clearly interested in the spread of democratic values because stable and free nations do not produce murderous ideologies.” At times, Bush’s evangelism for democracy was quite genuine, as when he said in July 2007 that he felt. forced to export the American political style because “there is an Almighty, and I believe that the Almighty’s gift to all is freedom.”
Of course, the Bush administration was less than faithful to those lofty goals. When the imperative to promote democracy and national (or special) interests collided, these often took precedence. Bush could not blow up the US-Saudi alliance over Riyadh’s influence to hang the apostatesnor will it end its support for Israel in consideration of that nation’s subjugation of the Palestinians in the West Bank of the Jordan River or Gaza.
However, the Bush administration directed many resources to promote democracy and economic development in many parts of the world. More than a trillion used to manage the democratic transition in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush more than twice US spending on foreign aid – including a 15 billion dollars investment in HIV treatment abroad.
Moreover, even if it is clear, Bush’s remarks revealed a concern to legitimize the international leadership of the United States. The president did not want foreign peoples to kneel before the extraordinary power of the United States, but, rather, to believe that its goals were fundamentally good – that America wanted to promote freedom and prosperity around the world, not just within its own borders.
Trump’s foreign policy “doctrine”.
Trump’s approach to foreign policy is more unabashedly nationalistic, opportunistic and neo-colonial.
In his view, America’s investment in the welfare of other nations has not advanced our interests but undermined them. The US wasted resources on foreign aid and nation building while allowing its partners to get rich on ours costs through bad business deals.
Basically, this opposition to the interests of other nations – including US allies – is clear. Trump apparently sees little value in proclaiming good or universal intentions, even as illusions. He plans his taxes as an attempt to confiscation of work from foreign countries and he offers many of his military adventures as a tender confiscate resources of conquered countries.
By completely rejecting concerns about America’s “soft power”, meanwhile, Trump gave up US spending on foreign aid and global public health.
All this said, the president is also inspiring and impressionable. His foreign policy decisions have not only been shaped by his conflict with zero world viewbut also with the desire to flatter themselves for media coverage, input from foreign advisers and officialsand movements of corruption.
When justifying his military intervention, at the same time, Trump sometimes takes the “kitchen sink” approach: In explaining his attack on Venezuela, the president did. to invoke the sovereign nature of his rule but, also, the desire to capture its fat and preventing “narco-terrorism.” Similarly, Trump has sometimes framed his war with Iran as a to redeem his people but, also, as a small operation intended to roll back its nuclear weapons program and humiliate its navy.
In both cases, the president quickly abandoned his desire to promote democracy. With Venezuela, Trump was content to elevate its most humble member authoritarian government of the nation. With Iran, the president has repeatedly repeated they showed interest in supporting the pragmatists within his Islamic regime, if only he could find some (that he had not killed already)
The contrast between Bush’s universal hypocrisy and Trump’s speculative nationalism is not merely cosmetic.
Bush’s commitment to transforming Iraq and Afghanistan into democratic societies led to years of counter-insurgency warfare in both countries, which resulted in high casualties. By other estimates, Bush’s War on Terror was demanding nearly 1 million lives and $8 trillion. So far, none of Trump’s military adventures have been overly bloody or dramatic. If Bush had been content to replace Saddam Hussein with a low-ranking Ba’ath Party official willing to cut deals with American oil companies, the last two decades of world history might look very different.
Meanwhile, Bush’s investment in foreign aid generally – and HIV treatment, in particular – they are given credit and save more than 25 million lives. On the contrary, Trump’s move to cancel US aid programs has already caused hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to estimates from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
Finally, Trump’s singular contempt for the interests of America’s allies has led them seeking closer relations with China. The long-term consequences of the decline of America’s international image could be many, even if it is difficult to anticipate.
Thus, the right wing succeeded in banishing Bushism from the Republican Party. The geopolitical strategy that replaced it, however, is not one that aims to avoid unnecessary war at all costs or to prioritize a rational concept of US interests.
Rather, it is a foreign policy that runs counter to events but is based on a form of thuggery – the belief in the pursuit of national advantage (assumed of course) through naked coercion and at the expense of other countries. Trumpism may not have put America first, but it has put the global poor last.
