The return of Donald Trump to the White House presents a vital opportunity for those interested in restoring and defending the American way of life against the revolutionary designs of the destructive Left. Among other requirements, the success or failure of that opportunity will depend on Trump realizing the stakes — that we are in a war — presenting an alternative vision, and choosing the correct people to make that vision a reality.
Dominick Sansone argues that the stakes are nowhere higher than in foreign policy, where a failure to choose the correct people constituted one of the gravest missteps of the first Trump administration. Yet Sansone sees in emerging leaders like Vivek Ramaswamy and Vice President-elect JD Vance a return to the foreign policy principles of the founding, and thus a real hope for the defenders of the American way of life to reclaim a crucial piece of territory.
One of the most interesting parts of the much-anticipated Joe Rogan-Donald Trump interview in the final days of the election was undoubtedly when the president brought up the issue of poor personnel picks in his first administration.
“I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked,” Trump said.
Rogan, without missing a beat, blurted out: “Neocons?”
Trump agreed, although he expanded the criteria to include “bad people” and “disloyal people.” General John Kelly — “a bully, but a weak person” — and his now infamous Hitler hoax story were of course fresh on his mind; but the very next name in Trump’s mouth was perhaps the most prominent hawk to hold power during his administration.
“[Former National Security Advisor John] Bolton was an idiot, but he was great for me.” Trump went on to explain that having Bolton — whom the president also described as “a nutjob” — by his side actually worked to his advantage. “Every time I had to deal with a country, when they saw this whackjob standing behind me, they said, ‘Oh man, Trump’s going to go to war with us.’”
Leave it to Trump to make a coherent case for putting an “idiot” in a major cabinet position — strategic ambiguity, perhaps.
Still, many were enthused to hear his evaluation of this influence in the first administration as a net negative. There is a substantive reason that “neocons” happened to be the first word that popped into Rogan’s head when discussing subversive influences. Unbeknownst to many, the world of foreign policy has become one of the most active battlegrounds in the war being waged against the American people.
Indeed, one of the greatest sources of grassroots support for Trump in his 2016 run was his promise to end the forever wars, cease the failed nation-building, and stop the free-riding of foreign countries on American military and economic power — all of which has become the status quo. In sum: to quit needlessly devoting our blood and treasure abroad on conflicts in which the U.S. has no real strategic interest, all while the homeland flounders and the border remains open.
The entrenched bureaucratic elements within the federal government committed to undermining the president-elect’s America First agenda are mostly composed of true believers in the ideological agenda of the establishment-Left alliance. They are committed to using their positions to direct the nation’s diplomatic and military resources toward maintaining the status quo. That means sabotaging any attempt to substantively change the direction of American foreign policy.
Nowhere was this more evident than during the first presidential transition back in 2016. Besides internal pushback and egregious disloyalty intended to neutralize Trump’s ability to maneuver, a united media dutifully served as an obstructionist attack dog through actively laundering manufactured controversies such as the Russia collusion hoax. This ensured that any prospect for a transformative agenda was smothered in its crib. Even today, there are few topics that still so clearly demarcate the several camps vying for control of American conservative thought as foreign policy and national security. That is because it is perhaps the central policy area in which the current course of the American nation can truly be affected, both at home and abroad.
But if Bolton represents the old guard that perceives the need for perpetual imperial expansion, there is a new and rising trend that has come to dominate among young conservatives. It reflects certain elements of earlier conservative movements advocating for foreign policy restraint, such as the one led by Pat Buchanan in the 1990s (it is no coincidence that Trump has recently heaped praise on Buchanan).
Mostly young men, these individuals reject the pretensions of American empire and want to see their country reorient its approach away from ideological crusading and toward the prioritization of specific geopolitical areas of interest. They acknowledge that the unipolar moment is over and champion the return to diplomacy as a means of accounting for the actual balance of forces in the world. And they reassert considerations of domestic health as the lodestar of foreign policy.
This phenomenon is in no small part due to the fact that the new generation of conservative thinkers has actually grown up on the front lines of the cultural and political war that is currently unfolding; they have witnessed first-hand the policy failures of the post-Cold War GOP establishment. Its members reject the call to empire abroad precisely because they have lived with the domestic rot that imperial overreach has engendered at home.
They have directly experienced the impact of steady and persistent cultural degradation taking place all around them. Many have also had friends and family members — if not themselves — sent to faraway lands in ill-conceived attempts to impose liberal democracy on political cultures that have not the capacity for, let alone interest in, such things. All this, while their own hometowns were hollowed out by offshoring in pursuit of marginal gains — once vibrant communities, now flooded with fentanyl and destroyed by opioids that pour freely over a wide-open border.
Of course, those same entrenched forces that subverted an America First foreign policy in the first Trump administration built their very positions of power (not to mention fortunes) by advocating for these expansionist policies. It is no surprise that they have attempted to lampoon every word of pushback against imperial overreach as inherently unrespectable and isolationist.
But that label is exactly that — a smear and a lie intended to present any opposition to the status quo as outside the pale of acceptable opinion.
This tactic becomes glaringly obvious when the two positions are juxtaposed, as in Bolton’s ill-advised debate with one of the most capable individuals to articulate a true America First position on foreign policy, Vivek Ramaswamy.
The proposition at question in the debate was whether the U.S. should “use diplomatic and military power globally for national security.” Unsurprisingly, the meat of the debate was focused on the “military power” aspect of the question.
Ramaswamy used his opening statement to assert that the United States needs to return to the prudential foreign policy represented by the statesmanship of George Washington. He referenced the first president’s Farewell Address, with its call to maintain a neutral position vis-à-vis other countries in the world and to avoid the damaging effects of permanent alliances.
This is the standard interpretation of Washington’s statements. Washingtonian realism understood foreign policy to be by its very nature a function of domestic stability and prosperity and avoided the damaging tendencies of ideological escapades and “passionate attachment[s] of one nation for another.”
Not to be deterred, Bolton shot back against Ramaswamy’s citation by accusing him of only partially reading the Farewell Address and thereby distorting Washington’s true intentions for the nation. According to Bolton, the oft-cited statement imploring the nation to steer clear of permanent alliances was not actually a warning about the inevitable domestic problems that follow from such entanglements. Rather, it was simply a pragmatic call for the young American Republic to bide its time and “grow…to become stronger before it could really exercise its influence internationally.”
Thus, while Ramaswamy accused Bolton of embracing the role of America as “world policeman,” the former national security advisor assured the audience that, actually, America as world policeman was the Founders’ intention all along. In Bolton’s mind, ideological empire is not only perfectly congruent with the foreign policy of Washington, but a direct continuation of it based on the same principles laid down in 1776.
According to Bolton, Washington actually countersignals his own invocation to avoid the dangers of foreign alliances by qualifying it with the statement that
the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance, when belligerent nations will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation. When we may choose peace or war, as our interest guided by justice, shall counsel.
The implication is that the current state of American overseas engagement — i.e., the foreign policy advocated by men such as Bolton — is the logical way to achieve this imperial status.
In other words, Bolton presents Washington as a hawk in waiting: America was simply laying low until it had the requisite power to become a global empire, both for its own good and for the good of all humanity. Neutrality was therefore not a principled position predicated upon the political philosophy of the founding, but a mere pragmatic stance in service of what Bolton describes as a “a longer-range vision, which we have now achieved.”
Thus, the overseas nation-building and military interventionism that has come to define American foreign policy is no abnegation of the founders’ principles. It is rather (again in Bolton’s words) the “very carefully thought-out legacy” that they intended us to inherit all along.
Ambiguous old texts can always be interpreted in different ways to reach divergent yet supportable conclusions. But on this issue, the Founders were hardly ambiguous. Bolton is simply wrong.
This becomes clear if one chooses to take Bolton’s advice and read Washington’s statement in its entirety. Bolton rather conspicuously left out the central clause from the section of the Farewell Address that he cites. The full statement by Washington is as follows (highlighted text is missing in Bolton’s reference):
the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance, when belligerent nations will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation, when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected…
In the sentence immediately following Bolton’s citation, Washington also celebrates our distant geographic and political position to European affairs as the lynchpin of our ability to maintain this neutrality. It is therefore apparent that the position being relayed by Washington is one of principle, not merely pragmatism. Likewise, the strategic imperative to maintain a position of strength is a means to ensuring that principled neutrality — not the path to imposing one’s own political will upon the world.
And Washington’s famous Farewell Address was indeed an expansion on — not a departure from — the principles of the consensus political philosophy of the Founding generation. One need look no further than the Declaration of Independence for a clear articulation of those principles and their manifestation in foreign policy. According to the document, men, equal by birth, come together to institute a government that rests upon the consent of the governed.
Likewise, the first purpose of government is to “secure these [natural] rights” of the consenting members to the commonwealth. In foreign policy, that meant protecting the physical security of citizens, particularly in terms of defense from external attack. The nation “respects security for the preservation of peace and tranquility, as well against dangers, from foreign arms and influence, as against dangers arising from domestic causes,” to quote John Jay in Federalist No. 3.
An interventionist foreign policy composed of entangling alliances is not only irresponsible, but against the very basis of an international system composed of independent and sovereign nation-states. Neutrality is the logically sound principle that follows from the Founders’ political philosophy. In this way, the United States would be able to “hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends,” as the Declaration articulates.
This is the “clearly thought-out legacy” of the founders.
But rather than understanding that there is some legitimacy to the ongoing backlash against the current status quo, Bolton attributes public hesitancy to the American people’s ignorance. Policymakers must simply do a better job “explain[ing] the threats and challenges that we face against the world and what we need to do to protect American interests,” lest “isolationism [continue to take hold] for the first time in a significant way since the 1930s.” To iterate the logical conclusion of Bolton’s line of reasoning: there is no legitimate opposition to interventionism.
Contra Bolton, the American people are not too stupid to understand the basic dynamics of international relations — and they are certainly not to blame for the political failures of the past three decades. The real problem is that their government has been coopted by a self-serving political class that has intentionally sacrificed the nation’s safety and prosperity to advance its own factional interests.
No, the solution to the American people’s ills is not more wily politicians who dupe them into ignoring the deteriorating situation they see all around them so that they are less hesitant about sending their tax money — and their sons — abroad. What we really need is for our leaders to understand the war that is going on in our own country, and to fearlessly and intelligently — which of course means peacefully — lead the American people into battle against the problems plaguing us right here at home. We need them to look back to the founding principles that can give us guidance in this fight and to seriously reflect upon how the failure to uphold those principles has led to the current crisis.
That is exactly what Ramaswamy advocated for throughout his debate with Bolton. His demonstrated political acumen and commitment to the principles of America First are why Trump’s appointment of Ramaswamy as leader of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Elon Musk is such an exciting prospect. Ramaswamy is joined in his reimagining of American foreign policy by a number of new thinkers in the conservative movement, especially Vice President-elect JD Vance. It is no coincidence that Vance’s own realist approach to international relations has drawn similar ire from the old guard.
There is no doubt that many young men and women — but the men especially — let out a great sigh of relief when Trump announced that Bolton would not have a place in the new administration. Recent reporting that Trump’s early administration picks “worry” Bolton should also come as welcome news. The president-elect’s Rogan interview made it evident that there is a latent political demographic that abhors disconnected establishment types like Bolton. It is exactly that latent potential that was a major contributing force to Trump’s 2024 victory — and that leaders like Ramaswamy and Vance can mobilize through honest arguments and impressive rhetoric.
Here’s to hoping that these are the men who continue to gain influence moving forward, fighting for a real America First foreign policy as envisioned by our founders.
Dominick Sansone is a PhD student at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship, a NextGen Washington Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, and a 2024 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow.
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