Asked about Israel’s horrific bombing of Gaza in an April interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Donald Trump laid out the message he would repeat again and again for the next seven months: “Get it over with and let’s get back to peace and stop killing people.”
Trump’s greatest gift as a rhetorician is his ability to say a great deal without saying anything at all. But close behind is another talent for saying two contradictory things at the same time. Yes, Trump campaigned as a “peace” candidate, particularly as he tried to woo disaffected Arab American voters in Michigan. But the first part of Trump’s statement—“get it over with”—never meant an immediate end to the bombing or the fighting or the systematic deprivation of food and medical supplies. Trump made clear what he meant by that phrase during his debate with President Biden in late June. “Let Israel finish the job” in Gaza, he said. No one really noticed because, well, his opponent could barely utter a coherent sentence, let alone a foreign policy.
For nearly a decade now, Trump has relentlessly campaigned against the neoconservative establishment and bemoaned America’s “endless wars,” prompting many foreign policy observers to label him an “isolationist.” But that’s wrong. Trump isn’t reluctant to use military force around the world; to the contrary, his gripe is often that the United States has not used enough force, or that it hasn’t used it in the right way (i.e., in 2016 he said that we should have “taken the oil” in Iraq and promised to “bomb the shit” out of ISIS; as president, he avoided major entanglements but used U.S. force liberally, if opaquely, in the Middle East and Africa). The reckless, aggressive, and haphazard use of military force has always been at the core of the Trump doctrine, to the extent that such a thing exists—which makes him not so different from the neocons after all.
That’s becoming clearer as his foreign policy team takes shape. While Trump has successfully exiled many of the establishment’s luminaries, like John Bolton and Liz Cheney, he has elevated in their place a new class of foreign policy leaders who may seem like a break from the past but who ultimately think about American military might in remarkably similar ways: They, too, believe in using force as a means of achieving the country’s strategic goals, often in ways that risk horrific global conflict. In fact, the team Trump is putting together might be as neoconservative as the one George W. Bush had when he entered the White House in 2001.
After the appointments of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (an insane person) to head the Department of Health and Human Services and Matt Gaetz (a sex pest) to head the Department of Justice, Trump’s foreign policy team has gotten comparably little attention. But it is every bit as extreme.
Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick as secretary of state, is a rabid Iran and China hawk, as is his pick for national security adviser, Representative Mike Waltz. Representative Elise Stefanik, who got the nod for ambassador to the United Nations, is avidly pro-Israel; former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, his pick for ambassador to Israel, has repeatedly stated that he believes the nation has a Biblical mandate to annex Gaza and the West Bank. Steven Witkoff, a close friend of Trump’s and a staunch backer of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was selected as special envoy to the Middle East. Rounding out the crew is John Ratcliffe for CIA director, another loyalist who previously was Trump’s director of national intelligence. Tulsi Gabbard, tapped for Ratcliffe’s old job, is a bit of an odd duck in the crew but is nevertheless pro-Russia and pro-Israel (and also pro-Assad and pro-Modi).
In total, it is a pro-war, pro-intervention Cabinet. One can certainly expect this group to tell Israel to “get it over with”—which would likely mean annexation of both Gaza and the West Bank. It is likely that Trump and his foreign policy team will push for an end to the war in Ukraine, albeit under terms that are remarkably friendly to Russia and its murderous dictator, Vladimir Putin. That settlement will increase the chances of global conflict, as Russia will suddenly be on NATO’s doorstep—either via Ukraine (or what’s left of it), if the country continues its path toward membership, or via future aggression toward Poland, a full NATO member.
Further conflict with Iran, which just had one of its nuclear installations taken out by Israeli missiles, seems inevitable regardless of how Trump’s team navigates the conflict in the Middle East. This group of advisers, meanwhile, seems intent on using American force against Iran. The Biden administration’s approach toward Israel has been inept, confused, and, in most respects, disastrous. But it has made avoiding a wider war a priority. That will no longer be the case. At the same time, a more aggressive posture toward China raises the odds of conflict in Asia. American foreign policy under Trump will be far more aggressive—and the prospect of war will grow.
It is only toward Russia that Trump can be seen as taking a dovish approach—which is also in keeping with his first-term foreign policy. That’s it. Everywhere else, armed conflict and war are more likely.
The idea that Trump is a “dove” has always been a myth—one that first arose as part of a ridiculous effort to contrast him with the interventionist-minded Hillary Clinton in 2016. But Trump has always governed with the idea that America should threaten to use—and sometimes actually use—force, including nuclear weapons. The team surrounding him is remarkably trigger-happy. American voters have made it clear again and again that they reject neoconservatism. And yet, it lives on.
