Trump's Second Term: Israel First, America Second

Trump's cabinet picks seem more neo-con than isolationist, suggesting that he does not intend to break from the Washington DC consensus on 'forever wars' like he once claimed.

When Donald Trump took the stage immediately after his election victory, he vowed that one of the first acts of his second term would be to put an end to the Washington DC consensus on aggressive military interventions abroad. “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars,” he resolutely promised to a room packed full of boisterous supporters in Florida. While it may have seemed like an idealistic assertion, his campaign was marked by this constant critique of neocon-led military engagements in the Middle East, which most American voters have grown disillusioned with, even if little detail was given to how this foreign policy would manifest itself.

Such ambiguity is not outlandish for the former president, who has a history of making bold, sweeping statements, but one could parse the true intentions behind these words - an almost total rejection of the neocon philosophy. The slogan “America First” was interpreted by many not just as a call to focus on domestic issues but to shift away from overseas conflicts and regime change. And it was seemingly backed up by his running mate, J.D. Vance, who suggested that the Democrats failed because they “built a foreign policy of hectoring, moralising and lecturing countries that don’t want anything to do with it” — as opposed to the Chinese, who “have a foreign policy of building roads and bridges and feeding poor people.”

It was this anti-war stance that stood in contrast to a bipartisan political establishment discredited by the forever wars, allowing Republicans to make inroads with constituencies they have historically struggled with, such as Latinos, African-Americans and even Arabic-Americans in Michigan, a mosaic voter coalition that once seemed impossible to assemble together.

Nearly two weeks after Trump’s historic victory, however, this hope that the next president might pursue a more isolationist — or at least less interventionist — foreign policy is already fading into the distance.

A proxy war has been raging within the MAGA movement between restrainers and sabre-rattlers. When political commentator and comedian Dave Smith wrote on X “that we need maximum pressure to keep all neocons and war hawks out of the Trump administration,” he was retweeted by Donald Trump Jr, who replied: “I’m on it.” The anti-neocon faction had another reason to rejoice when news emerged that Nikki Hailey and Mike Pompeo, the most zealous military interventionists in the first Trump cabinet, would not be re-joining the administration. But, as Trump started unveiling his cabinet selections, this excitement quickly turned to despair — and anger.

For the position of Secretary of State, arguably the most prestigious role in a president’s cabinet related to foreign affairs, Trump appointed Marco Rubio, the senior Senator from Florida who has made a career for himself as a zealot warhawk, promoting neoconservative foreign policy positions. From agitating for a wider escalation with Iran to goading China into diplomatic brawls by highlighting the widespread human rights abuse in the western province of Xinjiang, he is no stranger to foreign provocations. Rubio was also a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, of the bombing of Libya and of the Obama administration’s failed attempt at regime change in Syria. Unsurprisingly, much like his Republican peers, he is a staunch ally of Israel, closely aligned with the views of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, leading him to oppose the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, arguing for stricter sanctions and even advocating military strikes.

Many of the other names chosen to fill key foreign policy and national security roles are, in fact, well-known neocons and war hawks who advocate a muscular foreign policy against countries such as Iran and China (much in the same vein as Hailey and Pompeo). Such appointments don’t suggest a pivot away from Biden’s reckless interventionism and imperial overreach, but rather a return to policies that Trump once criticized.

In a recent interview, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defence, Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth, described himself as a “recovering neocon”, characterizing the post-9/11 forever wars as a mistake that had “made things worse”. However, he remains an ardent supporter of Israel’s war on Gaza, describing the story of Israel as the that of “God’s chosen people,” a view which aligns with his evangelical Christian background, where support for Israel is often seen as part of a theological stance.

Mike Waltz, Trump’s next national security advisor, is another militant neocon who criticised Biden for not escalating aggressively enough in Ukraine, supported allowing Ukraine to use US weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, advocated bombing Iran; opposed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan (to the point where he drafted a bill which would have forced American serviceman to remain in the country past the date agreed in the withdrawal agreement); called for “a new Monroe Doctrine” to deter Chinese influence throughout the Western hemisphere; and promoted escalating military support for Taiwan.

As is clear, fervent support for Israel is a common thread among all of Trump’s foreign policy nominees. Mike Huckabee, Trump’s choice as the next US ambassador to Israel is an evangelical Christian who describes himself as an “unapologetic, unreformed Zionist”, and frames his support for Israel through biblical and religious perspectives. He has been a vocal supporter of Israeli illegal settlements in the West Bank, which he refers to as Judea and Samaria. “There’s no such thing as a settlement,” he has said. “They’re communities. They’re neighbourhoods. They’re cities.”

Maybe it was naive to believe that Trump would break cleanly from the orthodoxy which has guided the State Department post-WW2. After all, while in office, Trump funded the Saudi blockade of Yemen, launched a trade war with China and brought the Middle East closer to the brink of a regional conflict by assassinating Qasem Soleimani, a high-profile Iranian general. On the surface, advocating for peace doesn’t seem to complement his faux masculine bravado. But there was a theory, one I, in fact, shared, that four years spent wandering the political wilderness, ostracised from the Washington Deep State, would polarise Trump and his closest acolytes against becoming entangled in overseas conflicts and instead towards pursuing a more conciliatory tone on the world stage, one where the disputes of countries were left for the involved parties to settle.

Sure, a 180-degree isolationist turn was never on the table, but there were signs he seemed to be breaking from this destructive way of thinking to a degree. The nomination of Tulsi Gabbard, a vocal critic of US involvement in what she called “counterproductive, wasteful foreign wars,” to national intelligence director could have been interpreted as a sign of this intent. His close association with RFK Jr, an avowed isolationist who criticised the US for ‘sleepwalking into the Ukrainian War,’ reignited hope amongst supporters that Trump could at least be swayed away from overextending American military presence.

But overall, it’s hard to make the case that Trump’s foreign policy line-up isn’t a victory for the pro-war uniparty. Even though the priorities may shift — as the focus moves to Iran and China rather than Russia — the next Trump administration looks unlikely to stray very far from the strategic orientation that has guided the US under the Biden administration, grounded in aggressively stemming the decline of American global dominance by resorting to diplomatic, economic and even military pressure. While we can expect Trump to prioritise diplomatic and economic tools over outright war, and to adopt a more transactional and less ideologically-driven approach to international affairs, this is ultimately no guarantee of peace.

This highlights the intrinsically contradictory and ambiguous nature of “America First.” For many in the MAGA movement, it evokes a return to a pre-World War II ethos, when the US prioritised domestic concerns over entanglements abroad. It suggests a focus on economic self-sufficiency and a military posture confined to defending the homeland rather than engaging in costly overseas conflicts. But for many in the incoming Trump administration — and Trump himself — it arguably means something quite different. It means a strategy aimed at recalibrating America’s engagements in order to maximise US interests, including by asserting military dominance while at the same time avoiding direct military involvement.

Trump’s actual philosophy seems to now be “more rubble, less trouble.” That is to say, Trump is willing to project violence abroad but wary of putting boots on the ground. It’s a yawning chasm to straddle, especially in today’s age of heightened geopolitical rivarly, in which the economic and military dimensions are deeply intertwined.

I still hold out hope that the innate loyalty shown by Trump’s cabinet appointments suggests he still wields some influence over them and can direct his foreign policy without succumbing to their warmongering tendancies. Naive? Maybe. But if any politician is prone to unpredictability, it’s Trump.

It would be better for the World, and for America itself, if the Republican Party embraced Trump’s ‘art of the deal’ approach to foreign affairs. It’s one of the quirks of Trump’s more enigmatic style of governing and the one advantage of being ideologically vacuous. Only he can switch from harping about the need to bomb Iran to articulating a desire to negotiate with U.S. adversaries such as China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia to de-escalate tensions and avoid fresh conflicts without suffering any shame. That ideological schizophrenia can yield promising results, as the Abraham Accords showed.

Going forward, isolationists should hope that Trump somehow lives up to his campaign promise and overrides his more hawkish advisers to implement an American First foreign policy that will decisively turn away from Joe Biden’s reckless interventionism and sponsorship of multiple wars. But they also have a right to be skeptical that Trump’s second term will be any more anti-war than his first. With the evidence at hand, there’s little reason to think that either Trump or his foreign policy team have the skill or the desire for a true anti-interventionist foreign policy, one that would draw down the American empire, use diplomacy to engage with rivals, and shift resources from the bloated military budget toward domestic repairs.

In such a context, anything less than a clean break with the US’s hegemonic approach is likely to lead the world down the same dangerous path laid out by the Biden administration, one where regional instability is the norm and civilian casualties are treated as nothing more than a statistical figure.