Comment: “The neocons are desperately trying to get a spy/saboteur into the Trump camp as a wrecking move. Rice, Rubio – whoever – it’s all crap. There’s two ways to be pro-Israel, one is indirect by making nation states the default again and the second is the neocon thing, globalism for everyone else except Israel. I’d suggest the neocon method is in the process of back-firing spectacularly and it may even be too late.”
The Hill: The rise of Donald Trump is threatening the power of neoconservatives, who find themselves at risk of being marginalized in the Republican Party.
Neoconservatism was at its height during the presidency of George W. Bush, helping to shape the rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
But now the ideology is under attack, with Trump systematically rejecting each of its core principles.
Whereas neoconservatism advocates spreading American ideals through the use of military force, Trump has made the case for nationalism and a smaller U.S. military footprint.
In what Trump calls an “America First” approach, he proposes rejecting alliances that don’t work, trade deals that don’t deliver, and military interventionism that costs too much.
He has said he would get along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and sit down with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un — a throwback to the “realist” foreign policy of President Nixon.
As if to underscore that point, the presumptive GOP nominee met with Nixon’s Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, earlier this week, and delivered his first major foreign policy speech at an event last month hosted by the Center for National Interest, which Nixon founded.
Leading neoconservative figures like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan have assailed Trump’s foreign policy views. Kagan even called Trump a “fascist” in a recent Washington Post op-ed.
“This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac ‘tapping into’ popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him,” wrote Kagan, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution….
John Mearsheimer, a preeminent scholar in realist theory, says there’s a parallel in history to the way America turned inward after the Vietnam War.
“There’s no question that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger went a considerable ways to pursue a less ambitious foreign policy, and they talked about allies doing more to help themselves, and they began to pursue detente with the Soviet Union.”
“And this was all a reaction to Vietnam. Vietnam of course was a colossal failure. The body politic here in the United States was deeply disenchanted with American foreign policy, especially in its most ambitious forms and the end result is we ended up backing off for awhile,” he said. “We have a similar situation here.”
