John Jefferson
As the new Trump Administration turns a critical eye to the priorities of government spending, one target of its investigations seems to be delivering an endless supply of questionable practices for scrutiny. USAID, long theorized to be part of a global soft regime change network by many opposed to the status quo of foreign policy, has been proven to be exactly that. This ranges from manufacturing opposition to the Cuban government, to using progressive identitarian groups to affect elections in Bangladesh, and even to create a feedback loop where American media cites supposedly independent activists abroad (who are funded by USAID) in order to justify distorting the narrative at home.
None of this is particularly surprising to those of us who have been skeptical of the softer side of endless interventionism. Two and a half years ago I published Woke Imperium: The Coming Confluence of Social Justice and Neoconservatism, which made the case that the increasingly messianic nature of progressivism served the cause of moral justification for a foreign policy of endless interventionism abroad; it provides a built-in excuse to be involved in as many foreign countries as possible. Through everything from non-governmental organizations supporting ethnic minorities in geopolitical fault lines to the funding of media that pushes a North American–style cultural vanguardism onto very different societies, a changing domestic audience could be brought into the quest for global domination through a self-flattering moralism.
That process is hardly unique to the liberal faction of politics, however. The George W. Bush administration was obsessed with democracy promotion and nation-building as a part of its plan to combat terrorism. It also had a reputation for conflating its own conservative Christian fixation on culture war with foreign policy, such as when its plans to combat AIDS in Africa were tied to abstinence-only education and a ban on condoms, reflecting the administration’s domestic obsession with similar policies at home. It was under such conditions that foreign governments could reasonably claim that American missionaries were tied at the hip to intelligence operations.
The present Trump administration’s willingness to question old talking points about foreign policy being a moral project are laudable but inconsistent. In the transactional worldview that Trump emphasized on campaign, there can be little room for such sentiments, yet already there are signs that he is willing to lean into domestic culture war in order to justify unnecessary interventions abroad. Any plan to remake war-shattered Gaza by acquiring it in a real estate deal facilitated by the United States reflects a long line of interventionist thought about the United States playing some kind of providential role in transforming the Middle East. Indeed, USAID itself once cooked up a potential plan for the relocation of Palestinians into new settlements in Egypt.
Trump has also made multiple statements opposing South Africa’s prospective land reform legislation which could disproportionately impact ethnically white farmers in the country. This even includes prioritizing white South Africans as potential refugees to the United States, something the administration seems hostile to when applied to other groups of people. Such stated goals, even if purely rhetorical, echo the longstanding trend of American presidents citing the plight of foreign minorities to change domestic policies of sovereign foreign states. Coupled with invoking War on Terror–reminiscent methods to combat cartels, such a posture serves to manufacture consent for more interventionism, but now in a conservative- rather than liberal-coded way. Likewise, Vice President J.D. Vance’s recent speech at the Munich Security Conference seems to be replicating a new conservative version of the very liberal hubris it appears to decry, admonishing European nations for domestic policies separate from what should be the transactional concerns of their foreign policy positions.
Trump’s proposed antisemitism task force risks replicating the same policies of bringing censorship of foreign affairs back home that USAID once proposed as well. By targeting the right to free expression and opposition to conflicts which the U.S. is involved in, it makes universities complicit in a dubious conflation of the actual prejudice of antisemitism with that of opposition to the U.S.-Israeli alliance, a keystone in the world view of bipartisan interventionism. Coupled with recent domestic priorities singling out “anti-Christian bias” for special attention, the possibility that the large and powerful network of pro-Israel Christian conservatives could monopolize discussion on Middle Eastern affairs in a way distracting from an objective national interest.
And it is this national interest, divorced from the culture-wars of the United States as well as the domestic policies of foreign nations, that should be upheld first and foremost when pursuing a foreign policy around realist principles. The transactional nature of world affairs, something that Trump has shown he is fully capable of understanding when it suits him, means that seeking a permanent moral ideal or constituency is likely to meet with disappointment, if not a disastrous commitment to an unnecessary engagement. No less a pivotal figure in American history than George Washington once cautioned against ephemeral ideologies and permanent attachments in his Farewell Address of 1796:
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.
If there is to be a guiding principle in America’s relations with foreign countries it is that of sovereignty, upholding its own independence and ability to pick and choose its engagements of interest, while acknowledging that others also share in this reciprocal right of self-determination. As the internal factions of the Trump Administration debate the future going forward, it would be wise for them to keep this in mind.
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