The MAGA Foreign Policy Evolution

"Already it was impossible to say which was which."

Photo by Shraddha Agrawal on Unsplash

In recent weeks, as the Trump administration has geared up its efforts to force regime change in Venezuela, the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has been thinking about the very end of George Orwell’s Animal Farm:¹

Like all of Napoleon’s speeches, it was short and to the point. He too, he said, was happy that the period of misunderstanding was at an end. For a long time there had been rumours-circulated, he had reason to think, by some malignant enemy-that there was something subversive and even revolutionary in the outlook of himself and his colleagues. They had been credited with attempting to stir up rebellion among the animals on neighbouring farms. Nothing could be further from the truth! Their sole wish, now and in the past, was to live at peace and in normal business relations with their neighbours. This farm which he had the honour to control, he added, was a co-operative enterprise. The title-deeds, which were in his own possession, were owned by the pigs jointly.

He did not believe, he said, that any of the old suspicions still lingered, but certain changes had been made recently in the routine of the farm which should have the effect of promoting confidence still further. Hitherto the animals on the farm had had a rather foolish custom of addressing one another as “Comrade.” This was to be suppressed. There had also been a very strange custom, whose origin was unknown, of marching every Sunday morning past a boar’s skull which was nailed to a post in the garden. This, too, would be suppressed, and the skull had already been buried. His visitors might have observed, too, the green flag which flew from the masthead. If so, they would perhaps have noted that the white hoof and horn with which it had previously been marked had now been removed. It would be a plain green flag from now onwards.

He had only one criticism, he said, to make of Mr. Pilkington’s excellent and neighbourly speech. Mr. Pilkington had referred throughout to “Animal Farm.” He could not of course know-for he, Napoleon, was only now for the first time announcing it-that the name “Animal Farm” had been abolished. Henceforward the farm was to be known as “The Manor Farm”-which, he believed, was its correct and original name.

“Gentlemen,” concluded Napoleon, “I will give you the same toast as before, but in a different form. Fill your glasses to the brim. Gentlemen, here is my toast: To the prosperity of The Manor Farm! “

There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover’s old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away.

But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously.

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Why has this scene been coming to mind? Well, consider one of Donald Trump’s few salutary contributions to American discourse: Trump was the Republican who finally got other Republicans to admit that the Iraq invasion might not have been the smartest foreign policy move. Until Trump very few Republicans had tried to challenge the neoconservative vision of using force to change regimes and promote democracy as a key of U.S. foreign policy.² Remember, even Trump halfheartedly supported the Iraq War back in 2003.

That had changed by 2016, however. In his big foreign policy campaign speech of that year, he blasted neoconservatives and “those who have perfect résumés but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war.” He campaigned explicitly as someone who would reject neoconservative GOP dogma. As noted back in January, Trump’s foreign policy defenders have repeatedly declared him to be super-different from the neocons he had blasted:

While still his running mate, Vice President JD Vance insisted that Trump was “the candidate of peace.” Respectable foreign policy observers like the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman wrote back in November that “Trump’s instinct is to stay aloof from foreign conflicts.” Dan Caldwell, an Iraq War veteran and public policy adviser at Defense Priorities—a pro-restraint advocacy group—echoed the thought, telling Rachman that “[Trump’s] instinct has always been to avoid a major war.”

So how is that position looking now that the administration conducts illegal military operations in the Caribbean and amasses forces in the Caribbean designed to eject Venezuela’s current regime?

Politico’s Megan Messerly, Eric Bazail-Eimil, and Diana Nerozzi report that a large swath of MAGA is trying to reconcile themselves to some new wars:

President Donald Trump built his America First movement, in part, on the promise of keeping the U.S. out of foreign entanglements.

On Tuesday, he teased an imminent land strike against Venezuela and even suggested he might attack other countries as well….

The whiplash has some anti-interventionists — among Trump’s most ardent backers — on the back foot as it appears all but certain that Trump is ready to use force to oust Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. The specter of the Iraq war is ever present and they worry that unintended consequences from Maduro’s ouster could mire the U.S. in conflict for years, destabilize the region, ruin Trump’s legacy and tarnish MAGA’s brand with voters.

Other Republicans, critical of past foreign engagements, are left defending the policy by drawing distinctions that at times appear strained or artificial. They argue intervention in the Western Hemisphere is more defensible than the Middle East wars they spent years denouncing, and that Trump isn’t pursuing real regime change, but rather trying to force a change in Venezuelan leadership without remaking the country’s political system.

See, it’s not regime change, it’s just pressuring a country to change its regime. That’s a completely different thing!³

What is particularly interesting is that the old neoconservative arguments are not just re-emerging under a MAGA guise — even the neoconservative wishcasting of how “All Problems Can Be Solved By Invading Country X” has returned in full force. Consider what William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh wrote last month about the Trump administration’s intentions in Foreign Policy:

The real aim is to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government and then, by cutting off the flow of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, fulfill the Republican right’s decades-long dream of collapsing the Cuban government. It’s a strategy that John Bolton, national security advisor in the first Trump administration, tried without success in 2019, but Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio now intends to try again. It’s unlikely to work this time, either, though the cost of a military conflict will be higher for U.S. regional interests and much higher for Venezuelans….

Rubio has his eye on a bigger prize. During the first Trump administration, Bolton imagined that overthrowing Maduro would lead inexorable to the collapse of the other two governments in the socialist “troika of tyranny,” Cuba and Nicaragua. Bolton, it turned out, underestimated Maduro’s staying power and the loyalty of the Venezuelan armed forces.

Yet his reverse domino theory survives. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, who originally introduced his former Senate colleague Rubio to Trump, recently told 60 Minutes that if the United States could remove Maduro and cut off the flow of oil to Havana, “It’ll be the end of Cuba.”

At this point, all the foreign policy observers looking in on the Trump administration from the outside are looking at Trump’s actions in Latin America — and finding it very hard to distinguish them from the neoconservative actions that Trump had decried from a decade ago.

It is becoming impossible to say which is which.

1. No, I’m not going to recap Animal Farm. If you’re reading this and don’t understand the reference, for the love of God just read the damn book.

2. Ron and Rand Paul excepted.

3. Some political scientists might try to argue that this about trying to affect a change in government rather than a change in regime. But in the case of Venezuela that’s a nutty distinction. If this results in just another Chavista running Venezuela then the stated concerns of the Trump administration would be unaffected.