“We’re all Neocons Now”

I want to start by saying that from Elise Stefanik as UN Ambassador, to Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, to Sen. Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, I am extremely happy with the first batch of significant foreign policy team members President-elect Trump has selected.  I mean, extremely happy. 

For those who want to point out that I have been very critical of Marco Rubio the last couple of years, you are actually reinforcing a big part of why I am happy – all of my criticism of Rubio has been targeted at his opportunistic abandonment of free market principles in exchange for an incoherent industrial policy and FDR-style approach to markets; his appointment to the Secretary of State plays to his strength as a morally clear anti-Communist and anti-Jihadist, and away from what has become his biggest weakness – all domestic policy).

But I digress.  Here is the point I want to make about these foreign policy appointments …  I am thrilled with them, yet so is the MAGA/Trump world that has alleged all such hawks are “neocons” and “warmongers.”  This has always been the utter mystery (and wonder) of Trump with foreign policy, a Jacksonian if there ever was one: He can, at times, make the hawks feel he is one of them (killing Soleimani, “bomb the sh—out of ISIS,” etc.) – and yet at the same time the isolationist wing is thoroughly convinced he is one of them.  The Ron Paul wing has mistaken Jacksonianism for isolationism while the hawks know he is not exactly one of them, but certainly can be given the right provocation.

I am under no illusion that President Trump’s foreign policy are rooted in a comprehensive ideology or thorough belief system.  But his instincts in this area are not what people think they are, and these appointments indicate how utterly obsolete the word “neocon” really is.  I don’t know exactly where Trump is headed with Ukraine.  But I do know this …  early foreign policy leadership is anti-Communist and anti-Jihadist.  That’s all I want in a President, and that’s all I want in the foreign policy apparatus around him.

P.S. - After I wrote the above piece the President-elect announced Kristi Noem as Homeland Security head.  So, I change my math to 3-for-4.