NR PLUS National Security & Defense

The GOP’s Foreign-Policy Tribes Prepare for Battle

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U.S. Army soldiers with 1-108th Cavalry Regiment, 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, provide security during a key-leader engagement in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan, February 16th, 2019. (Sergeant Jordan Trent/US Army)
Conservatives are divided into three camps: A guide to how the post-Trump party order could resolve.

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE O n hearing of Joseph Biden’s foreign-policy team, Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) critiqued them as “polite and orderly caretakers of America’s decline.” Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), meanwhile, dismissed the very same team as a group of “war enthusiasts.” What’s going on here?

The great majority of Republican voters have supported President Trump’s foreign policy, for as long as he’s been commander in chief. But beneath the surface, on a range of international issues, there is less underlying agreement within the GOP. Instead, there are some very basic differences over the future of American foreign policy. If anything, the Trump era …

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Colin Dueck, a professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, is a non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author, most recently, of Age of Iron: On Conservative Nationalism.