The Nixon Foundation has announced a seminar that will “advance U.S. foreign policies based in conservative realism,” led by two former top Trump officials.
Mike Pompeo and Robert O’Brien are co-chairing the high-caliber panel, which appears designed to institutionalize some of the foreign-policy thinking that crystallized under the Trump administration. It includes some of the top advisers to the former secretary of state and the former national-security adviser, such as Morgan Ortagus, Mary Kissel, and Matt Pottinger, in addition to several other leading strategic thinkers in the GOP, such as Representative Mike Gallagher.
The panel, whose honorary chair is Henry Kissinger, will have the following aims, as it meets for monthly discussions:
The Nixon Seminar on Conservative Realism and National Security will reassert and advance the visionary international policies rooted in conservative realism that President Nixon brought to the fore 50 years ago, by carefully outlining policies that look 50 years into the future. Particular focus and emphasis will be given to advancing Sino-American relations, evaluating global technological innovations, and developing a lasting peace in the Middle East.
What stands out is the seminar’s focus on “realism,” which Pompeo and O’Brien emphasized in a joint statement:
President Nixon spent years setting out a vision for a more peaceful world. His example as the ultimate realist and foreign policy grand strategist is one to follow today, as the U.S. should seek to maintain a balance of power in its national interest. The policies we’ll develop every month at this gathering will push this agenda and ready the next generation of realists to lead the United States of America.
Realism today is often associated with a commitment to reducing America’s global footprint, bringing the troops home, and cutting unconventional deals with adversaries. President Trump did some of this — think the negotiations with North Korea and the Taliban. But if you listen to what Pompeo says, and if you look at much else of what the Trump administration actually did, the “conservative realism” set to be advanced through this panel isn’t likely to resemble Trump’s transactional personal approach to diplomacy. It will instead build on his administration’s work to aggressively counter U.S. adversaries. This is an important distinction.
Consider the following from my piece on the former secretary of state:
When I ask about Europe’s reluctance to reimpose sanctions on Iran, Pompeo touts what he calls a “conservative realism,” according to which “we centrally acknowledge the truth, build up coalitions around that, and then act in a way that protects Americans and builds out prosperity around the world.”
He has previously used the term “conservative realism” in interviews. But in a 2019 address to the Claremont Institute, he also explained the Trump administration’s foreign policy as depending on three principles: realism, restraint, and respect.
This might seem promising to advocates of a noninterventionist foreign policy, but his Claremont address concluded with a paean to American exceptionalism. And this is no surprise, considering the people he has selected to implement his conservative-realist vision. Pompeo has brought in trusted, hawkish Republican foreign-policy hands to oversee specific issues and report directly to him, bypassing the traditional State Department bureaucracy.
The Nixon panel is branded as an exercise in conservative realism, but many self-described foreign-policy “restrainers” will likely view its recommendations as anathema to their outlook. As I put it in December, conservative realism is “a bridge between America First and the pre-Trump GOP conception of American leadership in the world.” It co-opts the rhetoric of the former to advance the aims of the latter, increasing the doctrine’s chances of weathering a presidential primary contest and ensuring that the next Republican president has a coherent strategic blueprint off of which to work from Day One.
If this panel is any indication, the future of Republican foreign policy might be driven more by the Pompeo-O’Brien wing of the party than by the one personified by Tucker Carlson. That’d be bad news for America’s adversaries.