A November prediction on Trump’s foreign policy seen from five months later
The Nation’s Jeet Herr wrote an analysis of Trump foreign policy and the team he was putting in place to run it last November 18.
Five months later, it is holding up pretty well: “Nothing in Trump’s record should make us confident that his spasmodic anti-war tendencies will result in genuine restraint” in foreign policy.1
And he went on, “Instead, we should be troubled by the incoherence of Trump’s cabinet picks. The governing principle of his nominations is neither hawkishness nor restraint but rather cravenness. Trump is putting together not a team of rivals but a team of cronies, united by obsequiousness to his whims.”
Writing a couple of months before Trump would even take office, Jeet prudently acknowledges that it’s always possible, at least by some happy accident, that Trump could stumble into doing something that would actually turn out to be positive in foreign policy. He cites a couple of conservative foreign policy commentators arguing “that Trump will in fact override his more hawkish advisers and implement an American First foreign policy that will decisively turn away from Joe Biden’s reckless interventionism and sponsorship of multiple wars.” He also immediately follows that by quoting an Ernest Hemingway character saying, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
Peace President Trump’s actual foreign policy so far more than justifies Jeet Herr’s skepticism from back in November! (How many countries has he threatened with war so far? I’m losing count.)
Jeet’s final word on the subject in that column: “[Trump] is not a genuine anti-war leader but rather the American empire in a new guise. The most plausible path for the second Trump administration is not America First but Chaos First.”
Which recalls Woody Guthrie line in his song about Hitler fan Charles Lindbergh who was the star of the mostly fascist-sympathizing original America First group2:
They say America First
But they mean America Next
Herr, Jeet (2024): Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Will Be Chaos First, Not America First. The Nation 11/18/2024. <https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-foreign-policy-team-chaos/> (Accessed: 2025-21-04).
Lindbergh. Woody Guthrie-Topic YouTube 05/19/2015. (Accessed: 2025-21-04). “Hoover, Clark, and Nye” in the song referred to three prominent anti-Roosevelt political figures of that time. Former President Herbert Hoover, Idaho Sen. David Worth Clark, and North Dakota Sen. Gerald Nye. Montana Sen. Burton Wheeler also gets a mention as one of the villains of the song.