Republicans Are More United on Foreign Policy Than It Seems

It has become conventional wisdom in Washington and beyond that Republicans are split on foreign policy. According to this view, a small group of House Republicans is preventing Congress from passing a bill to provide additional aid to Ukraine, demonstrating the deep division between the party’s traditional Reaganite, internationalist wing and its ascendant protectionist and isolationist Trumpian camp.

However, the disagreements over aid to Ukraine are an exception among Republicans. On the core pillars of foreign policy and defense, the party remains remarkably united. In a new book, we argue that most of the U.S. conservative movement supports what we call a Trump-Reagan fusion on foreign policy, which has taken traditional Reaganite principles—such as a strong national defense, free markets, and individual liberty—and updated them for the 21st century with former President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies.

Some observers might object that a Trump-Reagan fusion is an oxymoron, given that the leaders’ world views and personalities are so different, but they have much in common. Both were outsiders to Washington. Both were Democrats and entertainers before they became Republican politicians, and both were castigated as unserious and even reckless. Nevertheless, they became the most influential Republican presidents in recent decades, and one cannot make sense of Republican policy today without understanding them both.

Conservatives and progressives have fundamentally different beliefs about the nature of the international system and the role the U.S. government should play in world affairs. As conservatives, members of both wings of today’s Republican Party agree that it is the duty of the U.S. government to secure American interests in a dangerous world. By contrast, progressives tend to prioritize cooperation with other nations to address shared global challenges, such as climate change and public health.

On defense policy, conservatives share a broader commitment to the United States showing enough strength that no adversary dare challenge it—to attain the goal of peace. In this view, force should be used sparingly and decisively. Today’s Republicans support a strong national defense and oppose both what they perceive as the Biden administration’s excessive caution, such as overwrought fears of escalation in ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East, and neo-conservatives’ extended military interventions.

In 1986, then-President Ronald Reagan, quoting former President George Washington, said, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.” Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in 2020, Trump echoed this idea, saying that the United States is “fulfilling its destiny as peacemaker, but it is peace through strength.”

Join FP Live for more with Matthew Kroenig on the GOP’s foreign policy on Monday, April 22, at 12 p.m. EDT. Subscriber questions are encouraged. Register here.

Reagan’s defense buildup was a hallmark of his presidency, while Trump presided over one of the largest Pentagon budgets in history. They both sought to wind down amorphous military interventions: Reagan in Lebanon and Trump in Syria and Afghanistan. And when foreign adversaries attacked U.S. citizens, both presidents proved willing to punch back. Under Reagan, the U.S. military sunk Iranian naval vessels in 1988 in response to Iran’s mining of the Persian Gulf, and Trump ordered the killing of Iranian Quds Force Gen. Qassem Suleimani in 2020 after Iranian-backed militants attacked an Iraqi air base hosting U.S. personnel, killing a U.S. contractor in December 2019.

When it comes to trade and economic policy, Reagan and Trump may seem split at first glance: One was a free trader, the other a protectionist, right? But in reality, both believed that protectionist measures were sometimes necessary to bring about free trade. Reagan levied tariffs on many U.S. partners, including Brazil, Japan, South Korea, and the European common market. The “ultimate purpose” of his tariffs, he said, was “the expansion of free and open markets everywhere.” This approach resulted in new trade arrangements, including persuading Tokyo to curtail market-distorting practices.

Trump similarly believes, as he explained in 2018, that “we cannot have free and open trade if some countries exploit the system at the expense of others. We support free trade, but it needs to be fair, and it needs to be reciprocal.”

As president, he launched a trade war with China—upending the United States’ long-standing, bipartisan, and failed economic engagement strategy—and levied tariffs on U.S. allies, including Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, while also updating trade agreements with several partners. Trump explained the free-market motivation behind his tariffs, tweeting before a meeting with then-European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker: “[D]rop all tariffs, barriers and subsidies! That would finally be called Free Market and Fair Trade!”

Today, both Reaganites and Trumpians want to selectively “de-risk” from China and secure supply chains, even as they consider fair and reciprocal trade arrangements with like-minded countries such as the United Kingdom and Taiwan. If this sounds a lot like U.S. President Joe Biden’s approach, that is because he has largely retained Trump’s economic policies in this area, suggesting something of a new bipartisan consensus.

Republican unity extends to a belief in American exceptionalism, from Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” to Trump’s desire to put America first. At the 1984 Republican National Convention, Reagan’s U.N. ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, famously said that Democrats tend to “blam[e] America first.” And today, progressives foreground U.S. shortcomings, such as alleged systemic racism and sexism at home and militarism abroad. Sixty-nine percent of Republicans agree that “America is the greatest country in the world,” but only 37 percent of Democrats concur.

Moreover, Reaganites and Trumpians seem to agree on today’s most important foreign-policy issues. The Chinese Communist Party poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security. NATO allies need to do much more to defend Europe. The Iran nuclear deal was a mistake, and maximum pressure is the better approach for addressing the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. The United States should give Israel a freer hand in its war against Hamas. U.S. border policy is a disaster. Climate change is not an existential threat but a problem to be managed, and the transition toward clean energy should be driven by market forces, not heavy-handed government intervention.

Seen in this context, it’s clear that Ukraine is a rare point of disagreement within the party. Reaganites want to give Ukraine everything it needs to win a decisive military victory, while Trumpians want negotiations and an immediate cease-fire. But even here, there is more unity than meets the eye. Both wings of the party note that Russian President Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine while Democrats were in office, and they fault the Biden administration for failing to articulate a clear strategy to finish the war in Ukraine. Conservatives don’t want to fight a war for “as long as it takes,” as Biden put it last June. They want Putin stopped and the war brought to a swift conclusion, one way or another.

Ultimately, the Republican Party may converge on Ukraine policy. The Reaganite vision of a decisive Ukrainian military victory looks increasingly unlikely. The Biden administration did not provide Ukraine with the weapons it needed to win from the start of the war, giving Russia time to dig in behind its defenses. It is hard to envision a near-term military breakthrough for either side. These facts have led some prominent Republicans to advocate for a new strategy that would seek to aid Ukraine’s defense while winding down the war along the current lines of contact—functionally a convergence of the Reaganite and Trumpian camps’ approaches.

Although the Republican Party may appear to be in disarray, closer analysis reveals a different dynamic. The Trump-Reagan fusion is actually unifying GOP foreign policy—and it isn’t going away anytime soon.

The views reflected in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Atlantic Council.

Update, April 18, 2024: This article has been updated to clarify the specifics of U.S. retaliatory actions against Iran.