In a variety of interviews, speeches and books, they have been sketching out their vision for a second Trump term — one that would shore up America’s alliances, pursue peace through strength and confront Iran, Russia and China — while camouflaging their crusading Reaganite views in a veneer of Trumpian nationalism. Revisionists, by contrast, are “America First” advocates who espouse a much harder-edged approach and, more often than not, want to go it alone.Organizations such as the Heritage Foundation and the America First Policy Institute, the two main think tanks vying to staff the next Trump administration, have been vetting potential appointees to establish a government in waiting. As Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general and former Trump national security official, observed in his 2021 memoir, “War by Other Means,” “Our problem was that we did not always know who our enemies were; in some cases, they were our own political appointees.” Mr. Trump himself has loudly complained about many of the advisers he appointed, such as John Bolton.The conservative activists around him wish to install purists who will preach “America First” precepts, not least the dogma that America’s security isn’t tied to Europe’s because, as Mr. Trump recently put it, “an ocean” separates the territories.
Editors’ PicksThe Women of Greek Myths Are Finally Talking BackRare Wu-Tang Clan Album to Be Played at Exhibit in TasmaniaJaap van Zweden’s Brief, Fraught Time Atop the New York PhilharmonicThe revisionists don’t place as much value on our membership in NATO and are generally ardent proponents of a longstanding dream on the right of a Fortress America that can strike unilaterally whenever and wherever it pleases, unencumbered by nettlesome international alliances and organizations.Take Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and acting national intelligence director, Richard Grenell. He has opposed Sweden’s and Finland’s joining NATO while supporting far-right populists in Serbia, Guatemala and elsewhere. Then there is Russ Vought. A former Trump budget director who might serve as the White House chief of staff, Mr. Vought has decried American aid to Ukraine and stated that he would reassess “the old idea of NATO’s collective defense.”
Mr. Kellogg, who might serve as defense secretary under Mr. Trump, is not a staunch opponent of sending aid to Ukraine, but even he has suggested that we should be prepared to use the threat of cutting it off to push the country into peace talks with Moscow — a recipe for pre-emptive surrender.Elbridge Colby, a former Trump Defense Department official who is widely seen as a top contender to become national security adviser if Mr. Trump wins re-election, typifies the radicalism of the revisionist camp. Mr. Colby has insisted that confronting China requires slashing support to Ukraine, and he recently criticized Britain’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, for “lecturing” Republican politicians about the imperative to assist Kyiv, deeming it “foreign interference.”Mr. Trump’s hostility to sending aid to Ukraine suggests that he would most likely be receptive to a deal with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, allowing him to operate freely in Central and Eastern Europe — in the name of stability and peace. By the same token, for all his bluff and bombast about the China threat, Mr. Trump, unlike President Biden, has never indicated that he would stand by Taiwan were China to invade.
He appears to view American alliances with South Korea and Japan with skepticism, if not outright hostility. Less than a year after the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, met with Mr. Biden in April to announce new security agreements, Mr. Trump could simply decide that he had no intention of honoring America’s commitments abroad.Rupturing America’s alliances would lead to arms races and nuclear proliferation in Asia and Europe. Nationalists like Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, and Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, who is known as a “little Putin,” would be emboldened to strengthen their ties with the Kremlin and undermine European security.And the domestic consequences could be severe.
Many of Mr. Trump’s economic advisers, including the former trade chief Robert Lighthizer (a leading candidate to be the Treasury secretary under Mr. Trump), are apparently intent on pursuing the Great Depression redux — waging trade wars with Europe and Asia.
They’re floating a host of other risky measures, including curbing the independence of the Federal Reserve, weakening the dollar to try to increase exports and imposing high tariffs on goods from China and Europe.While Mr. Biden’s new tariffs on China aggressively target the solar industry and electric cars, Mr. Trump wants to decouple the world’s two largest economies from each other. These measures would weaken the confidence of foreign investors and fuel higher inflation.With Ukraine and Russia at war, China threatening its neighbors and the Middle East aflame, warnings of a new world war already abound.
Add in Mr. Trump’s strongman predilections — purging the State Department, the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. as redoubts of the “deep state,” cozying up to Mr. Putin, threatening China and reportedly planning to send assassination squads into Mexico to target drug kingpins — and the odds of a calamity rise.Would the damage be irreversible? Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Germany supposedly remarked that “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America.” But Mr. Trump’s return might test even the Almighty’s patience.Mr. Trump’s economic and foreign policy nationalism would subvert the preponderance of power that America has enjoyed since 1945 and that he has promised to bolster. It has been threatened from without but never from within. As he vows to upend America’s relations with the rest of the globe, the danger is not that Mr. Trump would fail to live up to his principles. It’s that he would.
