An Anti-War Guide to Trump's Cabinet

A serious look at the new president's foreign policy team.

If there was one thing that both Donald Trump’s supporters and opponents agreed on during the 2024 election, it was that he represented profound change. Were he to be elected, it was said, his second term would bring far more than just the usual changes in personnel and policy that come when a new party ascends to power. Instead, his new administration would represent a fundamental break from decades of bipartisan D.C. consensus, from personnel to policy. Nowhere was this said to be the case more than the world of foreign affairs, where a new Trump administration would be set to have the most control. If he returned to the White House, everyone agreed, America’s role in the world would be forever changed, whether for good or for ill.

This narrative has stuck since last month’s election and Trump’s subsequent selection of his new cabinet. Over the course of this process, both sides have fallen into a familiar pattern of either condemning or celebrating the president-elect for establishing the neo-isolationist foreign policy that he has spent the last decade campaigning on. On the Democratic side, kooky nominees have been lavished with attention while opposition leaders have leaned into old narratives about Trump being weak overseas. Meanwhile, those in Trump’s corner have celebrated these same kooks as proof that their leader is finally, truly committed to the anti-interventionist stance that he never seemed to get around to during his first term.

This narrative has proved quite convenient for both sides for quite a long time. It is also completely wrong. Although it’s not what either hawkish liberals or self-described populists want to hear, nearly everything about Trump’s foreign policy team represents continuity with the hawkish foreign policy consensus. Far more than the final victory of Robert Taft and Pat Buchanan, his administration is most accurately understood as a new George W. Bush White House with an even stronger preference for ass-kissers. Here is an overview of Trump’s foreign policy team that partisans on both sides want you to hear: one that pulls back the mask of its public-facing anti-interventionist rhetoric and shows its true roots in bloodthirsty, destructive warmongering.

Trump’s Farm Team (or Lack Thereof)

For modern incoming administrations, it has never been strictly necessary to go through each and every appointment to get the gist of their governing approach. This is because the basic structures of modern presidential administrations are assembled years in advance by D.C. consulting groups and think tanks. Once a new party comes into power, these groups monopolize major appointments and positions, putting new administrations on set paths that they rarely ever break from.

Past examples of interest group dominance abound. The Reagan administration was dominated by members of the Committee on Present Danger, a hawkish foreign policy interest group that the 40th president himself was a member of. Twenty years later, George W. Bush’s administration’s top foreign policy posts were filled by members and associates of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, whose hawkish approach proved to be far more indicative of his ultimate policies than Shrub’s semi-dovish campaign trail rhetoric. Obama’s White House was filled with members of the hawkish Center for a New American Security. Joe Biden’s was dominated by WestExec, a consulting firm formed by hawkish Obama administration alumni that was structured as a White House-in-waiting. From Antony Blinken to Avril Haines to even Jen Psaki, it’s more challenging to find WestExec employees who didn’t go on to serve in the White House than those who did.

So, what’s the equivalent of WestExec for Trump’s second term?

There’s no one answer. Over the past few years, a shadow war raged between two competing right-wing groups who wished to establish themselves as Trump’s shadow administration: the Heritage Foundation’s (in)famous Project 2025 and the more obscure America First Policy Institute (AFPI). While the campaign trail controversy over Project 2025 this year led many outlets to report that Trump came to prefer the less-flashy AFPI to staff his administration, he has drawn heavily from both groups for top cabinet-level posts since his election. For a quick list:

• AFPI leaders have been tapped to lead the Department of Justice, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

• Project 2025 author Russell Vought was nominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

• Several others associated with Project 2025 have received senior posts in the Trump administration, including Brendan Carr (Trump’s nominee for chair of the Federal Trade Commission), Peter Navarro (designed as his Senior Advisor), and Tom Homan (his so-called “border czar”).

• Trump’s nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, is tied to both organizations, being both a contributor to Project 2025 and a chair of the AFPI.

These selections have made Trump’s vision on domestic policy clear, especially since Project 2025 and the AFPI have few actual ideological differences on that front. On foreign policy, however, things are less easy to track. In contrast to influential interest groups of the past, both Project 2025 and the AFPI focus far more on economic and social issues than on America’s role overseas. Project 2025, despite being nearly one thousand pages long, declines to get behind any specific foreign policy approach, instead endorsing a vague focus on “national interests.” The AFPI takes a similar approach, dedicating only four chapters in its 55-chapter-long agenda to overseas affairs. This section is not only minuscule—the institute’s section on election fraud alone is larger—but also highly vague and, most importantly, hardly dovish. The AFPI repeatedly calls back to the initiatives of Trump’s first term as examples of what an “America First foreign policy” should look like, with a special focus being given to his prioritization of Israel’s interests and efforts to increase military spending at home and abroad. Along with this lionization of an administration that the populist right broadly condemns as an embarrassing failure, they repeatedly state that Biden hasn’t been tough enough on America’s so-called enemies abroad, whether they be China or the Palestinian Authority.

Unlike Project 2025, however, the AFPI is slightly more explicit in its philosophical approach. As said by Fred Fleitz, a former Trump administration official and current AFPI chair, in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

Today’s America First movement, which the America First Policy Institute proudly represents, is clearly not isolationist. We favor a strong U.S. defense and the prudent use of U.S. military force.

It’s quite curious that an organization titling itself the “America First Policy Institute” has so little to say about foreign policy compared to privatizing schools and cutting taxes. It’s especially curious that in the few instances that they actually mention overseas affairs, they spend most of their time promoting an agenda that wouldn’t be out of place in a Reagan or Bush White House. If you’re feeling somewhat cynical, you might even be inclined to say that the organization’s name stands as a perfect example of Trump-era conservatives co-opting popular anti-interventionist taglines in service of an agenda that’s anything but.

But I digress. In keeping with their focus on domestic policy over foreign policy, both Project 2025 and AFPI alumni have primarily been chosen for posts that have little to do with overseas affairs. Across both organizations, only Ratcliffe stands as someone with ties to Project 2025 and/or the AFPI to receive a nomination for a major foreign policy post. For all the other big picks—Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, etc.—Trump has chosen an eclectic mix of elected officials and celebrities with power bases outside D.C. think tanks. Could it be here that the long-heralded revolution in right-wing thinking is taking place? Has Trump, now at the height of his power, finally bucked that insidious right-wing foreign policy establishment that so nefariously infiltrated his team during his first term?

(The answer is no.)

Vice President: JD Vance

To start, I decided to be a little generous to the so-called populist right. Since the Vice Presidency lacks a defined role in foreign policy (or any defined role at all, for that matter), one could be easily justified in simply leaving the office off of a list like this. JD Vance, however, is a special case, both in how he stands as the leading “populist” figure in Trump’s cabinet and in how much his political brand centers around his supposedly new foreign policy ideas. I wouldn't be conducting a complete analysis if I ignored him and focused on the most explicitly hawkish members of Trump’s cabinet, however numerous they may be.

So, let's look at JD’s supposedly revolutionary worldview on foreign policy. Right away, you’re presented with quite a lot of rhetoric from someone who has spent a long, long time attempting to convince the world and himself that there is more to conservatism than carrying water for the powers that be. The basic story is this: as a young man, JD enlisted in the Marines to serve in Iraq as a believer in overseas wars, once even “eagerly” meeting with Dick Cheney himself. Over his tour of duty, however, he became skeptical of the cause he was fighting for, a conversion that supposedly led him down the long road of right-wing populism. Since becoming a politician, Vance has made a habit of referencing the near-unanimous elite support for the Iraq War as proof that the establishment cannot be trusted. Due to this firsthand experience, he says, he does not support interventionism. In recent years, he has made a special point of decrying U.S. aid for Ukraine, which he characterizes as yet another costly overseas project motivated by “moralism” rather than “realism.”

This, by itself, is a more-or-less coherent story. One doesn’t need to have served in Iraq to be skeptical of interventionism and interventionists as a result of the failures of the war. And if Vance had applied this perspective consistently, all of the coverage characterizing him as a revolutionary new figure might be warranted. The big thing is that he doesn’t. Like everything else in the sickening display of ass-kissing he calls a career, Vance’s foreign policy “doctrine” has zero ideological or intellectual coherency. On the one hand, he condemns Washington’s support for Ukraine to the high heavens, endlessly decrying it as a pointless waste of money in a place where the U.S. has no real strategic interests. On the other, he has emerged as one of the GOP’s staunchest supporters of Israel—hardly a small feat—despite U.S. support for that country costing far more and being far more pointless than U.S. support for Ukraine. The reason for this, as you can likely tell, is that opposition to Ukraine aid is politically acceptable within the GOP while opposition to aid for Israel is not. Such is the case with China (where Vance is an outright hawk), Latin America (ditto), and Iran. When actually pressed on his stance on the use of force, he says that he doesn’t support it “unless you really have to,” a qualification so vague as to be completely meaningless.

Supporting and opposing conflicts on the basis of political expediency is, of course, nothing new in politics. It’s just the exact opposite of revolutionary: i.e., exactly how Vance is presented and likes to style himself. But as amusing as the contrast between Vance’s desire to be a very special boy and his real-world obsequience is, it could prove very dangerous. Rather than accepting his self-serving ambition for what it is, Vance has worked overtime to rationalize his self-serving beliefs, coming to truly baffling conclusions along the way. His leaked texts with Chuck Johnson, an alt-right blogger, are a perfect case in point. At the same time that Vance puffed his chest about his lack of interest in Ukraine, bragging about how he “won’t even take calls” from the country’s top military officials, he ran to defend Benjamin Netanyahu whenever Johnson criticized him. In his own inexplicable words:

“If the GOP listened to Bibi we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, wouldn’t have done nation building in Afghanistan, and wouldn’t be threatening a war with Iran.”

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Middle East and Netanayhu’s positions would know that this statement is the precise opposite of the truth. In reality, Netanyahu lobbied extensively for an invasion of Iraq in 2002 and sees regime change in Iran as his ultimate foreign policy objective. But Vance has somehow convinced himself that he is an anti-neocon warrior anyway, showing how skin-deep his entire populist shtick is. He likes using the anti-interventionist rhetoric because it plays well with the online right, allows him to frame Democrats as the establishment, and makes him look smart and unique. But when push comes to shove, he won’t just fall in line with the pro-war status quo—he’ll find a way to convince himself that he’s actually standing up to the “neocons” while doing so.

Secretary of State: Marco Rubio

Moving on from Vance, who has at least tried to hide his true pro-war colors, we reach Trump’s pick for Secretary of State: Liddle Marco himself. The so-called populist right was quick to ignore Rubio’s appointment once it was announced. It was for good reason: he’s never seen a war he doesn’t like. During his time as a rising star in the GOP, Rubio has been a hawk in a party of hawks, supporting military action everywhere from Syria to Venezuela to North Korea. He defended the Iraq War long after it had clearly failed. As a freshman Senator, he established close ties with ultra-hawks like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, even going on a trip to Libya with the two in 2011 to promote the NATO-led intervention in the country. To the extent that he said he disagreed with then-President Obama’s policy, it was that he was not aggressive enough and didn’t commit to nation-building in the country.

There are, as you might expect, countless other examples of this hawkishness throughout Rubio’s career, from his support for mass surveillance to his labeling of Palestinians as “savages” who need to be “eradicated.” And although his lack of opposition to Trump himself has meant that he has never been as infamous among the so-called populists as John Bolton or Liz Cheney, any honest look at Rubio’s role during Trump’s first term would immediately mark him as one of the neocons who took advantage of an inexperienced president to push their own priorities. He was described as essentially running Trump’s Latin America policy throughout his presidency, a role in which he attempted coups and threatened invasions against countries he didn’t like.

Now serving as Trump’s actual Secretary of State, he’s certain to push such interventionist policies once again, both in the Americas and in countries abroad. Inconsistent policies on Ukraine don’t change the fact that our so-called anti-war president put a hawk with a record that would make Hillary Clinton blush in charge of the State Department.

NSA: Michael Waltz

Slotting in nicely alongside his fellow Floridian at the State Department, Representative Michael Waltz stands as yet another lifelong interventionist psycho to be given a top post on Trump’s team. From the start of his career as an advisor to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to his recent stint in Congress, Waltz is also yet to see a war he hasn’t liked. Like Rubio, he carries his interventionist beliefs on his sleeve, leaving little about him to be exposed. Along with his support for the standard Trumpist hawk policy planks—China hawkery, Iran hawkery (he has called for Biden to bomb the country), support for an invasion of Mexico, etc.—Waltz also stands out for his ardent support of continuing the War in Afghanistan indefinitely.

Yes, seriously. During his time in the private sector, he made millions doing defense contract work related to the war in the country, which he once called a “multi-generational” commitment that should last 100 years. Once in office, he despaired over withdrawal plans by both Trump and Biden, even working behind in opposition to the Trump administration to prevent him from withdrawing U.S. forces from the country. When Biden went through with the withdrawal, Waltz urged him to re-invade the country once it became clear that the U.S.-backed government was set to collapse. In this, he went far beyond the rhetoric of even his fellow right-wing hawks, most of whom wisely chose to attack Biden on the optics of the withdrawal instead of litigating the larger question of the point of the war itself.

Beyond Afghanistan, Waltz has supported military intervention in a truly staggering number of countries, including:

• Pakistan, as part of an expanded War in Afghanistan.

• Syria, where he once called for a Gulf War-style military effort.

• Much of sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on Niger in particular.

To the extent that Waltz has any “populist” positions on foreign policy, it is, like almost all others in Trump’s orbit, on Ukraine. As was the case with Rubio, Waltz began as a staunch supporter of efforts to support the country, only later changing his views once the politics of the issue changed. Even in this case, however, Waltz’s supposed support for peace comes with many asterisks. While he has disavowed the Biden administration’s position that the support should be continued for “as long as it takes,” his primary criticism of the White House’s policy has been that it hasn’t expanded the effort further by pressuring European countries to spend more on defense. He also said that the primary lesson to learn from the conflict was that the U.S. should be more hawkish abroad, specifically pointing towards Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan as a mistake that reduced “deterrence” and caused the invasion to happen. A tiger never changes its stripes.

As for what Waltz would support doing about the war now, his positions largely align with Sebastian Gorka, a Russia hawk who Trump has chosen to be his counterterrorism director. Gorka’s understanding of the war, as he has repeatedly stated, is that current U.S. aid should be increased exponentially until Putin comes to the negotiating table.

Deputy NSA: Alex Wong

For a quick note on who will be serving alongside Waltz in the National Security Council, we reach Alex Wong, a former foreign policy advisor to Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton. While his work for Romney may be the most amusing part of his resume, the Cotton connection shouldn’t be overlooked. Ever since entering the Senate in 2015, Tom Cotton has established himself as one of the most hawkish members of the Republican Party, which puts him far in the running for one of the most hawkish people on Earth. To get a sense of the Senator’s deal, he recently threatened to invade the Netherlands on behalf of the Israeli government. This was after years of Wong advising him “on all issues related to national security, international relations, and law enforcement.”

If personnel is, in fact, policy, this selection should speak for itself. As for Wong personally, perhaps his most notable belief is that a full-scale World War-level conflict between the U.S. and China is both unavoidable and necessary.

CIA Director: John Ratcliffe

Previously mentioned as Trump’s sole cabinet-level appointee with ties to both Project 2025 and the AFPI, John Ratcliffe represents yet more continuity with Trump’s neocon-riddled first term team. A former hard-right member of Congress who served as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence during the final year of Trump 1.0, Ratcliffe has largely been typecast as an unqualified Trump loyalist since his rise to prominence. This largely correct characterization overlooks the very real influence he has found in the right-wing foreign policy world over the past few years. Alongside retired General Keith Kellogg, who Trump has named his Ukraine czar, Ratcliffe has authored several papers for the AFPI on the war, articulating positions on the conflict that the rest of Trump’s team has ultimately taken. Again, the primary criticism of Biden’s policy was that he hadn’t pressured the Europeans into spending enough money and was too “risk averse” in general, even as they said he should ultimately seek to end the war.

Look at how Ratcliffe talks about any other country, however, and you’ll quickly get a sense that he’s only interested in potentially winding down U.S. support for Kyiv because he thinks the resources would be better used attacking every other country on the planet. He’s an intense China hawk, as might be expected at this point, and favors nothing less than “joint U.S.-Israel action” against Iran. This deprioritization of Atlanticist affairs in favor of aggression towards perceived enemies elsewhere is hardly a new tendency in right-wing foreign policy thinking. The Bush administration adhered to essentially the same perspective, as did the Reagan White House before them and Vietnam-era hawks before even that. Some scholars have even tracked this tendency as far back as the early 1800s, when foreign policy debates were divided between those who supported closer ties with Europe (“Yankees”) and others who supported westward expansion (“Cowboys”). With Vance, Rubio, Waltz, Wong, and Ratcliffe in top posts, the new Trump administration looks set to uphold this long legacy of rapacious overseas meddling.

DNI: Tulsi Gabbard

Credit: Gage Skidmore

Amidst all of these disappointments—the fake populists, the unrepentant neocons, the psychotic Zionists—it’s no wonder that the more libertarian-minded chumps figures in the MAGA coalition have found it hard to hide their disappointment in his new administration. Indeed, even this list doesn’t account for every psychotic interventionist Trump has brought into his orbit. Alongside these new leading officials, he’s also bringing on:

• Pete Hegseth, who found his start in politics running an interest group supporting further troop deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, to run the Defense Department.

• Mike Huckabee, a hardline supporter of the Israeli settler movement favored by the country’s fascist leaders, to be the U.S. Ambassador to Israel

• Elise Stefanik, a former Bush administration staffer who worked for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Bill Kristol’s Foreign Policy Initiative, to be UN Ambassador.

Even still, there appears to be one appointment they can hold their hat on—one seemingly undeniable win that must prove they have their foot in the door. This is Tulsi Gabbard, the Bernie-Sanders-supporter-turned-MAGAt who Trump chose to be his Director of National Intelligence. Unlike every single other person he has appointed to cabinet-level foreign policy positions, Gabbard does seem to have a somewhat anti-war record. She has spent her entire career railing against what she calls “regime change wars,” with her attacks ranging from the usual critiques of Iraq to less mainstream defenses of the Assad regime. Is there, at last, an anti-war voice at the highest levels of power in Washington?

Not necessarily. As she has put it herself, Gabbard only considers herself a dove regarding “regime change wars.” As far as the War on Terror more broadly is concerned, she has described herself as a hawk, slotting herself in quite nicely with the rest of the incoming Trump administration. And even if one takes a generous view towards Gabbard’s past positions—ignoring, say, her upbringing in an Islamophobic cult—her history of flip-flopping on a moment’s notice shouldn’t inspire much confidence in anyone hoping that she will serve as a bulwark for anti-interventionism in the new White House. She has spent her entire career disappointing those who placed their hopes in her. Now that she’s closer to power than ever, I wouldn’t bet on this trend changing.

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To recap, here is a full map of all the countries that Trump’s new cabinet has threatened intervention against in some form or another. Look upon the works of the New Right, ye neocons, and despair!