Trump and Vance Promised ‘No New Wars.’ What Happened To That?

MAGA’s philosophical twists and turns are hard to follow given that whenever Donald Trump changes his mind his supporters have three go-to approaches. First, they claim his latest notion is part of a 3D chess game even if, by all appearances, Trump would struggle to play one-level tic-tac-toe. Second, they distract our attention: Didn’t Barack Obama do this, too? Third, they get with the program and shamelessly back whatever the president is doing.

Sometimes MAGA-supporting influencers with their own agendas and philosophies take issue with some Trump policy. But rank-and-file MAGA always follows the Dear Leader even if it means contradicting some Deeply Held Principle they espoused weeks ago. The closest MAGA has to a firm belief set—outside of scapegoating immigrants—involves war and peace. I figured MAGA supporters were halfway serious about their often-touted goals of noninterventionism.

Then, boom—quite literally. MAGA cheered as Trump deposed the Venezuelan dictator to promote “freedom,” although the administration bypassed the democratic resistance and replaced him with another authoritarian. They high-fived as Trump vowed to take over peaceful Greenland. Now “anti-war” paleoconservatives sound like the pro-war neoconservatives they’ve long criticized after the United States and Israel attacked Iran for a still-unclear purpose. And don’t you dare bring up congressional war-powers authorization, as the Constitution requires.

Trump has long touted himself as the peace candidate. Before 2020, he warned that Joe Biden might start World War III. White House adviser Stephen Miller posted that “KAMALA WILL SEND YOUR SONS TO WAR” if she won. We know the president’s determination to receive a Nobel Peace Prize—even a second-hand one—and his joyful acceptance of the international soccer league’s toddler-appeasing peace prize, which seemed like something lifted from “Idiocracy.”

Vice President J.D. Vance has also pivoted repeatedly to serve a man he once called America’s Hitler. Nevertheless, Vance is unquestionably smart and, more than perhaps anyone else in this kakistocracy-like administration, has carefully detailed the case for opposing America’s endless international interventions. I always thought his foreign-policy views, though often misguided, were at least heartfelt.

In a Wall Street Journal column in 2023, then-Sen. Vance argued Trump would break the consensus where U.S. officials tossed out “slogans about ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ while starting world-historic catastrophes in the Middle East.” He preferred “reminding leaders in both parties that the U.S. national interest must be pursued ruthlessly but also carefully, with strong words but great restraint.”

Well, so much for restraint. As the New York Times reported, Vance “argued in a White House Situation Room meeting that if the United States was going to hit Iran, it should ‘go big and go fast,’ according to people familiar with his remarks.” In fairness, nationalist, populist Republicans have never really opposed military actions. They mainly oppose the regime-change, endless-war missions that our country has undertaken since Woodrow Wilson.

By the way, these folks are no friends of freedom and democracy, which helps explain why their “peace” stance in Ukraine aligns seamlessly with Moscow’s, as they essentially argue the best way to stop the tragic killing is for victims to lay down their arms and submit to an invader. Trump and MAGA have even blamed Ukraine and NATO for Russian aggression and warned that U.S. support could spark the next world war. At least I can contort their position, however muddleheaded, into some anti-war narrative. But Iran? A war of choice seems more likely to spark widespread convulsions.

This is hardly America First. Furthermore, the administration’s rationales keep changing. Apparently, the United States had to stop an imminent threat of Iran gaining nuclear weapons, although Trump had previously asserted that his limited previous air attacks on the country had already accomplished that goal. As others have noted, Iran is an “imminent” threat that’s been imminent for decades. The country has been a source of relentless mischief, although MAGA used to argue it’s not our role to launch special military operations against the world’s many mischief-makers.

Trump also said the attacks would protect the Iranian people after the mullahs brutally repressed recent protests. Then he acknowledged that the new boss might be as bad as the old boss. Not that MAGA or Trump have shown the slightest concern about human rights, here or abroad. Whatever their real motives, this reminds me of George W. Bush’s Iraq folly, which was followed by years of chaos and violence. Ironically, that war emboldened Iran, as the vicious Iraqi strongman was a regional counterbalance to the vicious mullahs.

We can expect the usual: a destabilized region, years of unforeseen and negative consequences, billions of lost American dollars, and lost lives. The one tiny potential upside of the populist movement was its apparent reluctance to plunge the nation into foreign debacles. That’s gone now, but it shouldn’t be a surprise given that MAGA isn’t so much a political philosophy as a cult of personality.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.