MAGA GOP’s Utter Failure to Take Our National Security Strategy Seriously

One of the most remarkable – and lamentable – features of the MAGA movement is its utter lack of serious thought about American national security and grand strategy. In essence, the most important issues of America’s strategic security have been reduced to whether Donald Trump sees personal and/or domestic political advantage in any particular aspect of our national security and trade policies. Trump and his cultish GOP followers dare not to encourage real experts to explore and criticize the underpinnings of Trump’s predilections and whims regarding his foreign policy agenda – because Trump’s puerile view of the world is anathema to America’s actual long-term strategic interests.

The collapse of the GOP’s ability to engage in serious foreign policy analysis over recent years so as to fit wholly inside Trump’s bellybutton is a tragedy because the GOP used to think seriously about these issues and contributed substantially to the dialog from which a sound grand national security strategy emerges: this is no longer the case. Instead, we get little from the GOP but jingo, xenophobic hatred, dictator worship and envy, and a scatalogical farrago of increasingly unserious and short-sighted nonsense that makes no strategic sense for a democratic society that produces unprecedented global wealth through free trade, mutuality, and technological advance.

I invite you to take some time to delve relatively briefly into the work and thought of a realistic and intelligent scholar of American strategic interests and the consequent policies we should pursue to preserve our security, prosperity, and a world order where our values and interests are sensibly protected by the might of our armed forces, alliances, international rules-based order, and economic productivity.

A leading light of such realistic thinking about grand strategy is Sarah C.M. “Sally” Paine, a scholar of naval policy and military history. Paine is currently a professor of strategy and policy development at the U.S. Naval War College. She is also the author of several books, including ‘The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949’, ‘The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895: Perceptions, Power, and Primacy’, and ‘The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War’.

I suggest a watch of the following interview video with Dr. Paine (if you don’t want a history lesson on the wars of the 20th Century you can skip to about 45 minutes in…), and read or listen to her interview with Noah Smith of Noahpinion.com for a distillation of her very serious thought on American strategy and note how it aligns with the priorities and strategems of a certain current Presidential Administration: