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For as long as I can remember, Republicans stood for a more hawkish and assertive response to terrorists and dictators, and a greater willingness to promote freedom and liberal democracy as a global ideal. Ronald Reagan, of course, led the military buildup that helped precipitate the collapse of the Soviet empire, while Mitt Romney proved especially prescient [ [link removed] ] about resurgent dictatorship in Russia.
Since the Vietnam War, by contrast, Democrats often expressed sympathy with foreign dictators—at least those [ [link removed] ] who used the appropriate leftist rhetoric. As former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick famously complained [ [link removed] ], they seemed to “blame America first” for every conflict.
This difference has been particularly important in presidential elections because foreign policy is the issue on which the Constitution gives the president the greatest power and freedom. In this area, it is difficult for Congress to prevent the president from doing something he wants to do—and even harder to require him to do something he doesn’t want to do.
Yet under the influence of Donald Trump, the two parties are rapidly switching positions. The Democrats are now the hawks, while under the banner of “America First,” Republicans are adopting a policy that puts American interests last.
Remember, Remember, This Fifth of November
In the most important conflict right now [ [link removed] ], Russia’s war against Ukraine, Trump has already offered plenty of indication he would favor Russia and President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. A lot of the political support for Trump seems to rely heavily on forgetting what happened in his previous term in office—which makes remembering it imperative.
For example, recall that in early 2020 Trump was impeached because he arbitrarily held up congressionally mandated military aid to Ukraine, offering to release it on the condition that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky order an investigation of Joe Biden’s son, to bolster Trump’s re-election chances. Later testimony revealed [ [link removed] ] that this effort was not limited to just one phone call; the demand was pushed through a back-channel pressure campaign by some of Trump’s aides and allies.
It is important to bear in mind the key issue [ [link removed] ] in this case. Trump’s own version of the National Security Strategy [ [link removed] ], a congressionally mandated document that publicly defines the national interests of the United States, listed “counter[ing] Russian subversion and aggression” in Europe as one of America’s crucial goals, and Congress mandated aid to Ukraine for that purpose. But Trump flagrantly ignored America’s national interests in pursuit of his own political gain.
Since then, he has only become more hostile to the American goal of supporting liberal democracy against aggression. In the months after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, there was strong bipartisan support for aid to resist Russian aggression. Then Trump and his supporters went to work undermining it.
This was not a protest against the deployment of the U.S. military, because that was never even considered; given Ukrainian valor, there wasn’t any need. All that has been required is for America to serve as the “arsenal of democracy,” providing weapons, technology, intelligence and support. At a cost that has so far been a fraction of our military budget for a single year, we have already helped Ukraine bog down the entire Russian military and destroy much of its capacity. This is one of the cheapest and most effective uses of American resources in history.
Yet Trump has continually undermined these efforts. In late 2023, Republicans were set to approve a new aid bill to Ukraine until Trump came out against it [ [link removed] ]. His followers in the House of Representatives held up the bill for six months, at a huge cost in Ukrainian lives and battlefield initiative. He has repeatedly said he would cut off further aid to Ukraine [ [link removed] ] if he is elected—often while praising [ [link removed] ] Russia’s supposed military prowess. He would also restrict and delay any aid that Congress approved subsequently.
In fact, he is already doing so, indirectly. Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, who has met with Trump repeatedly and recently, is holding up [ [link removed] ] European Union approval of a $50 billion loan to Ukraine that would be paid back with proceeds from seized Russian assets. This would help Ukraine while literally costing the United States and our allies nothing. But Orbán is delaying it as a favor to Trump.
As his alliance with Orbán indicates, Trump opposes Ukraine because the conservative movement he represents is openly sympathetic to Putin’s authoritarian regime, which many view as a model [ [link removed] ] for strongman rule in the name of religious traditionalism.
This sympathy for authoritarianism is a very serious ideological degradation of the Republican Party. But it is also a degradation in the fact that it is not serious or even ideological. Typical of this is J.D. Vance’s cavalier dismissal [ [link removed] ] of Ukraine. He literally told a podcast, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” Elsewhere, he told [ [link removed] ] a right-wing conspiracy theorist, “Dude, I won’t even take calls from Ukraine.” Vance is not just hostile to Ukraine and deeply involved with the pro-authoritarian right, he is also openly unserious about his responsibilities as a senator or as a would-be vice president.
Peace in Our Time
One of the key discoveries of the past few weeks—from a new book by Bob Woodward, the venerable chronicler of recent presidencies—is a report [ [link removed] ] that Trump has had frequent conversations with Putin since leaving office and has repeatedly blamed Zelensky [ [link removed] ] for Russia’s invasion because he “refused to make a deal” with Russia. This explains how Trump thinks he can end the war in Ukraine quickly if he is elected to office.
The only realistic way Trump could make a deal with Putin is by agreeing to cut off support for Ukraine and pressure Ukraine [ [link removed] ] to give up a massive amount of its territory.  (A plan put forward by would-be Trump aides says it would also threaten Russia with an increase of aid to Ukraine—but how realistic is that threat, given that Trump has repeatedly opposed such aid?)
But realistically, this amounts to a plan for a deal that would leave Ukraine defenseless for whenever Putin decides to relaunch the war. Trump is lining himself up to be this century’s Neville Chamberlain—the British leader who made the deal that rendered Czechoslovakia similarly defenseless against Nazi Germany and set the stage for World War II.
We can predict that Trump would end aid to Ukraine because it is precisely what he did in Afghanistan. In March of 2020, in The xxxxxx, Shay Khatiri accurately summed up [ [link removed] ] Trump’s peace deal with the Taliban as “surrender with reparations”: “Trump is giving the Taliban everything they want and abandoning the Afghan government.” Yes, President Biden also deserves blame for the withdrawal from Afghanistan—but for choosing to continue and to implement Trump’s policy. So we should remember that Trump did to the Afghan government precisely what he is now saying he will do to Ukraine.
If Trump is elected tomorrow, the impact would be immediate, demoralizing Ukraine and emboldening Russia. Putin’s whole hope has been to hang on in Ukraine and wait out global opposition until he gets more sympathetic politicians in power in the U.S. and Europe.
The final indignity is that Trump justifies his policies by describing [ [link removed] ] the U.S. as the aggressor against Russia. He and his supporters have repeatedly insisted [ [link removed] ] that Russia’s invasion is a legitimate response “provoked” by NATO. He even thinks the U.S. Civil War could have been avoided [ [link removed] ] if Abraham Lincoln had only “negotiated”—presumably cutting a deal with the South to preserve slavery. (I have described Trump’s conservative faction as “Copperheads [ [link removed] ],” but I didn’t know how literally true that was.)
Donald Trump Jr. has made the case more widely, explaining [ [link removed] ] that he pushed for the selection of J.D. Vance as his father’s running mate to keep out the “neocon warmongers” he blames for global conflicts. They call this policy “America First,” but it is more like Blame America First—precisely the attitude Republicans despised when Democrats did it.
Axis and Allies
Interestingly, if you read the famous “blame America first” speech [ [link removed] ] from the 1984 Republican convention, you will find this piece of advice from Ambassador Kirkpatrick:
The United States cannot remain an open, democratic society if we are left alone—a garrison state in a hostile world. We need independent nations with whom to trade, to consult and cooperate. We need friends and allies with whom to share the pleasures and the protection of our civilization. We cannot, therefore, be indifferent to the subversion of others’ independence or to the development of new weapons by our adversaries or of new vulnerabilities by our friends.
Trump, by contrast, has constantly complained about NATO, proposing to withdraw from it [ [link removed] ], and treats America’s alliances as financial burdens [ [link removed] ] we should seek to escape. This is a policy of America Last. In Trump’s approach, every other country—including predator nations like Russia—will get the chance to act first to shape the world the way they want, while America is the last to take action in support of our values and interests.
If Trump is elected, maybe Ukraine and our other allies are not doomed. Maybe the Europeans will panic, as they should, and provide some kind of extraordinary support for the Ukrainian war effort. But the point is that America, the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, will be sitting back meekly and hoping that somebody else does something.
Since World War II, and especially since the end of the Cold War, the world has been in the “Long Peace [ [link removed] ]”—a peace earned by extraordinary American exertions in previous generations but that requires far less effort to maintain today. Yet we have gotten so used to wars being relatively small and far away that we now entertain the idea that we can just give up on all effort and the world will stay roughly as it is now.
But the world we live in can get far worse very quickly. A Russian victory in Ukraine would put many Eastern and Central European countries next on Putin’s list. It would also embolden dictators everywhere and could lead to many more such invasions across the world. It would create a sense that everything is up for grabs and the only rule is: Might makes right. We are already beginning to see signs of a growing “scramble for everything [ [link removed] ],” but this is just a preview of the international chaos waiting to break out if America decides to let aggressive authoritarians like Putin do whatever they want—and do it with our blessing.
That is the future Donald Trump offers us, a future in which America will be significantly less safe and prosperous.

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