Are Republicans Turning Against NATO?

Are Republicans Turning Against NATO?

A strong minority within the party wants to ditch Dwight Eisenhower’s legacy. It’ll take strong leadership to turn things around.

A simpler time.

By Jonathan Bernstein

Photographer: M. McNeill/Hulton Archive/Getty

When it came to public policy, Donald Trump’s presidency was marked by repeated defeats whenever he attempted to take on Republican orthodoxy. When he championed tax cuts, the party was right there with him. When he urged massive spending for infrastructure, they ignored him. On several foreign-policy questions, including Trump’s antagonism toward NATO, congressional Republicans actively opposed him.

Those foreign-policy issues reflected the enduring triumph of Dwight Eisenhower. Republicans were always anti-communists. But before Ike, conservatives had also been isolationists, preferring that the U.S. stay out of the world, and especially out of long-term alliances. Harry Truman had worked with internationalist Republicans in Congress to commit the U.S. to the United Nations, NATO, the Marshall Plan, and more, but the rank and file was less than comfortable with all of that, and it wasn’t at all clear where a Republican president would take the party. In fact, Eisenhower only narrowly won the Republican nomination in 1952, defeating the conservative wing of a party that was desperate after losing five consecutive presidential elections and happy to have a war hero leading the ticket.

Eisenhower’s popular and effective two-term presidency moved isolationism to the fringe. His vice president, Richard Nixon, followed his lead during his own presidency. Even when conservatives fully took control of the party with the election of Ronald Reagan, the old isolationist impulse was reduced to occasional UN-bashing. There were plenty of real differences on foreign policy between the parties during the Cold War, but Ike’s presidency put Republicans firmly on the side of an active continuing role for the U.S. in world affairs, including participation in a series of alliances and agreements. Indeed, that commitment outlasted the Cold War.

Trump didn’t care much about public policy when he was president. But he did undermine this internationalist consensus, even using the old “America First” slogan from an isolationist (and anti-Semitic) movement from the 1930s. And while he had little success actually implementing his foreign-policy preferences — as he was repeatedly rolled by Congress, the bureaucracy and allied nations — it’s quite possible he could have the last laugh.

Earlier this week, an astonishing 63 House Republicans opposed a resolution supporting NATO. That’s still not a full third of the Republican conference, but it’s not exactly a tiny fringe, either. To be fair, some of those objecting claimed to oppose the non-binding, symbolic resolution because of some of its specific wording rather than because they opposed the alliance — but quite a few seem to be wary of the whole concept of an alliance of democracies against authoritarianism.

These lawmakers are only reflecting where their party appears to be heading. In two recent polls, strong minorities of Republicans — 40% of respondents in one survey — supported leaving the alliance altogether.

If a Republican committed to the old consensus wins the 2024 nomination and is elected president, I’d expect all of that to dissipate pretty rapidly. Both parties will once again be strong supporters of NATO in particular and of the general overarching direction of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s. But if Trump is nominated, and especially if he wins the presidency, it’s hard to see the party working as hard to constrain his foreign-policy choices as it once did. And if Democrats remain in the White House for another four years (or more)? It’s easy to imagine partisan polarization extending into this area, as it has so many others, with Republicans automatically opposing whatever it is that Democratic presidents are doing — including participation in the alliances that Eisenhower, Nixon, Gerald Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all strongly supported.

Preventing that result would require strong, responsible leadership from Republican politicians. I’m not optimistic that will happen.