What happened to America First? Trump's cabinet picks seem more neocon than isolationist

Since the election, a fierce battle has been raging within the MAGA movement between restrainers and sabre-rattlers. When political commentator and comedian Dave Smith wrote on X “that we need maximum pressure to keep all neocons and war hawks out of the Trump administration”, he was retweeted by Donald Trump Jr, who said: “I’m on it”. The anti-neocon faction rejoiced when news emerged that Nikki Hailey and Mike Pompeo, known for their ultra-hawkish positions, would not be joining the administration. But as Trump started unveiling his cabinet selections, the excitement quickly turned to despair — and anger. 

Many of the names chosen by Trump to fill key foreign policy and national security roles are, in fact, well-known neocons and war hawks who advocate a muscular foreign policy against countries such as Iran and China (much like Hailey and Pompeo themselves). Such appointments don’t suggest a pivot away from Biden’s reckless interventionism and imperial overreach, but rather a return to policies that Trump once criticised. 

Take Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice for Secretary of State. Rubio, a prominent senator from Florida, is a longtime hawk who has spent most of his political career promoting neoconservative foreign policy positions, particularly on Iran and the Middle East, and advocating US military action abroad. In the eyes of many MAGA supporters, he is the quintessential representative of the establishment wing of the Republican Party that Trump has long railed against. Back in 2016, when Rubio ran for the presidential nomination, Trump belittled him as “Little Marco”, and Rubio responded by calling the magnate “frightening”, “disturbing” and a “con artist”. 

Rubio was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, of the bombing of Libya and of the Obama administration’s failed attempt at regime change in Syria. He has also supported US interventionism in Latin America, particularly against Left-wing governments. A staunch ally of Israel, closely aligned with the views of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Rubio has consistently taken a hardline stance against Iran. He opposed the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, arguing for stricter sanctions, and even advocating military strikes. On the current conflict, he has defended Israel’s every move in the war in Gaza and Lebanon. He is also an anti-China hardliner: he was instrumental in pushing for legislation that would counteract China’s influence in US technology sectors and has been vocal about China’s human rights abuses. 

In the past, Rubio has also called for strong measures against Putin’s regime, though in recent years he has aligned with Trump on opposing military support for Ukraine. But aside from the latter, where we can expect Rubio to back Trump’s efforts to end the war, his track record suggests that Rubio will maintain a focus on aggressively pursuing US interests abroad, and countering all the official enemies and geopolitical rivals of the United States, including via military means. 

Trump’s Secretary of Defence pick Pete Hegseth — a national guard veteran and Fox News anchor — is more of a wild card. In the past, the former soldier was an ardent supporter of US military engagement in the Middle East: in 2008, as head of the pro-war lobbying group Veterans for Freedom, he appeared with George W. Bush at the White House to support Bush’s plan to escalate and extend the Iraq war. Today, his view seems to have shifted. In a recent interview, he described himself as a “recovering neocon”, characterising the post-9/11 forever wars as a mistake that had “made things worse”. However, he remains an ardent supporter of Israel’s war on Gaza, describing the story of Israel as the that of “God’s chosen people”, a view which aligns with his evangelical Christian background, where support for Israel is often seen as part of a theological stance. He has also stated that “Zionism and Americanism are the frontlines of Western civilisation and freedom”. 

Trump’s other key foreign policy picks all lean in the same direction. Mike Waltz, Trump’s next national security advisor, is another militant neocon who criticised Biden for not escalating aggressively enough in Ukraine and supported allowing Ukraine to use US weapons to strike deep into Russian territory (though, like Rubio, he recently voted against additional military aid to Ukraine). He has also advocated bombing Iran; opposed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan; called for “a new Monroe Doctrine” to deter Chinese influence throughout the Western hemisphere; and promoted escalating military support for Taiwan. 

Like Rubio and Hegseth, Waltz, too, is a unwavering supporter of Israel. He has criticised the Biden administration for undermining Israel’s position during conflicts, particularly in the context of the Gaza and Lebanon wars. And has suggested that Israel be allowed to “finish the job” when dealing with threats like Hamas and Hezbollah, indicating a preference for a more assertive response from Israel. The theory is, as he set out in a piece for the Economist earlier this year, to “move quickly to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine in order to transfer US focus and military assets back to the Indo-Pacific region and counter China”. 

Similarly, Brian Hook, who will lead Trump’s transition at State Department, is known for his hardline stance on Iran: as the US Special Representative for Iran during the previous Trump administration, Hook was a key architect of the “maximum pressure” strategy against the regime, which involved reimposing and expanding sanctions after he helped Trump withdraw from the nuclear deal. Elise Stefanik, Trump’s new ambassador to the UN, is an equally staunch Israel supporter and Iran hawk. “There is no excuse for an American president to block aid to Israel”, Stefanik told the Israeli Knesset earlier this year in a speech where she criticised Biden for delaying a single shipment of 2,000-pound bombs. 

While Stefanik initially supported aid to Ukraine, she voted against the latest aid package in April. She has also suggested that the US should take a more aggressive stance against China. Before being elected to Congress, in 2014, she worked for several leading neocon think tanks, including the National Endowment for Democracy, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Foreign Policy Initiative. 

As is clear, fervent support for Israel is a common thread among all of Trump’s foreign policy nominees. Mike Huckabee, Trump’s choice as the next US ambassador to Israel is an evangelical Christian who describes himself as an “unapologetic, unreformed Zionist”, and frames his support for Israel through biblical and religious perspectives. He has been a vocal supporter of Israeli illegal settlements in the West Bank, which he refers to as Judea and Samaria. “There’s no such thing as a settlement,” he has said. “They’re communities. They’re neighbourhoods. They’re cities.” In 2015, he even drew criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, an organisation committed to fighting antisemitism, after accusing Barack Obama of “marching the Jews to the oven” by signing a nuclear deal with Iran. 

The overwhelmingly pro-Israel stance expressed by the new appointments, rather than staunching the violence in Middle East, risks encouraging Netanyahu to further escalate the war, including against Iran, potentially drawing the US into an all-out regional conflict. 

The only conflict where peace and de-escalation seem to be on the agenda is Ukraine. Trump seems keen to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, and even if that is likely to prove harder than he thinks — also because of the pushback he’s likely to face from pro-war forces in his own party, as well as in Europe — it at least offers some hope. The nomination to national intelligence director of Tulsi Gabbard, who has been a vocal critic of US involvement in what she called “counterproductive, wasteful foreign wars”, could also be read as a sign of this intent. 

But overall, it’s hard to make the case that Trump’s foreign policy line-up isn’t a victory for the pro-war uniparty. Perhaps this was only to be expected: the stance of Trump’s foreign policy picks — which can be summarised as being pro-Israel, anti-Iran and anti-China — is, after all, closely aligned with Trump’s own views, as well as with the policies he pursued during his first administration. So a 180-degree isolationist turn was never on the table. 

Even though the priorities may shift — as the focus moves to Iran and China rather Russia — the next Trump administration isn’t likely to stray very far from the strategic orientation that has guided the US under the Biden administration, grounded in aggressively stemming the decline of American global dominance by resorting to diplomatic, economic and even military pressure. While we can expect Trump to prioritise diplomatic and economic tools over outright war, and to adopt a more transactional and less ideologically-driven approach to international affairs, this is ultimately no guarantee of peace. 

His previous administration testifies to this: while it is true that Trump started no new wars, as his supporters often claim, one may argue that he helped pave the way to many of the conflicts currently unfolding around the world. By withdrawing from the nuclear deal with Iran, ordering the killing of Soleimani and spearheading the Abraham Accords — aimed at sidelining Iran, while erasing the question of Palestinian statehood — many believe that Trump helped create the conditions that erupted on October 7. Similarly, Trump’s trade war with China set the stage for a broader geopolitical confrontation that has since assumed an increasingly marked military dimension. Indeed, even insofar as the Russia-Ukraine conflict is concerned, it was the Trump administration that began selling lethal weapons to Ukraine, and then unilaterally withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, further fuelling Russia’s security concerns about the aggressive nature of Nato’s involvement in Ukraine. 

This highlights the intrinsically contradictory and ambiguous nature of “America First”. For many in the MAGA movement, it evokes a return to a pre-World War II ethos, when the US prioritised domestic concerns over entanglements abroad. It suggests a focus on economic self-sufficiency and a military posture confined to defending the homeland rather than engaging in costly overseas conflicts. But for many in the incoming Trump administration — and Trump himself — it arguably means something quite different. It means a strategy aimed at recalibrating America’s engagements in order to maximise US interests, including by asserting military dominance while at the same time avoiding direct military involvement. 

However, that is a very thin line to tread, especially in today’s age of heightened geopolitical rivarly, in which the economic and military dimensions are deeply intertwined. In such a context, anything less than a clean break with the US’s hegemonic approach is likely to lead the world down the same dangerous path laid out by the Biden administration. 

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Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.

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