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I don’t think a war with Iran is what Trump — or his voters — had in mind when he campaigned on “America first.” My guest this week is Curt Mills, the executive director of The American Conservative, a magazine that champions foreign policy restraint. Mills thinks the war with Iran is a major betrayal of the voters who put Trump in the White House and has the potential to shatter Trump’s domestic coalition.
(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)
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From New York Times' opinion, I'm Ross Douthett, and this is interesting times.
Today, the United States military continues to carry out large-scale combat operations in Iran.
Today, the United States military continues to carry out large-scale combat operations in Iran.
To eliminate the grave threats posed to America by this terrible terrorist regime.
So, whatever happened to America first?
It doesn't feel like a war with Iran was quite what Donald Trump campaigned on in 2024.
We put America for it.
We're going to end these endless wars, endless wars they never said.
Have you ever seen these wars they go on for 14 years, 20 years?
And my guess this week thinks it's a big betrayal of the voters who put him in the White House.
Kurt Mills is the executive director of the American Conservative, a magazine that champions foreign policy restraint.
He argues that the Iran war isn't just a foreign policy blunder.
It's a move that could shatter Trump's domestic coalition.
Kurt Mills, welcome to interesting times.
Thanks for having me.
So, I'm going to do some stage setting here for anyone in the audience who doesn't follow all of the ins and outs of right wing foreign policy debates.
But you are in charge of the American Conservative magazine, which is a magazine founded by Pat Buchanan among other people in opposition to the looming Iraq war.
And for a long time, the American Conservative was a pretty lonely voice for foreign policy restraint, a kind of anti-war, anti-imperial conservatism.
But throughout the Trump era, it's been seen as much more influential, maybe closer to what Trump himself believes.
But here we are, the US is at war and it is a war.
It's not a, whatever, a large scale combat operation, right, where at war with Iran, we're still backing Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia.
We've intervened in Venezuela, we've intervened in Nigeria, there's a long list, right.
So, whatever this looks like, I would not describe it as a dovish or restraint oriented administration.
And however you would describe your faction on the right, can call it anti-war mega, we can call it America first, whatever label you want to use seems to be losing.
So, give me a big picture account of why that's happened, why in the broadest sense, why is the second Trump administration turned out to be much more hawkish than a lot of people expected?
It seems pretty clear to me that the ultimate deciding factor is the president's personality and own determinations.
There are a number of people in this administration, there are real cadres that believe in non-interventionism, they were put into personnel throughout the administration in a much more pronounced way than in term one.
This generation is younger, I think very notably at the cabinet level, but also at the sub cabinet level.
There was every indication that when Trump came in first day of term two, first month of term two, that they really wanted to get the ball rolling on a number of these endeavors.
But they tried before he was even in power. The president's special envoy Steve Wyckoff, if you remember the transition in mid-January 2025 imposed a ceasefire on the Israelis, that was very unpopular among the Israeli right.
Trump opened up negotiations and announced it side by side with Benjamin Netanyahu with Iran in April of 2025.
Vice President Vance led a caustic showdown with Zelensky in February of 2025 indicating the administration was going to take a hard line in getting out of the war.
Even on pet projects of people like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, there was every indication that there were competing factions to try to do diplomacy in Latin America.
This may well just be stuff that is written in history books and not remembered actively, but the opening thrust of Trump term two was extremely in this direction.
And I think it's worth noting. I also think it had been building for years. There was every indication that it was going to look very different.
So so then what so what changed what was the you said it comes down to Trump himself is impatient. So the president is impatient. The president does not have the patience for diplomacy.
I think this is clear. The president does not have the detailed oriented mindset to overwhelm the various factions in his coalition. And the president is ultimately fundamentally an underratedly agreeable personality.
And so a major part of President Trump's boss tweed style of management or people who want to drive the US into war right there are Latin America hawks there are Ron hawks there are even conservative hawks remaining on the hill and in the military industrial complex for Ukraine.
And fundamentally he has not shown the determination and courage to tell them now and I think you've seen this yes on the right, but you've also seen it on the world stage.
He likes Keir Starmer. I know he has sailed him yesterday with Friedrich Merz, but generally speaking, there's been any regional relationship. He likes a manual Macron. Of course he likes fusion paying any likes Vladimir Putin.
There's a status quo dynamic if you can't say no to anybody. And the status quo is America as an escalatory interventionist power.
So that's a status quo embodied by not just forces within his administration, but by NATO, the Western alliance, what gets what gets pejoratively called the foreign policy mob right a lot of this is just an open sort of like I really don't people are intimidated by foreign policy. I don't think it's actually that complex.
Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany flew to DC immediately when the Iran war started because he sniffed I think correctly a grand opportunity for Europe here or the European international such as say, which is support Trump on Iran, lump it.
I don't think they would have chosen this, but they don't really care, right? I mean the Europeans have been you know contract 10 years ago when they were all in on the Iran diplomacy.
They've been very frosty throughout this process. They don't care about the Iranians easy to dump them and try to get Trump back in all in on NATO and Ukraine. And he said in the first 20 seconds of his response in his meeting of Trump, he said, yep, we support the end of this regime, but I'm really here to talk about Ukraine.
How much do you think Trump likes being a hawk though to right? I mean, yes, so it's impatience with diplomacy, it's agreeableness, but you know when I look back at his first term.
It was a first term that had in a way a kind of establishment Republican foreign policy in other ways he very conspicuously resisted figures like John Bolton arguing for escalation against Iran.
But there were various moments, right? The assassination of General Salimani, most notably where it seemed like Trump took real pleasure in using the US military arsenal and you know not being the guy who put boots on the ground and occupied countries, but in being a dynamic actor on the world stage.
And that when I look at sort of the pattern from Venezuela to Iran, that's sort of what I listed to the impatience though. I mean, like it's, you know, there's disputes, there's negotiations, it's complex, it's hard.
He feels like he's getting run over by foreign actors potentially, you know, he said it yesterday, Israel didn't make the decision of anything. I forced their hand. He's very competitive and chalkish and, you know, macho about that, so to speak.
But I think you're right that he's attracted fundamentally to the glamour of these strikes. So there is this element, damn, but fundamentally until perhaps this month or until February 28th when we launch the the war of the run.
Trump has shown a pretty clear hesitancy to get involved in these grand ways, a lot of the neocons, a lot of the 2000s.
So what is the alternative to the kind of internationalist and interventionist consensus that you're arguing that he sort of accepted?
What is the right wing foreign policy, the conservative foreign policy that you were hoping for just in broad strokes?
I mean, look, I think it's important. So, you know, our magazine was founded by Buchanan and as you mentioned, and Buchanan in a lot of ways was the Tucker Carlson of his age and also ran for president, which, you know,
may be forthcoming one day from Mr. Carlson, but Trump and Buchanan had a very bad relationship because they both sort of comically competed over the 2000 reform party nomination and Trump said horrible things about Pat.
And I'm only aware of two people that Trump has ever personally apologized to.
One is wife Melania Trump after the leak of excess Hollywood and second pat.
So, even if you think Trump believes in nothing and is a nihilist, right, don't.
If you believe that, he is aware of the ideology that he trafficked in in the 2016 primary and has continued to the last 10 years.
And that is fundamentally a conservative anti-globalism. It is skeptical of our massive empire overseas that it serves the Americans, that it serves the national interest.
It is skeptical of unending immigration and it is skeptical of, quote, free trade.
That is what Trump ran on. That is why the conservative establishment lost its mind when he first rose to power.
And that is when his back has been against the wall, what he has really reached for.
I mean, remember someone called Ron DeSantis was one favorite to beat him in the 2024 primary and he leaned in hard to the anti-war messaging,
leaning hard to the trade hawkish messaging, hard on the immigration.
He reached for it again and again and again. And at the same time, of course, a rising young senator called JD Vance endorsed President Trump early in that primary.
When that was not vulgar, that was not considered the safe play.
And then he backed a withdrawal and skepticism of Ukraine.
When that was not at all considered the conventional wisdom even on the right or at least within the establishment right.
He made those bets and that was an early alliance between the two of them.
And I think it tells you that this ideology was always twinned and linked.
Do you think of this ideology as isolationist?
No.
But I mean, I think what is isolationist?
Well, that is part of my question, right.
It seems like a catch all slur, right?
I mean, I mean, very few...
Well, there is a thread that runs through republic before it calls themselves as an isolationist.
No one ever... No one knows.
Well, people actually called themselves Neocons, right?
Like, so that was like a real movement. They called it the Advanced Policies that helped ruin the country.
But like, that was an actual ideology.
I think...
Although by the time...
By the time it became controversial, right?
When they started messing this up.
In the early 2000s, you had lots of Neoconservatives who would say, well, what is a Neoconservative?
Anyway, right? It was...
I guess what I'm getting at is this.
There's a strand of Republican foreign policy that is extremely hawkish, aggressive and interventionist.
And sometimes for the sake of democracy, sometimes just on general...
Is it defective?
On general, right?
You see it. It's on autopilot on Capitol Hill.
I mean, it's...
The older generation is just marinated.
It's this central nervous system.
But there is also a thread, a strong thread that runs through actual Republican presidents from Dwight Eisenhower,
through Richard Nixon, into some extent Ronald Reagan, that is internationalist,
but skeptical of military intervention.
But then there's also a fuller kind of anti-imperial anti-war right that says,
no, we need to sort of dismantle bases, bring troops home, and so on.
And I'm curious where in that divide you sit?
Like, do you think that Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan offer a valuable tradition
or do you think they were too imperial themselves?
First, the magazine represents a range, but I'm happy to answer for myself.
For yourself.
Okay.
And it's also relevant to advance, to Trump, to these figures.
Like, what are they trying to build?
Are they trying to sort of change the way the American Empire works?
Or are they trying to retreat and dismantle it?
For myself, I am far more to the latter.
I think basically the critics of where America went, particularly post-World War II,
lost the battle, but they were right.
And I don't think this is actually an ancient battle because the Empire is still going on.
And America is increasingly stressed thin in my assessment.
And I think their arguments are still alive and well and relevant going into the 21st century.
So I prefer Nixon's foreign policy to Reagan's.
I prefer Eisenhower's foreign policy to the John Birch society.
But I prefer Robert Taft to Eisenhower.
That's where I come from.
And Reagan, I think, is similar enough to Obama on the left,
which is it's a sort of deity figure where it just doesn't really behoove one to mess with him.
But I think we drew the wrong lessons from the Reagan years.
And I think Reagan is fundamentally an overrated conservative figure and overrated president.
Okay.
And potentially, in many ways, damaging one.
When you talk about then, the shift that you saw happening on the younger right,
in appointees to the Trump administration,
do you think that a lot of those people agreed with you,
or do you think that they saw themselves more as saying,
we're still internationalists, but we're in the Nixon school.
Yeah.
I mean, I think the people who are in the government are probably functionally closer to the Nixon Eisenhower school,
which I still think would be a vast improvement over the default mode of where we have been in the 92,000 since 2010s.
Okay.
Do you think there's actual public support for any kind of sort of anti-imperialist anti-war term?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
I think foreign policy is complex.
I think it needs leadership.
I think it would need a president to explain why we are doing this to the American people.
But I think the people who lose their minds when the president pursues a new type of foreign policy,
whether this be Donald Trump or even Barack Obama, it is a elite driven game.
It is a DC and New York thing.
That is who's actually opposing it most vociferously.
It is not protests in the streets to keep our bases in buck rain.
It is not protests in the streets to make sure that we bore out bag Nicholas Maduro.
It is a DC, New York intelligentsia thing fundamentally.
Okay. Let me make a counter-argument and see what you think.
If you look at polling on the Iran War so far, and again, we're four or five days in,
and obviously it can change dramatically.
But right now, initially, overwhelming numbers of Republican voters support the war.
It's not popular nationally, but then Donald Trump himself is not popular nationally.
Within the Republican coalition, there's plenty of support for the war in polls.
It doesn't seem just elite driven.
I think if you looked at polls for the Venezuelan operation, you would probably see something similar.
And then over time in polling, I think if you do it on the basis of philosophy, right,
you find a lot of sort of default hawkishness among Republican conservative and right-wing voters.
And there's people who look at the kind of anti-war right or the war skeptical right that you represent,
but that's also associated with really prominent figures like Tucker Carlson, who you already mentioned.
Steve Bannon, all the way now through figures like Megan Kelly and others.
And people say, well, that's actually the elite driven phenomenon.
That's a group of people who found a way this is an attention economy to monetize a lot of people
who are really intensely focused on foreign policy or sometimes really hostile to Israel.
Talk more about Israel in a minute, right?
But that ultimately, Bannon, Carlson, others, they speak for a really hyper-engaged 10% of the Republican coalition.
But most people are just hawks on the right.
And if you say we're going to go to war and kick some ass in the Middle East,
yes, if it goes really badly, people will turn against it.
But there isn't like a philosophical support for restraint.
What do you make of that argument?
Most voters are deferential to their party and their politicians.
So, I mean, I just think the counterfactual, seizure counterfactual needs to be interrogated.
What if President Trump had signed an Iran deal?
I think overwhelming numbers of Republicans would have supported that.
What if President Trump had opened up business dealings with Nicholas Maduro,
like he's doing right now with Delci Rodriguez, or trying to?
I think that would have been uncontroversial in the population.
What if President Trump had pulled out of Ukraine and Ukraine had been collapsed
and there was an enduring deal where an armistice frees the battle lines?
I think that would have been very popular on the right as well.
So, you see a level of partisanship in this country that is extreme.
You see a level of trust on the right in President Trump, which is notable.
But I'm not sure entirely unique.
I think the Democratic standard bearer Biden was a weird president.
We can agree on that.
We stipulated that.
I think Barack Obama, if he was President today, would have similar dynamics on the left.
I think that was frustrating for liberals that were...
Meaning that the left was notionally anti-war, but when Obama...
There were a lot of left things.
I mean, Obama and Trump have similarities, right?
The phenomenon's have similarities.
There was a lot of left-wing intellectual on we with Obama in the mid-2010s.
I'm sure you recall.
And it didn't really show up in the polls, okay?
So, I think Trump is a big deal.
I think these parties are big deals.
I think presidents are big deals.
But I don't really see that as evidence as for hawkishness, actually.
I see that as evidence for trusting the president.
Or trusting who leads the party.
Or trusting your party.
And I will say this.
I'm not a big fan of Bush, certainly.
And but also of Obama, who I think were both failed presidents,
they both tried to marshal support in fairly traditional ways,
which is, this is what I believe.
I'm going to do this.
I'm going to spend political capital on it.
Rock Bush did that.
Obama did it for mediocre health care reform.
Wouldn't you at least agree, though, that there is a strong generational division here?
Where older conservatives and Republicans...
Yes.
And again, I think you can see this in opinion polls.
Have a stronger hawkish default.
For sure.
Going back in part to some of the veneration of Ronald Reagan,
you talked about.
But again, I think just connected in a kind of profound way to how conservatives,
older conservatives think about their country, right?
That we were the country that won the Cold War.
And if you're a patriotic American, you should expect us to be able to do good things abroad.
But that seems like it's still a powerful force in public opinion
that can't be just reduced to Trump, says it, therefore, people go along.
But I think the story ultimately is an elite one,
because I'm still going to focus on the counterfactual.
Let's say Trump did a deal with Vladimir Putin.
Let's say Trump did a deal with the Iranians.
He said, I solved Biden's war.
I did a better Iran deal than Obama.
Yeah.
There might have been some people in the country, some right-wing radio shows,
like, you know, the Mullahs are still up the stuff.
We've got to do this or do that.
But I don't think there would be revolt from the older Kleentel of the party
if Trump had chosen diplomacy.
Versus Trump is choosing war, and there is revolt.
Is there revolt?
I think you're going to see.
I think it's going to be pretty bad.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, it stipulates how long this war goes.
Right.
Trump may still off ramp. Trump should off ramp.
But like, I'm arguing, systemically,
that it actually would have been politically more savvy for him to do the diplomacy.
And the only real explanatory variable in my view is the elite story.
That's who was losing their mind at diplomacy.
What about the explanatory variable of non-American actors?
I think that's huge too.
Right.
Maybe diplomatic.
Well, but not, so I don't mean our allies.
We'll talk about our allies in a moment.
I mean, our adversaries, right?
Okay.
So when I look at what's happened with Russia and Ukraine,
right, it seems to me that the administration made a big diplomatic push.
Right.
They twisted the Ukrainian government's arm, as you mentioned,
you know, in the famous office meeting and elsewhere,
to get them to be more open to a peace deal.
And for various reasons, Vladimir Putin has decided that it's in his interests
to let the war go on.
And that has left the White House still, you know,
they're still negotiating.
I mean, I think they could have come to a deal.
That would have been attractive enough for Putin to not continue the war.
But that's life.
I mean, like you have to offer a deal that makes it more attractive than the status quo.
Right.
But to take the extreme example, if Trump made a deal with Putin
and six weeks later, the Russian army took Kiev and occupied, you know, two-thirds of Ukraine,
the public would turn against that, don't you think?
I think the driving force on why they were turning against it
would be hysteria driven from the media and by foreign policy elites.
So I'll stick to that.
And like, look, I don't think it was really an offer, though.
I mean, we debate Ukraine all day.
But I think let's just narrow the zone of what was actually discussed.
Like, there wasn't discussion of giving them Kiev.
There was discussions of giving them these four oblasts.
There was discussions of security.
There are discussions of security guarantees.
These are the things that are actually being talked about in all these various negotiations.
If Trump did, let's say, the 28-point plan, which critics say is a Russian plan from 2025,
late 2025, I think if that was initiated, I think that the Ukrainians and the Europeans
would complain and liberals in the United States would complain,
but that Ukraine would not collapse, that there would be a deal,
and that would solve the conflict for the short to medium term.
Okay.
And I think the public would not revolt.
Right.
I guess I just...
I think the Afghanistan scenario is what you raised, basically.
Which is, if the administration had incompetently allowed Ukraine to collapse,
Allah Afghanistan.
Yes.
I do think Trump would have been blamed, but I also think the big story there is media
and foreign policy elites hammering that issue and making it, you know,
everything on the airwaves.
That was the story.
There was a fucking story in Afghanistan.
I guess this is a point where we somewhat disagree in the sense that
I supported the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
I wrote columns in favor of it.
I defended Biden at the time against his critics at the same time,
at the same time, observing the dynamics of that,
how it affected perceptions of the Biden presidency,
and obviously that reflected the way it was handled as well as the policy itself.
It just gave me a sense that there are limits to how anti-imperial
and withdrawal oriented and American president can be,
because a lot of Americans are just bought in,
and sometimes I think for good reason, sometimes for bad reasons,
to are a sort of broadly ambitious role in the world.
And certainly that things that appear as national humiliations,
it doesn't take Fox News whipping them up for that to...
I think the attitude has also...
I think if Abigade hadn't happened,
I think if the images in the airport had been less chaotic,
I think that would have gone a long way.
So let's talk about, as you say,
let's stipulate that disagreement,
and talk more about what you see as the other actors shaping U.S. foreign policy.
So you argue that restrained oriented anti-imperial foreign policy
could be popular with the right leaders.
We've both been writing about these issues for a long time.
It has not found the right leaders,
even in the form of Donald Trump,
you know, a partial Buchananite.
So what is the obstacle?
What is the core obstacle to elites embracing this kind of foreign policy?
Those are kind of different questions.
Yes.
Right.
I mean, the fundamental obstacle is the President
who believes in it advances it and goes for it.
I mean, I would say the same thing,
we went into ancient history,
the early 20th century.
World War II was not popular getting into it before it was,
and FDR,
cleverly martial public support,
and world events to get us into that war.
And now that's remembered as this sterling success of American power.
But it wasn't popular.
It was extremely unpopular actually in the late 30s,
and he basically had to pledge to not get us into war
when he ran for re-election in 1940.
And so I think that the idea that Americans have extremely strong convictions
on any of this stuff is not true.
But I also think that is an argument against their extremely strong convictions
for hawkishness.
And you mentioned the ban in Carlson, Kelly,
right, whatever you want to call it.
And, you know, because I see this line of critique.
But I also think it's very notable that the highest information members of the party
and the most engaged voters,
because I think you picked up on something smart.
Carlson, I've known a while,
and I think he would be doing this regardless.
Ban and pretty much the same.
But if there wasn't a market for what they were saying,
they wouldn't be doing this probably, you know, 10 years ago.
It was always told on like television that foreign policy,
you know, it didn't track.
They could barely get me on TV.
They could barely get people on TV to talk about it.
You know, even when Carlson had me on,
it was like, you know, it was really just kind of almost a favor.
That's not the way it is anymore.
People are getting matter and matter and more engaged on this subject organically.
I would say that the way that they're getting matter and more engaged
centers around having one very specific villain, right?
Like a primary focus of Carlson, especially,
but others as well, right, is Israeli policy,
Israeli influence on the United States.
It's true.
It's true.
Okay, so it's just true.
It's just true. Good.
All right, so what tell me about Israeli influence on U.S. foreign policy?
Israel's foundation was always twinned with the United States.
I mean, this happened in the 1948 election.
Truman told the scales and helped, you know,
it helped him win the election in 1948.
But fundamentally, since the 90s,
since the assassination of its Okrabin,
Israeli politics has gone in a different direction,
it has been highly twinned with particularly center-right intellectuals
and elites in the United States with a certain perspective.
And it is a perspective that says that Israel can only be secure
by thrashing everybody in the neighborhood
and breaking them into bits until they're weak.
It is a siege mentality.
It is a garrison state.
And of course, it is very linked to the U.S.
where, you know, I believe the numbers are 45% of Jews live in Israel,
45% of Jews live in the United States, 10% live elsewhere,
could be stipulated, roughly correct.
And of course, when the other half of the world's Jewish population is here
and is a highly emotional issue,
there is an attempt to say any criticism of Israel
is ifso facto anti-Semitic.
I think it is, well, number one,
it is the kind of argument that the right is supposed to be against,
which is woke political correctness.
It's also just fundamentally untrue
and I think it's a silly and doling thought technology.
Okay, but five years ago, right,
I would say it was fair to say that that kind of critique
had a fair amount of purchase in American politics
and people, the critique that says
if you criticize Israel too strongly or anti-Semitic.
I don't think it has any substantial purchase right now.
I think the Democratic political coalition has been fractured repeatedly, right,
in the last few years by debates that are profoundly about Israel
and Israeli policy.
And as we were just saying,
some of the most influential voices on the right
in terms of sort of interest and engagement
are intensely critical of Israel.
So it seems to me that like one,
that taboo is gone to a large degree.
If it's gone, then let's actually be substantive.
What is, it can't just be that...
I think you're brushing aside the fear
that Israel still engenders, especially among the establishment.
And you know this.
You know that people feel that their careers will be destroyed
if they're at all critical of Israel.
And that is still a controlling mechanism.
People wear.
People in media and politics.
People in media and politics.
People in media and politics and to an extent corporate America.
But since we're talking about foreign policy.
You know it's true.
Just focus on foreign policy.
Is that then an actual driver of U.S. policy management?
I'm sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you would say that a big reason
that a lot of Republican elites
take a much more hawkish line
in the Middle East towards Iran especially.
Then you would favor,
or then you think most of their voters would favor,
is not because they're sincere around hawks,
but because they're afraid of having their careers destroyed.
I think it's a mix.
I think particularly with older,
as we mentioned this, this age,
the variable is huge.
I think older people are more inclined to actually believe it.
And then additionally, I think the clear separation
between the interests of the United States
and Israel wasn't as obvious in generations past.
I think there was a view,
especially in the Bush administration,
that the world was fukiyamist.
And so yes, this was the Israeli position.
But if we knock over all these strong Muslim states,
Jeffersonian democracy will actually blossom.
And like, look, I understand you can say
that different elites in the Bush administration fundamentally
said this, or disagreed on this,
or Bolton wanted to go in for this reason,
and it's different than Paul Wolfowitz, right?
Okay, fine.
But fundamentally, the marinade
was the only acceptable style of government
and organization in society is Western liberal democracy.
And other societies that organize themselves
in a separate form are fundamentally illegitimate.
And I think, because Israel stylized itself
as a quote Western liberal democracy,
I'm not sure it's Western liberal,
or a democracy at this point,
they are naturally able to latch on to that cast of mind.
That cast of mind is discredited among younger people
because this is a heavily indebted society
and Americans don't believe in the future broadly speaking anymore.
But for older Americans,
it is a more attractive mode of argument.
But do you think, see,
I guess I just don't think that's where
the pro-Aran war right is right now.
I agree that that was a big part of the story
of where the right was in the Bush era,
not universally, but a sense that...
I'm not so sure we're out of the Bush era.
To me, I look at the Trump era,
and I look at not so much
even the people who always supported war with Iran,
like Lindsey Graham, right.
But people who have sort of oscillated back and forth
between being anti-war, pro-war,
who are shaped, I think, by loyalty to Trump
in the ways you describe.
I think for a lot of those people,
the story they tell themselves now,
is we don't have any fond illusions about democracy
and the end of history.
We think the world is a tough place.
We think there's a bunch of powers
Russia, China, Iran, most notably
that are hostile to American interests.
We think there's a set of powers in the Middle East
that are friendly to American interests,
including Israel, also including Saudi Arabia,
which has also played a substantial role,
I think, in pushing for a more hawkish foreign policy
from Trump in a way that gets less attention
from Tucker, Bannon, people like that.
Well, it was like...
No one is out there telling a podcast host,
you can't criticize Saudi Arabia, right, in the American media.
Right, right.
And yet, there's much more criticism of Israel
in the American media than Saudi Arabia.
Yeah, but Israel's much more mesh than in US society
than Saudi Arabia is.
But Israel more and meshed in the decision-making patterns
of US foreign policies than Saudi Arabia
over the last 25 to 50 years.
I feel like there's a fundamental underestimation
of the place of Saudi Arabia
from the anti-war right.
I think there's a bunch of Americans
who support working with Arab states
and Israel to fight Iran
for what they think of as tough-minded,
realist reasons, not just gossips.
Americans release.
I think Americans who like Trump
and currently say they support this war.
So, yeah, he advances...
Yeah, he advances...
That he has picked aside pretty clearly at this moment.
But he may flip again.
He may flip again.
Well, no.
Yeah, no.
I want to end by talking about the future.
It might be likely, yeah.
But I mean, seriously, I mean, like, I mean,
the guy flips constantly.
Oh, yeah.
No, no.
He could absolutely flip again.
But even in terms of foreign policy elites,
when I look around the Republican Party,
it just seems to me that there's, yeah,
there's a lot of people who are like Israel's tough,
you know, Saudis are allies.
We're weakening an enemy and strengthening an ally.
I think this is a supine ideology.
And I think it has gotten...
The essential center structure is this.
You can discard the things that are unpopular.
So the 2000s...
Oh, the naive democracy building, right?
Oh, you know, it's enough on Iraq.
We're not going to do that again, right?
The essential lesson of the Iraq war is, don't evade Iraq, right?
But everything else that has power
is really influenced on the United States,
the large military, conservative institutions
that are still bought in on this.
You keep that,
and you just cook up something new,
slightly different,
and sell it as fundamentally a rejection of the 2000s.
It's not a rejection of the 2000s.
This is why the administration is so vulnerable
to the criticism that this is so similar to Iraq,
because it is so similar to Iraq.
I don't think it is a full rejection of the 2000s,
but I think the people who are supportive of the war...
Well, again, have people or elites,
or members of the party...
Including elites.
Well, I think it's very different.
I mean, look, I think George W. Bush,
who was a worst president,
to this point anyways,
then Donald Trump, he's the worst president
by far in American history, in my opinion.
He lost two wars,
and he crashed the economy,
and when he left in January of 2009,
22% low 20s of American support him.
What does that tell you?
Half a Republican supported him,
even as he was leaving the White House.
I think that matters.
I think that will fundamentally be true
no matter what Trump does,
but I think it's only so interesting.
Right.
Now, I'm just trying to get it,
like, what are the actual conduits of forces
that are shaping foreign policy right now?
And it just seems like you...
You're telling a story where
Israel, in particular,
exerts this kind of influence over people
who don't fully agree with Israeli policy,
but are afraid to argue with it.
And I...
There's one argument.
It's not the four seasons.
Or in the thrall of like,
yeah, early 2000s ideas about the spread of democracy.
Let's just to be very concrete.
Like, how much power do you think Benjamin Netanyahu
is exerting over US foreign policy right now?
A disgusting amount.
I mean, I mean, this has been going on for a while.
I mean, the Benjamin Netanyahu,
when he spoke to Congress under,
I believe, Speaker Boehner,
he was greeted more warmly by the legislature
than the President of the United States was at the time.
So the Republicans took over Congress in 2014,
and he gave him an address,
and it was like he was the President.
I think a lot of Republican Congressmen
want Netanyahu to be the President, frankly.
Like, if...
I mean, it's obvious for everyone to see,
but it just is fundamentally a...
I can't delete thing.
Netanyahu is not that popular in the United States.
No, but among Republican...
Lawmakers and elites, he is.
But the lawmakers and elites reflect...
Sort of.
Yes, and reflect.
Yes, and reflect.
The broad...
The broad...
I mean, no, you...
Most of us, you know.
Most of us, you know.
Most of us, you know, are low information.
Okay, but you know Republicans.
You know American Republicans.
And you know that a default support for Israel
that is rooted not in fear of political persecution
by Zionists, but by some combination
of historical affinities, religious affinities,
and hostility to the Islamic Republic of Iran,
which has done a lot of bad things
to Americans over the years.
Like, that's a real core part of Republican sentiment.
It may be ebbing among the younger generations, right?
No, but it is not a majoritarian perspective in the country.
I mean, if that was true,
Trump would never have been the Republican nominee.
Right, I'm just trying to stay with Israel
because it seems so central to the actual...
It is.
Inside the right critique.
But Trump...
Trump ran for president as more of a dove
than other Republicans,
but throughout his first term,
he also constantly boasted about being the best friend
that Israel has ever had.
He was moving the embassy.
He was doing all kinds of things.
He's in bed again.
He's in bed with him.
But that...
He accepted large Israel-adjacent financing
for his campaign.
And you mentioned the golf before.
The family is obviously in business in the golf,
and the golf was far more of a driver of hawkish foreign policy
in the first term.
I'm trying to understand, in certain ways,
just the future of the right,
and where a right-wing foreign policy goes from here.
Right?
And so it makes a big difference
whether we understand Israeli influence
on Republican foreign policy as a,
primarily about the opinions of conservative voters
who are pro-Israel for a range of reasons,
to the opinions of elites
who are pro-Israel for a different set of reasons,
some mixture of sincerity and fear you're arguing.
Versus three, this narrative where...
Well, no, it's about Trump's business deals
and deal-making in the Middle East, right?
Those are three quite different perspectives.
They can all be true.
They can all be part of the story.
I don't understand the contradiction.
Well, I'm just curious what we think
is sort of the defining force here.
He can't say no to Israel.
He's not saying no to Israel.
This will not stop unless he says no to Israel.
Right.
And he's not saying no to Israel
because he is fundamentally too agreeable
or because he's fundamentally corrupted.
He's agreeable.
He is too close to them politically.
And I think he's somewhat afraid of them.
Why is he afraid of them?
I think they're an intimidating society.
And I think people are afraid of Mossad.
I think people are afraid of Israeli influence
in foreign policy.
They are afraid what he can do to people's careers.
I think this taboo, as you mentioned, is breaking.
But I think it has a lot of explanatory power.
For Trump.
Sure.
Sure.
Yeah, I mean...
Do you think Trump...
Are you think he's afraid of Israel as a force that could...
I don't want to...
I don't want to...
Could break him that could attack him and call him an anti-Semite?
Or as a force that could like expose dark secrets about him?
Yeah, I mean, I think the Epstein story is somewhat relevant.
I don't know.
We don't know because the government is not being transparent.
But I think he was in alliance, fundamentally,
from the beginning because of campaign donations
and the structure of conservative foreign policy elites
with the Israeli hard line.
And the Israeli hard line is they don't...
Yeah, they want regime change.
They also want state collapse in Iran.
They don't really want Iran to exist anywhere close to its current form.
Right.
I guess I've just...
My sense is just that these things
from watching Republican foreign policy in this administration
and previously that these things are over-determined
and that it ends up being easy for the anti-war side
to say, well, you know, it's just Israel
and if we fix America's relationship to Israel...
I think it's a huge deal.
I mean, do you think this would be happening without Israel?
I don't think it would be happening without Israel
in the sense that if an entirely different Middle East
existed, the world would be entirely different.
But I can certainly tell a very straightforward story
where the US relationships
with Saudi Arabia, Cold War issues,
the Iranian revolution, a lot of different things
lead to a long-standing US rivalry with Iran
without Israel being part of that story.
Yes, I can certainly tell that story.
I think that Israel matters profoundly to this
in part for reasons related to
what actual Republican voters believe,
which is something that I think you think is more...
I'm not arguing with you.
We're going to be a naturally good relationship
with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I think we're a long way from that happening
if the Islamic Republic of Iran exists in here.
I think the story, though, is why is this a crisis?
Why do we have to do this now?
Why do countries have to be evacuated
if US citizens?
Why do oil prices have to go up,
potentially $100 a barrel?
Why is the administration seemingly more interested
in being defiant on this issue
than its central issue, immigration?
I mean, say what you will,
and I don't want to debate Minnesota,
but the administration caved on that.
And they may caved because it's too much on this,
but they are really putting their back into this one
in a way they didn't do on their central issue.
Yes, but part of that is that
presidents and second terms
can find foreign policy crises
easier to sort of feel like
they have freedom of movement in.
They don't have freedom of policy.
And Trump himself is...
But he had a lot of freedom of movement on immigration.
The Congress isn't really stopping him.
Congress isn't stopping him,
but I think that courts and public opinion
are from his perspective
actually more difficult adversaries
than foreign dictators seem to be,
especially in the aftermath of Venezuela,
which again, to me,
has more explanatory power.
No, no, no.
I think that has a lot of explanatory.
I'm not just counting that at all.
I think he has become besotted
with these, quote, quick actions.
So the assassination of Salamani,
the 12-day war,
the abduction of Nicholas Maduro.
No, I think that was a huge story
and why he thought,
okay, there's all this pressure on me.
A major part of my coalition
is losing his mind about Iran.
You know, we got to do everything
the Israeli hard line wants.
But maybe it won't be so bad, right?
Right.
And then additionally,
there are a number of smart conservatives
that are, I think,
basically doing the anti-anxiety
what we're putting forward.
They're not putting forward
2002-2003 neo-conservatism,
but, and I think I sense it in the tone of your voice
a little bit,
maybe my view is overheated.
Maybe it's too much.
Maybe I drew too many lessons from the 2000s.
And, I don't know,
this looks pretty bad.
Just to take your own language,
you get state collapse in Iran.
We don't make any kind of, you know,
Venezuelan style deal.
I don't think the U.S.
stays at war with Iran for six months
or puts 50,000 troops in.
I don't know.
No, the government is, I mean,
it's very tellingly
move the over to window on that immediately.
Now troops are possible.
Now forever wars.
Now forever wars are sneer quoted.
But let me, I'll just give you a scenario
where we don't do that.
But it is perceived in six months
that this was a failure
and Iran is a kind of festering landscape.
Right?
There's some kind of civil war inside Iran.
Maybe we are backing Kurdish militias.
Okay.
We've stopped bombing.
There is a more hard line government
in power in Tehran
that can't control its provinces.
Let's say, just as a scenario
that is not,
not maybe the worst case,
but it's quite bad
and people agree this policy has gone badly.
What does that do to
Republican politics and conservative politics?
In going into 2027, 2028
and successors to Donald Trump?
Yeah.
I think there are probably two main views
on where the party and where the movement can go.
And I think this has been
true throughout the Trump era.
There is view number one
and it is that it is a cult.
And it is just Trump as a celebrity.
And once you get rid of Trump,
once he's off the scene,
then it can go back to business,
as usual, Allah 2013, 2014, 2015,
status quo anti.
The other view,
and these are obviously extremes,
and so I think there's truth in both perspectives.
The other view is that the ideology
really does matter.
And additionally,
the fact that the reigning ideology
keeps failing will create a more
and more radicalized polity
that is actually going to,
that Trump will look in some ways
like a moderate, right?
And we've kind of talked about it before.
This is the sort of idea of,
I would say President Tucker Carlson,
something like that, right?
This is the real thing this time.
The Trump will be remembered
as this wobbly,
you know,
it's a regnum before, you know,
we get real right wing policy,
or something like that.
I think obviously both of these things
are kind of extreme,
so just said,
but I'm far more towards that.
And I think,
because why don't I support the Iran War?
Because it doesn't work.
And I think when it doesn't work,
it is actually going to be accelerationist.
Do you think Republicans' conservatives
turn on Trump explicitly
in that scenario,
the way to some degree they turned on Bush?
I was just looking at Tucker's,
you know, his post-Ran episode,
right, and it had a title
like Israel's War on Iran.
He didn't call it Trump's War,
on Iran, right?
Is there a,
like, and you see a lot of that.
I think, I think that it breaks.
For the record,
I think that it's equally culpable.
I just want to be absolutely clear.
I think Israel
and that dynamic set the table,
but I think President Trump is responsible.
President Trump is,
okay, so 50% blame.
So Trump,
do we get to a point
where conservatives
and Republicans agree with that,
where anyone from Tucker
to Meghan Kelly,
to Ben and beyond,
is saying,
not, you know,
the neocons have failed,
but Trump has failed.
The economy sets the tone.
So it all depends
what the economy looks like.
But let's say,
let's say we keep,
the same economy,
roughly.
Yeah, we're keeping the money
machine going on,
and we're going in a debt,
you know, we've basically
been doing the same thing
since 2009.
I think you will see the administration,
if this war goes on for a while,
or if we go into something that's,
you know, Iran looks like a disaster,
like what you described,
say in the autumn,
I think you will see an administration
that will be in the low 30s,
maybe even the high 20s,
of approval rating.
So today,
I think Trump is in the high 30s.
So I'm,
yeah, postulating,
a five to seven point knock
on his approval rating.
I think you will see them,
this is just projection.
I think you will see them
in this scenario.
If Trump hasn't cut bait,
which I think he's still very,
well, might,
they would,
But even if he cuts bait,
if Iran is a disaster area,
the policy is still
depended on going on popularity.
Depends on what's going on.
Depends on what's going on.
It's like,
I mean, I mean,
the IRGC government lobbying missiles
that Shahad drones,
the golf,
still,
I mean, to an extent,
it would imply that
we can't get out at that point,
we can't get back into,
defend our assets
and defend commerce
and air traffic, et cetera, et cetera.
So I don't,
I think this projection is hard to do.
But I think what you're asking is like,
what does it look like
if this actually takes a chunk out
of his approval rating?
And how does the
infrared dynamics go from there?
I think you will see an administration
that,
you're already seeing elements of this,
leaning, you know,
advance and review
to get all the attention.
But like,
aesthetically and spiritually,
this is very hexathian,
right?
Which is just like,
it's screaming at the media,
it's absolute fetishization
of comments and the troops.
It's leaning into the most
loyal Republicans,
which are often religious Republicans.
I mean,
some of the reporting
as the language out of the Pentagon
on why we're doing this
is pretty astonishing.
I think you will see
the White House do that.
I think you will not see them
to now Trump.
Outside critics,
you mean, right?
I don't, I mean,
like, look,
they didn't,
the Democrats never announced Biden
until they could him,
right?
So,
like, I think this is the
equal opposite on the Republican side.
But I think you will see,
and this will be criticized.
You will see,
would be successors,
and you will see
the right-wing dialogue,
be all but explicitly
content and inventory of Trump.
Not him,
and, you know,
there is the perspective
that, like,
this is cowardice, right?
Like, you know,
talkers attacked,
just announced Trump,
etc., etc.
Why won't you?
Well,
because I think it's,
it's not actually
the zone of argument
that will make the most
impact.
And so, I think you will see
the primary debate,
be per-divicious
and openly
condemnatory of the policy,
maybe not the person.
And so, what happens
to the vice president,
J.D. Vance,
in that scenario?
Vance is someone
who is very explicitly,
as we've said earlier
in this conversation,
associated with some kind of politics
of restraint.
Yeah.
He is someone who,
his friends with Tucker Carlson,
is sort of broadly
associated with anti-interventionist
populism.
You're telling a story
where there's a big,
breakdown,
an attack on the administration
from the anti-war right,
what happens to Vance?
Well,
I think, number one,
that the biggest macro
question is whether
or not Rubio is going to
run against Vance,
would be my,
my number one.
And I think it's a weird zone,
where Rubio actually
profits politically
from the administration failing.
So, I think if the
2028 primary race
is not attractive,
he'll just pass.
And in 2032,
he'll be remembered
as this grand man of state
representing a Republican
super state,
Latino,
you know,
yeah, he was for the Iran stuff,
but it wasn't his thing.
Venezuela and Latin America
is his thing.
You could see him,
you know, like people
thought Connie Rice could run, right?
Like it's just,
you know,
she had more going on
than just that.
It wasn't Dick Cheney running.
And I think
that could be very attractive to Rubio,
because the reality is,
is Rubio being VP
with Vance,
all that attractive, right?
I mean,
if they win,
he has to wait eight more years
to run in 2036,
if they lose,
I mean,
not since FDR
has a losing vice president
on the ticket,
become the president.
So it's not,
it's not great.
So I think that's the,
the first open question,
because you could imagine
a Vance Rubio dual, right?
And then I think this stuff
actually becomes extremely
salient,
because Vance's clear allies
are the interventionists.
Right.
But Rubio's clearly
the establishment.
But Vance can't make an argument
that his own administration's
policies have failed.
I think he might have to.
I want to be clear.
So what was the,
what was the central mistake
that Kamala Harris made
among many?
But the central one was,
I think,
the no-daylight policy
with Biden.
I think Vance is going to
have to innovate
beyond that
if he wants to be the president.
And is there anyone
besides Tucker,
who you imagine
as a standard bearer
for a right-wing
institution campaign?
Well, that's quite the
discipline campaign.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is there going to be a right-wing
institution campaign
challenged to Vance?
So Vance,
so we're talking about
flanks basically here, right?
So there's the establishment
flank, because you've got
DeSantis,
Hailey,
it crews,
those people are all going
to try to flank Vance
from like, you know,
it's just a call we can go back.
But if the Iraq war,
sorry,
he's Freudian slip,
right there.
Here we go.
Everyone who's kind of
for the war is doing this.
And with that,
with the Freudian slip,
if the Iran war is
seen as a failure,
it seems to me
that the action in the party
is not
Rhonda Santis
running against the
Rhonda Santis.
I'm not saying what,
I'm not saying what the party
elites think.
I'm just saying,
the action is
who becomes the voice
of, you know,
a kind of this failed
narrative.
You're saying one,
it could be Vance
himself.
Somebody who's
actually willing, right.
Like, I mean, that's what
Sanders in 2016 is.
Inplicitly critical
of the incumbent
democratic president.
Right.
But it seems to me
incredibly difficult
for Vance to do it.
Yeah, I agree.
So then its talker
is there anyone else?
Well, yes, I think I think
it depends how many of them
wronged.
I think there's clearly
four potential anti-
interventionist critics
of Vance who could run.
It is Karlsen.
It is Bannon.
It is Marjory Telegram.
It is Thomas Massey.
it is Thomas Massey. Those were the four I would I would I flag. I struggled to imagine any of those
four winning a one-on-one race, but I but it may be against you. Against Vance. Against Vance.
So imagine it's not going to be a one-on-ones race. I mean I think I think is very clear
that Vance will probably have at least one competitor within his own administration. So if it's not
Rubio, Hexeth, Kristi Nome, I think I've been talked to. Sorry. I'm not talking seriously.
No. Well, let's do Lewandowski's managed one success. All right. Then last last question.
Is this though? If the war goes if the war goes badly, does any of this conversation matter? Or is
it just a poison chalice and no one should want to be a Republican nominee? That's why Rubio's
standards are so perverse. I think he is the most untrustworthy politically in the administration.
And because you think he benefits. I think he's been around failure. I think he benefits from an
wrong treatment. Okay. I'm skeptical that he thinks that way, but I think we've argued enough,
Kurt Mills. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you.
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