Trump's "America First" legacy is a grim, militaristic one

The most toxic and urgently dangerous legacy that the Trump's very Republican Administration is leaving us is his militarism.

Some people who are (rightly or wrongly) considered part of the left will point to elements of Trump's foreign policy as evidence of an isolationist dovish-ness as a way to warn about the establishment foreign policy assumptions that we can reasonably expect to be extremely influential in the Biden-Harris Administration.

As a polemical device, this is understandable. I'm not promising never to use it myself.

But substantively, I've been critical for, well, as long as I can remember of rightwing isolationism, especially the brand of it associated with the America First tradition. Some people who associated themselves with the pre-Second World War America First movement were acting from a genuinely peace-oriented from pacifist or labor-left motives. An interesting example of a boo expressing such a view us Theodore Dreiser's 1941 book, America Is Worth Saving. Dreiser was attracted to the Communist Party's views, and at that time of the Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact, Soviet diplomacy was calling the British and German war against Germany an imperialist war and took a very anti-British position. A reminder of the complications peace politics can encounter. (A contemporary review in the Communist Party's literary magazine of Dreiser's book gives a flavor of it, Dreiser's J'Accuse)

But rightwing "isolationism" from Charles Lindbergh to Barry Goldwater to Pat Buchanan to Donald Trump has always been based on a hardcore nationalist, militaristic worldview. Woody Guthrie got the gist of it in this song, America First (Woody Guthrie):

"They say America First, but they mean America Next."

Michael Klare, We won’t miss Trump’s two-faced military policy Responsible Statecraft 12/07/2020

Michael Klare gives a good overview of Trump's military orientation in We won’t miss Trump’s two-faced military policy Responsible Statecraft 12/07/2020:

The Pentagon’s annual spending authority climbed every year between 2016 and 2020, rising from $580 billion at the start of his administration to $713 at the end, with much of that increment directed to the procurement of advanced weaponry. Additional billions were incorporated into the Department of Energy budget for the acquisition of new nuclear weapons and the full-scale “modernization” of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

Far more important than that increase in arms spending, however, was the shift in strategy that went with it. The military posture President Trump inherited from the Obama administration was focused on fighting the Global War on Terror (GWOT), a grueling, never-ending struggle to identify, track, and destroy anti-Western zealots in far-flung areas of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The posture he’s bequeathing to Joe Biden is almost entirely focused on defeating China and Russia in future “high-end” conflicts waged directly against those two countries — fighting that would undoubtedly involve high-tech conventional weapons on a staggering scale and could easily trigger nuclear war. [my emphasis]

There was plenty for money for military contractors of various kinds to be made in the GWOT. But a shift to a massive new armament program to confront China and Russia in conventional and nuclear warfare brings far more. Trump had the populist instinct to talk about getting out of endless wars. But his program is based on hardcore militarism.

But this was barely an issue at all in the Presidential election. And even that probably overstates the role it played. Klare writes:

Supporters of the new administration and even members of Biden’s immediate circle (though not his actual appointees to national security posts) have advanced some stirring ideas about transforming American military policy, including reducing the role military force plays in America’s foreign relations and redeploying some military funds to other purposes like fighting Covid-19. Such ideas are to be welcomed, but President Biden’s top priority in the military area should be to focus on the true Trump military legacy — the one that has set us on a war course in relation to China and Russia — and do everything in his power to steer us in a safer, more prudent direction. Otherwise, the phrase “forever war” could gain a new, far grimmer meaning. [my emphasis]

His article originally appeared at TomDispatch 12/06/2020, with an introductory comment by Tom Engelhardt that includes, "As it turns out, America’s forever wars (still ongoing, though perhaps finally winding down) may be succeeded by wars that none of us will ever forget."