OPINION:
World events are often interpreted through the lens of the two dominant political parties: Republicans vs. Democrats. But the emergence of two dissenting voices on opposite sides of the political aisle — former President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — spotlight how “America First” policies defy the current political establishment, which continually puts Americans last.
On nearly every issue, partisanship identifies leaders of either of the two political parties. On many national security issues, the partisan dividing line has been blurred as the two political parties have formed a consensus around U.S. foreign policy.
Under the George W. Bush administration, for example, the U.S. used direct military intervention to pursue vague abstracts of fighting the global war on terrorism, spreading democracy, and conducting nation-building exercises.
On the other hand, the Obama administration favored American interventionism through covert action, including regime change, for the same stated objectives.
Therefore, the tactics from the Republican and Democratic administrations may have been different, but the results were inevitably the same: America’s entanglement in endless conflicts abroad.
America First policies during the Trump administration offered a new paradigm to this uniparty establishment. This America First doctrine rejected the notion that the U.S. should be spreading an empire abroad while its own nation was deteriorating from within.
Therefore, it prioritized domestic affairs such as ensuring safe communities, a strong economy, and secure borders before engaging outwardly. It was also an approach that fundamentally rejected the tenets of globalism and embraced the supremacy of nation-state sovereignty.
Upon these same principles, Mr. Kennedy has broken from the current political establishment to raise concerns over America’s current approach to engagement abroad. In doing so, he has elevated America First policies.
First, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy have recognized that the U.S. national security apparatus is often given incentives to commence and prolong wars rather than prevent or end wars. American leadership is therefore required to keep the U.S. out of wars and deliver peace through strength.
Mr. Trump demonstrated this leadership by becoming the first U.S. president in over 20 years to not engage the U.S. in a new war. This feat was accomplished by using the military as a means of deterrence, not a steppingstone for further engagement abroad.
Mr. Kennedy has similarly denounced the uniparty consensus surrounding waging unnecessary wars by citing the policies of President John F. Kennedy, his uncle, who was in many ways an early implementor of America First policies.
Kennedy entered office following President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous farewell address in which he warned of the “unwarranted influence” the military-industrial complex had over U.S. policy.
It was this very warning Kennedy came to know personally when his advisers proposed Operation Northwoods, a Defense Department plan to stage false flag attacks against U.S. citizens and blame these attacks on the Cuban government in order to “provide justification for U.S. military intervention in Cuba.”
Kennedy, therefore, recognized that many of his military and intelligence advisers were more set on generating conflict abroad and delivering “an endless pipeline of wars” than protecting Americans and their interests.
Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have also each noted the detrimental consequences of American strategic overreach.
In a recent interview, Mr. Kennedy asserted that “America cannot be an empire abroad and continue to be a democracy at home” — meaning the U.S. cannot preserve domestic prosperity and national strength and protect constitutional rights at home when it is focused on being the world’s police force and developing an international hegemonic empire.
This same doctrine of preventing strategic overreach formed the basis of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, which was built on the idea that any engagement abroad must achieve “a better outcome” for the American people and that the U.S. cannot be the leader of the free world when it fails successfully manage its own affairs first.
Advancing policies that prioritize the interests of the American people, not those of bureaucratic institutions that often have globalist-oriented goals, requires departing from and challenging the political establishment and conventional wisdom of Washington.
Mr. Kennedy, a Democrat, has a track record of this. He has held pharmaceutical companies accountable for their corrupt practices.
He has been an outspoken critic of the loss of constitutional rights that ensued with COVID-19 policies, stating that “the framers of the Constitution did not put a pandemic exception in the Constitution.”
He has voiced concerns with the totalitarian policies developing in the United States with the rise of digitally controlled assets, such as digital currency and identification systems.
Furthermore, Mr. Kennedy has gone against the Democratic Party platform in his recent visit to the U.S.-Mexico border to document the humanitarian crisis that has ensued as a result of the Biden administration’s policies and the homelessness crisis in our inner cities.
These are, at the core, America First policies.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy’s shared views on preventing endless wars and preserving constitutional rights amid encroaching bureaucratic institutions show that the Republican-Democratic framework is no longer the metric by which we can identify strong, constitutionally governing leadership.
It is only America First vs. America Last.
• Gloria McDonald, a graduate of Liberty University with a degree in international relations, is pursuing her master’s degree in global security at Johns Hopkins University, and has previous work experience with the State Department.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.