Since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, populist currents have swept across the American Right. The failed nation-building enterprises launched by the Bush administration and continued by the succeeding Obama administration sowed the seeds for a non-interventionist reaction on the Right. Throughout modern American political history there has existed a significant anti-interventionist bloc within the Right. From the Old Right to the presidential campaigns of former Congressman Ron Paul, non-interventionism has been able to assert itself in the political arena throughout multiple times in American history. The consolidation of the national security state at the start of the Cold War and the rise of neoconservatives in the twilight years of the Cold War witnessed the Republican Party go from a relatively restrained party on foreign affairs to a thoroughly interventionist party. Despite interventionist outlooks dominating the GOP, Republican leaders still have not been able to fully suppress anti-war sentiments within the party. Since the end of the Cold War, various anti-interventionist movements tried to upend the interventionist faction that dominated the Republican Party. Pat Buchanan’s presidential runs in the 1990s were the first signs of anti-interventionist sentiments being alive and well among America’s right-leaning electorate. Though any prospect of foreign …read more
Source:: Ron Paul Institute
