Both of these pieces were published recently by The American Conservative. Which piece do you think is a more realistic take on Trump”s choices for his national security team and what he might do with respect to the Ukraine war? Let me know in the comments. – Natylie

Will Trump Channel Nixon in Ukraine?

By James Carden, The American Conservative, 12/5/24

The similarities between this most recent presidential election and that of 1968 are several. Like Joseph R. Biden, Lyndon B. Johnson was an increasingly polarizing and unpopular wartime president who declined to run for re-election. Their respective vice presidents were each hobbled by their records and paid the price at the polls in November. The Republican candidates in both ’68 and ’24 were, each in their own ways, the authors of their own political resurrections. And during the campaign, both Richard M. Nixon and Donald J. Trump claimed to possess plans to end the increasingly unpopular wars of their predecessors.

Upon winning the New Hampshire primary in March 1968, Nixon promised “to end the war and win the peace in the Pacific.” Still more, in a series of private meetings with editors and reporters, Nixon claimed that once he was in office he would convene a summit with Soviet leaders to get their assistance to help end the war. As the Christian Science Monitor’s longtime Washington bureau chief, Godfrey Sperling, recalled,

it was from these “off the record” briefings that a story began to circulate among those who wanted the U.S. out of the war: that Nixon had a “secret plan” to bring the boys home. He doubtless was able to win some dove votes from those who felt Humphrey had been too closely tied to President Johnson’s acceleration of the war.

Of course, Nixon had no such plan. Instead, he increased the intensity of bombing over North Vietnam and expanded the war to Cambodia. 

As with Nixon, Trump’s campaign pledge to end the Ukraine conflict “in 24 hours” probably attracted dovish voters. And there are several indications he may follow in the footsteps of Nixon by escalating the war in an attempt to end it.

Trump’s appointment of the retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as his Ukraine envoy is one such indication. Kellogg, a longtime Trump adviser and the co-chair of America First Policy Institute’s (AFPI) Center for American Security, seems to see the war in Ukraine through the same lens the Biden administration views it. Writing in the once-respected National Interest in October, Kellogg claimed, “Russia has invaded Ukraine for a second time with the goal of ending its sovereign existence.” (The goal was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, but never mind.) And Kellogg’s professed vision of a post-war settlement seems more in sync with the demands of the maximalists in Kiev than with anything remotely achievable at this point in the conflict. Writing, again, in the National Interest, Kellogg proposed that

a ceasefire along the current lines and subsequent negotiations would preserve a sovereign, democratic Ukraine anchored in the West and capable of defending itself. Kyiv would maintain its internationally-recognized claims to sovereignty over all of Ukraine. A halt to hostilities would also facilitate the provision of reliable security guarantees, including possible NATO and EU membership, to deter Russia from resuming the conflict.

If he hasn’t yet, Kellogg ought to be informed that Ukraine’s membership in NATO was the war’s casus belli, and as such, holding out any possibility of Ukrainian’s membership in the future will be a non-starter for Moscow. 

In an April 2024 research report for AFPI, Kellogg and his colleague Fred Fleitz wrote that in order to end the war, Trump “would continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement.”

In addition to calling for (yet another) bilateral defense agreement with Ukraine, Kellogg and Fleitz also called for “placing levies on Russian energy sales to pay for Ukrainian reconstruction.” 

Do such proposals seem more likely or less likely to draw Putin to the negotiating table?

That Kellogg was appointed to such a sensitive position in the first place should worry those who supported Trump on the assumption that he would bring much needed change to the conduct of US foreign policy. Reasonable people might ask: Where are men of experience and imagination, like the retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor, senior fellow at The American Conservative? Unlike Macgregor, Kellogg knows nothing about Russia or its interests, let alone its historic sensitivity to Ukraine’s strategic importance. Macgregor has decades of scholarship invested in Russo-German relations and Moscow’s role in Europe and Asia. But Macgregor is nowhere to be found among the incoming team. Perhaps Howard Luttnick and Linda MacMahon were too busy campaigning for cabinet appointments to do what they should have been doing: selecting the most competent men and women for the most sensitive positions.

Alas, we will have to leave for another time the question of why the president-elect has staffed his national security team with a veritable roster of Fox News personalities and a recent immigrant with suspected ties to foreign intelligence such as Sebastian Gorka. The British-Hungarian Gorka has claimed that Trump will “force” Putin to the negotiating table by threatening a massive increase in military aid to Ukraine. Faux-machismo aside, there is little to indicate that—even if Trump pursues such a plan—there is much left to provide. Indeed, there is little evidence Putin is likely to be swayed by inducements from Washington. 

With regard to Ukraine, the playbook of the bipartisan Washington blob still rules. And while it has only been a month since the election, the president-elect has provided few signs that he plans on deviating from the script left by Joe Biden and Jake Sullivan.

James W. Carden is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and a former adviser to the U.S. State Department.

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The Hidden Logic of Trump’s National Security Picks

By Lyle Goldstein, The American Conservative, 12/6/24

As President-elect Donald Trump announces his selections for cabinet posts, there is a definite pattern of choosing figures from outside the political mainstream. That is perhaps understandable for a candidate that had many cabinet-level appointments turn abruptly against him in his first term. Some of the selections even seem to constitute brazen challenges to the nation’s governing elite and their institutions. To be sure, these unconventional choices also reflect Trump’s new power deriving from his significant electoral victory—taking all seven battleground states, the popular vote, and both chambers of Congress.

In the national security realm, Trump has promised the American people “peace through strength” and found widespread support for this formula, which may hark back to the golden era of Ronald Reagan. And that’s one consistent theme among all of his foreign policy choices, who come from a variety of backgrounds.

Several of the picks could be considered classic conservative “hawks” in that they have continuously advocated for military escalation against rivals. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), nominated to the key positions of secretary of state and national security advisor respectively, certainly fit in this category. Nonetheless, we can already see examples of Trump’s unique approach influencing his top advisors. Thus, Waltz actually decried President Joe Biden’s recent decision to allow Ukraine to fire U.S.-made missiles directly into Russian territory: “This is another step up the escalation ladder, and no one knows where this is going.”

Two other picks in the national security domain, Peter Hegseth for secretary of defense and Tulsi Gabbard for the director of national intelligence, correspond more closely with Trump’s vision for American foreign policy. Notably, they are both from a National Guard background, which may partially explain their shared strong inclination against U.S. military interventions abroad. Hegseth, for instance, endorsed a law in New Hampshire that would prohibit sending National Guard troops into conflicts overseas without the constitutionally mandated declaration of war from Congress. Hegseth, a veteran-turned–Fox News defense analyst, was one of the most unusual of Trump’s selections; now his nomination unfortunately seems to be in significant trouble due to allegations of malfeasance.

Like Hegseth, Gabbard also served with distinction in America’s wars in the Middle East and came away disturbed by what she saw there. During her service in Iraq, Gabbard witnessed first-hand the devastation and enormous costs of that war, including to her fellow American soldiers. As an Iraq War veteran, Gabbard may well be particularly suited to serve as director of national intelligence, coordinating America’s myriad, sprawling intelligence agencies. She is well aware that intelligence has too often skewed assessments—including with respect to nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction—with devastating results. The paradigmatic case for the misuse of intelligence is the Iraq War, but intelligence failure has also haunted the U.S. government more recently—for example, when overly optimistic estimates of “progress” in Afghanistan kept the U.S. stuck in that quagmire far longer than was necessary for U.S. national security.

The sad reality is that nuclear weapons are once again emerging as a salient issue for American defense policy, and the next director of national intelligence will need to bring focus on this crucial domain of national security. Gabbard chose to make the nuclear threat a centerpiece of her presidential campaign back in 2020. Today, her stark warnings seem all too prescient, especially as the Ukraine–Russia War seems to be expanding in scope, with Ukraine losing ground to the country which hosts the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. Biden himself admitted in October 2022 that major U.S.–Russia tensions mean that “we have a direct threat of the use of the nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going… We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since … the Cuban missile crisis.” Gabbard’s long focus on nuclear strategy, crisis stability, and arms control will be an asset in a world where Russia has lowered the threshold for nuclear use, China and North Korea are rapidly expanding their nuclear arsenals, and Iran could suddenly test a nuclear weapon.

While it may not be clear at first glance what unites all of President-elect Trump’s national security picks, his national security team is well-positioned to implement, rather than thwart, his agenda—and this “team of rivals” approach will ensure that a spectrum of views will be represented before the commander-in-chief makes the ultimate decisions about the most consequential issues. Instead of a unanimous “blob” adhering to the status quo or a coterie of “yes men,” Trump will surround himself with competing and alternative views. This is essential, since foreign policy is where the president’s authority and power are greatest.

There are reasons for hawks and realists and so-called “Asia firsters” to be encouraged by the emerging Trump team—people from different experiences and with varying perspectives. Having dissenting opinions within the president’s official circle is vital for effective national leadership. Having objective intelligence assessments, free from institutional biases or erroneous threat inflation and informed by multifarious perspectives, will be key to helping Trump make the right decisions on the crucial matters of war and peace.

Whether Trump is able to replicate his first term, during which he avoided starting a new war, only time will tell. But there is a case to be made that disrupting the status quo could form a necessary, but not sufficient, first step toward mending our broken foreign policy and putting the American people and American interests first.