Two monumental events have shaken the U.S. foreign policy establishment since the inauguration of President Donald Trump. They took place at roughly the same time, but few have recognized their connection.
The first was the widespread exposure of USAID as the “world’s hipster vanguard of globalist, cultural Marxist revolution,” in the words of J. Michael Waller. When it wasn’t outright funding jihadist terrorism, USAID redirected billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to left-wing organizers promoting LGBTQ, anti-racism, climate change, and every other imaginable progressive policy around the globe.
While “charity” CEOs living in taxpayer-funded luxury wailed about how cuts would cost lives, the debate among the online Right was about burning USAID to the ground and salting the earth, or perhaps repurposing some form of foreign aid to support an America First foreign policy agenda.
The other earthshaking event was Vice President JD Vance’s transformational speech before the Munich Security Conference. Vance warned that our European allies, who cynically appeal to the shared principles that united America and Western Europe during the Cold War, have increasingly shunned the consent of the governed in favor of a heavy-handed bureaucratic censorship regime that resembles our former Soviet enemies.
The speech rocked Europe and opened a debate on the depth of America’s security commitment. What is the proper role of the U.S. in providing security in Europe? Is it based on geopolitical necessity or shared principles? What kind of Europe would actually be worth defending? Does MAGA merely desire a bigger commitment to NATO funding by European allies? Or a desire to see the U.S. leave Europe to its own devices? Is America First compatible with European nations making their own nations “great again,” thereby becoming allies genuinely worth having?
One can forgive the frustration of the Munich Security Conference crowd in hearing the words of Vice President Vance. For decades now, European elites have been the very best of allies—not for America as a whole but for our ruling class. On all the issues Vance mentioned, whether unchecked migration, censorship, or repression of Christian religious sentiments, European elites are in lockstep with America’s ruling class, and in many cases operate at its insistence.
Foreign Enemies, Domestic Enemies
Burgeoning political strife between Americans at home has come to drive U.S. foreign policy.
The late, great Angelo Codevilla gave us the term “cold civil war” to describe the tense and increasingly uncivil divisions between our ruling class and country class. The ruling class nearly universally holds progressive views and demands progressive policies both here and abroad. Americans of the country class, meanwhile, make up the majority of those who reject the direction of the elites, and who are responsible for electing Donald Trump—twice.
As Codevilla warned,
In revolutionary times or times of profound discord, this approach is especially important: minimize interference in others’ affairs so as to minimize occasions for others’ interference in ours and maintain such military capacity as would discourage anyone from taking advantage of our temporary distraction.
This is not advice the ruling class will accept.
It’s too much to say Europeans were dragged kicking and screaming behind American progressive leadership. They have their own populist revolts they are anxious to put down, after all. But those revolts are being egged on by America’s ruling class, as evidenced by complaints among French elites of the disastrous impact of “le Wokisme.”
Worse still, some of our European allies have intervened directly in our cold civil war. British intelligence played along with the U.S. Intelligence Community’s framing of President Trump (known as “Russiagate”) even though British spies privately suspected the collusion effort was the work of incompetents.
From a strictly strategic assessment, if a foreign nation chooses to intervene in America’s cold civil war, it makes sense to do so on behalf of the ruling class. First, because at least in 2016, their victory seemed highly probable against what seemed to be Trump’s ill-fated presidential run. Secondly, because after 2020 the American ruling class demonstrated it was fully prepared to punish foreign nations they perceived to side with their domestic opponents in the country class.
Much of the driving force of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy from 2020 onward sought to undermine any foreign nation that treated Donald Trump as if he was really president for four years, or warmly greeted his administration in any way. The Netanyahu government in Israel, which played a crucial role in delivering President Trump his signature foreign policy accomplishment in the Abraham Accords, was targeted to be overthrown in a color revolution. The internal Israeli debate over judicial reform was, after all, funded in part through USAID. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates likewise came in for special hostility, and for the same reason.
Hungary and Brazil were painted with bullseyes as well. President Biden openly called Hungarian President Victor Orban a “dictator.” Democrats went so far as to seek the expulsion of Jair Bolsonaro from the United States after supporters of the former Brazilian president riotously stormed the Brazilian capitol to protest what they viewed as unfair election results (a scenario that might provoke a sense of déjà vu for those prone to notice such things).
My friend Dave Reaboi likes to note that “Democrats don’t have foreign enemies; they have countries that remind them of domestic enemies,” to describe how the Left has increasingly engaged in foreign policy through the lens of America’s cold civil war. Countries perceived as aiding them against the country class or Trump are allies. Those who do not aid them or are perceived as pro-Trump and pro-populist are enemies.
It was only a matter of time before America’s country class noticed and responded in kind. This is why they frequently cite Ukrainian attempts to intervene in the elections of 2016 and 2024—along with their general perception that Ukraine serves as the offshore slush fund of America’s ruling class—to justify their animosity toward funding Ukraine rather than any geopolitical calculation.
As foreign policy writer Zineb Riboua noted prior to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous Oval Office appearance,
Zelensky has one card to play, and it’s not some vague appeal to Western values and unity—it’s choosing a side. He needs to confess to the American public what really happened. No more diplomatic hedging, no more pretending everything was fine. He must position himself as a leader who was cornered by Biden’s empty promises, not the so-called ‘Democratic asset’ that Russian propaganda paints him as. It’s a tough situation, but he must acknowledge the perception damage Ukraine has suffered.
Zelensky rejected this very wise advice and was led down the primrose path yet again by Democrats and their European allies. They promised that their applause was more important than securing a deal with the sitting President of the United States.
So Zelensky launched into a hectoring rant about Putin’s geopolitical designs and his risk to Europe. He even warned that America’s oceans would not protect her in the conflicts to come. Maybe that’s true. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Because for Americans of both classes the only operating guidance in foreign affairs is “He who is not with me is against me.”
Allies for the Country Class
It would seem that we are too late to heed Codevilla’s wise counsel: that we ought to minimize as best we can foreign interventions in the midst of America’s inner political turmoil.
Which brings us back to USAID. It was not wholly about buying allies for American geopolitical maneuvers against U.S. adversaries like China and Russia, as some of the program’s few remaining proponents on the Right insist. Indeed, evidence suggests the U.S. government’s woke demands hurt traditional American foreign policy, as countries turned to Chinese or Russian backers who were less likely to hector and meddle.
But if USAID wasn’t about geopolitics, neither was it merely just a global Tammany Hall of corruption and money laundering, as many denizens of the digital Right wish to assert.
USAID was about buying allies—not for America, but for America’s ruling class. Its programs were aimed at creating cadres of loyal progressive members, both at home and abroad. The American ruling class invested in building up foreign alliances to be used against opponents of their cause, both foreign and domestic.
While President Trump may or may not succeed in temporarily pausing that effort, it is one that ultimately will continue to advance, fed by foreign governments and progressive foundations, and will be restarted in earnest as soon as the Democrats retake the presidency.
For the time the Trump Administration is in office, the country class must find allies for itself abroad as their domestic opponents have done. Vance’s performance in Munich suggests it can. While ostensibly aimed at European elites, warning them of the dangers of their current course, the vice president’s speech should also be understood as a clarion call to prospective allies within those countries, providing them a standard around which to rally.
For years the Left has used NGOs as a recruiting ground for future foreign policy experts, diplomats, and administrators to staff the government, and especially the foreign policy and national security bureaucracy. MAGA ought to do likewise. The Trump Administration should use a portion of U.S. foreign aid to promote agreement on its own principles, such as sovereignty, patriotism, reversing mass migration, respect for national customs and traditions, and opposition to censorship. Doing so would have benefits—both in terms of the administration winning allies abroad and helping train and equip its supporters.
The more die-hard libertarian-minded of the Trump coalition may say that U.S. dollars should remain at home no matter what. One can certainly argue that helping minority Afrikaners defend private property rights is no more worthy a cause than Colombian transgender opera. But realistically, whether it’s this administration or some future administration, the U.S. government will continue to provide foreign aid abroad at some level. As much as geopolitical strategists might wish otherwise, Americans in the short term will continue to view foreign affairs through the lens of domestic political warfare.
America’s cold civil war has become, and will remain, a global conflict. Not by our choice but because the ruling class deliberately made the decision to widen the political battlefield to the entire globe. The only question is whose allies will be helped and whose enemies will be punished.
MAGA should take the opportunity to forge for itself allies abroad who share its vision of the world.