• U.S. Foreign Policy
• United States
• Russia
• Iran
• Ukraine

July 21, 2025, 11:07 AM View Comments ()

Recent shifts in U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign and national security policy herald a more vigorous use of Washington’s military power and deeper engagement in the world. From the missile attacks on Yemen’s Houthis and the bombing of Iran’s nuclear production facilities to successful U.S. pressure on European NATO allies to prepare for the Russian military threat and this week’s decision to provide Kyiv with additional weapons—all this and more signal Trump’s increasing willingness to shape the global arena.

This is a far cry from the inward-looking tone of Trump’s presidential campaign, during which foreign affairs took a back seat to domestic issues such as inflation and immigration. Indeed, Trump’s focus before taking office was on criticizing what he characterized as a trigger-happy, out-of-touch foreign-policy establishment that had needlessly launched costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead of these failed policies, Trump and his team offered a vision of peace through strength secured by a defense buildup that would deter enemies and preclude U.S. engagement in overseas conflicts. Trump emphasized his skills as a tough negotiator and promised to quickly resolve the wars raging in Europe and the Middle East.

To underscore this shift away from direct U.S. engagement in world affairs, many of Trump’s key appointments were advocates of an insular, “America First” foreign policy. These included Vice President J.D. Vance, social media mogul Elon Musk, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and chief technology advisor David Sacks. To be sure, these appointments were offset by the presence of important voices from the more traditional Reaganite wing of the Republican Party, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, as well as advocates of a U.S. military buildup in Asia, such as Elbridge Colby, the Defense Department’s undersecretary for policy.

By focusing on peacemaking—primarily through his so-called “peace through strength” strategy—Trump was able to split the difference between his party’s isolationist and activist currents. However, in the aftermath of U.S. assertiveness in Yemen, Iran, and now Ukraine, he has moved conspicuously toward a more muscular foreign-policy posture. Predictably, this has set off a debate among major Trump supporters in the news media and on social media, with Trump stalwarts such as Sean Hannity, Ben Shapiro, and Mark Levin defending his actions against criticism from figures such as Tucker Carlson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Steve Bannon.

This debate raises a crucial question: What does Trump’s electoral base think of his shift toward deeper international engagement, including military intervention in the Middle East? Is the Make America Great Again (MAGA) base really as isolationist as conventional wisdom would have it? Recent polling suggests that the surprising but clear answer is “no.”

A June 2025 poll by the Reagan Institute showed that 83 percent of Americans surveyed believed that the United States should “stand up for human rights and democracy whenever possible.” This included 87 percent of Democrat respondents and 81 percent of Republicans. Interestingly, the poll showed higher support for a morally driven foreign policy among MAGA voters than other Republicans. (The Reagan Institute did not define how it categorized respondents as MAGA Republicans.)

More significantly, a larger proportion of MAGA Republicans (73 percent) than Democrats (65 percent) supported the view that the United States should “lead on the international stage.” Indeed, the overall mood of Americans tilts toward foreign-policy activism. Overall support for engagement was the highest registered by the Reagan Institute in six years of polling, with just 23 percent of those surveyed stating that the country should be less engaged. Just as significantly, the poll found that MAGA Republicans were nearly unanimous (96 percent) in their belief that a strong U.S. military is a bulwark of peace and prosperity.

In the aftermath of Trump’s attack on Iran, Republican support for Trump’s actions stood at 82 percent according to polling from the Tyson Group, well over double that of Democrats. Even allowing for reflexive partisan support, it is highly unlikely that support for military intervention in a conflict not directly threatening the homeland would be as high if the Republican base had embraced isolationism.

Indeed, all this the data strongly suggests not only that Trump’s base is far removed from isolationism today, but also that it was never truly isolationist to begin with. Rather, MAGA skepticism about global engagement was the consequence of suspicion of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment—and what many MAGA adherents call the “deep state.”

Just like most Americans, MAGA votes are deeply critical of U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, which came at a massive cost of blood and treasure. Middle-class and lower-middle-class Americans, a major Trump electoral base, perceive that they and their children paid a high price for the miscalculations and misadventures of the elites. This contributed to lingering distrust of what, in MAGA voters’ eyes, was an out-of-touch establishment willing to risk American lives in pursuit of a “globalist” agenda or profits for the military industrial complex.

Such conspiratorial beliefs were fodder for many Trump-adjacent media personalities and for MAGA isolationists such as Carlson, Gabbard, and Charlie Kirk. Other Trump-adjacent critics of U.S. interventions—such as State Department policy planning chief Michael Anton—made the broader case that U.S power in the world is greatly diminished and that the country’s policy must adjust to this reality by pulling back. Yet this neorealist mantra of a weakened United States (which itself recalls the thinking behind U.S. retrenchment during the Nixon administration) stands at odds with the MAGA’s belief in U.S. greatness.

Fairly or not, the Trump administration’s recent evisceration of the U.S. Agency for International Development, elimination of most foreign aid, cutback of the national security apparatus, leadership replacements in the U.S, military, and cuts in State Department staffing are seen by Trump voters as blows against what they view as an out-of-touch, elitist policy establishment dominated by liberal proponents of globalism and wokeness. Paradoxically, this weakening of U.S. institutions and soft power has solidified MAGA support for an activist foreign policy that is now seen as firmly in the hands of trusted leaders.

What, then, do these developments mean for the key challenges that the United States faces around the world? Generally, polling data shows that on a number of the key regions and global challenges that the U.S. faces, there is little evidence of isolationist sentiments among Republican voters and the Trump MAGA base.

On issues related to the Middle East, Trump’s recent actions have won significant approval from his electoral base. Indeed, according to the Tyson Group polling, those who voted for Trump in 2024 were substantially more supportive of Israel than Democrats or independents, partly reflecting the country’s strong support among evangelicals.

MAGA voters’ views of Ukraine are more complicated. Although they admire the Ukrainian people, they remain broadly opposed to carrying the financial burden for the war. A February 2025 poll of Republican primary voters, conducted by 1892 Polling, showed that 60 percent of those surveyed supported some military aid to Ukraine, and nearly three-quarters saw Russia as the aggressor. While polling taken in the immediate aftermath of the Oval Office blow-up between Trump, Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky showed Trump supporters souring on the Ukrainian cause, that effect was temporary; a May Harris poll showed that 59 percent of Republicans still supported aid to Kyiv. Moreover, Republican support for Ukraine will now likely rise, given Trump’s successful efforts to press Europe to take on the burden of financing Ukraine in its existential war with Russia, including by paying for U.S. weapons.

Republican voters also have a strong awareness of the growing military threat posed by Beijing. By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, they support military aid to Taiwan in the event of Chinese aggression.

Thus, there is broad-based MAGA and Republican voter support for both an engaged, tough-minded U.S. foreign policy in general as well as the Trump administration’s specific foreign and national security priorities. Focusing on loud right-wing critics of Trump’s recent foreign-policy decisions, such as Bannon, Carlson, and Greene, might make for exciting media coverage. But the reality is that Trump not only enjoys the confidence of his base on his conduct relating to foreign policy, but also has a MAGA constituency that is been deeply committed to a powerful and engaged United States.

The conventional wisdom has it wrong: The MAGA movement has never been isolationist. Trump has its support to continue pursuing a more activist foreign policy, should he so choose.