If President Donald Trump accomplished anything during his four years in office, it is that he broke the pre-existing U.S. foreign policy consensus, upending previously held beliefs regarding China, Arab-Israeli relations, European dependence on Russian energy, and more. While many may decry and fight over the particular details of his administration’s policies and changes, no one disputes that his term in office brought marked change to America’s foreign policy.

Yet despite Trump’s legacy and the new opportunities that he created for change in America’s foreign policy, the Republican Party is now entering the U.S. presidential primary season with a significant problem on its hands: a weak foreign policy agenda.

This has led to some confused head-scratching. The past few years have seen much energetic discussion on the future of conservative and Republican foreign policy, yet relatively little in terms of concrete proposals. The most recent example of such is an essay in Foreign Affairs written by Dan Caldwell, the new(ish) vice president at the Center for Renewing America. In his essay, Caldwell persuasively lays out the case for why Republicans should adopt a more restrained foreign policy. He correctly notes the hard “economic, military, and political limitations” that the United States faces and suggests quite reasonably that policymakers should make necessary adjustments, with a few broad recommendations worth considering.

Yet these types of articles, and the discussion they encourage, miss the point. The problem Republicans face is not in determining what set of principles or values should guide U.S. foreign policy: that issue has more or less been intellectually settled in most Republican circles in favor of restraint. Even foreign policy elites who disagree must operate in an environment where public opinion is very much in favor of restraint-oriented views; running for higher office without endorsing such positions is becoming increasingly difficult. Moreover, it is likely that restraint-oriented policies will only become more widely accepted as policymakers come to grips with the reality that the country does confront real limitations amidst a changing global geopolitical context.

Rather, the real problem is that Republicans are unable to formulate, advocate, and implement specific policies due to political and ideological constraints.

American Foreign Policy has Factions…

Understanding Republicans’ current inability requires diving into unfolding factional politics within both the Republican Party and the broader U.S. foreign policy establishment. Majda Ruge and Jeremy Shapiro, experts at the European Council on Foreign Relations, proposed a suitable framework last year that works rather well, describing three “tribes” that have emerged within conservative foreign policy. I will borrow some, but not all, of their terminology—starting by noting these groups are more factions than tribes, as they are less cohesive in their loyalties and cohesion than the word “tribe” would indicate.

In any case, there are three primary factions in conservative U.S. foreign policy: the Primacists, the Pragmatists, and the Restrainers.

Primacists, as their name implies, believe in the primacy of U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic leadership, and believe that such should be maintained worldwide. They reject—or at least, contest—the idea that the United States lacks the necessary resources for maintaining this foreign policy stance, and often advocate for a strong engagement abroad in all forms.

Restrainers, by contrast, hold the opposite view: they believe in the exercise of restraint, especially military, in the conduct of foreign affairs, and that Americans are better served focusing on domestic priorities. Restrainers believe America should lead by example, rather than through direct leadership, and that, given limited resources and capabilities, strong foreign engagement should be reserved only for when the most important of national interests are at stake—a categorization which, they contend, is often abused by primacists, who tend to classify everything as a significant national interest.

Between these are the Pragmatists. Shapiro and Ruge use the term “Prioritisers” instead, though I disagree with its usage, on the basis that the latter implies agreement with Primacists on American leadership but disagreement over its focus. Pragmatists are not necessarily wedded to that notion of U.S. primacy—they agree it holds significant advantages and can be a force for “good,” but are cognizant of its material and reputational costs. Like Restrainers, Pragmatists note that U.S. resources—and thus U.S. foreign policy options—are limited, but do not take the view that such should preclude the United States from being actively engaged abroad. They believe that there is a strict hierarchy of U.S. national interests and that each issue should get the attention and resources it warrants.

…and Sub-Factions

What Ruge and Shapiro’s framework misses, however, is that within these factions are various competing sub-factions, each with their own agenda and set of beliefs. They both cooperate and compete both with sub-factions and without their respective factions for political capital, resources, and policy-setting power. It is here that the Republican Party’s problem starts to appear.

I would like to note that the following list of sub-factions is neither exhaustive nor authoritative—I have no doubt that more could be conceived and described, and that many will debate over various aspects of my categorization. While I welcome such debate, I would just like to note that at present my intention is simply to help illustrate to readers the dynamics at play within U.S. foreign policy.

For example, within the Primacist camp there are neoconservatives, neoliberals, and hegemonists. Neoconservatives believe in using military power and interventionism to spread liberal democracy and American values throughout the world. Closely tied, but not necessarily the same, are the neoliberals, who are more economically oriented and support the spread of free market capitalism and the reduction of impediments to the free flow of capital. Hegemonists, compared to neoconservatives, are more defensive in nature; they firmly believe in the benefits of U.S. primacy (both to the country and to the world at large), and perhaps even that it is a force for good, but do not take the view that defending such requires actively spreading American values through force of arms.

Restrainers are more varied. On the political Right, Paleoconservatives draw heavily from traditional conservative values and advocate for a non-interventionist foreign policy. Less partisan are the Multipolarists, who both accept and advocate the transition from an American-led unipolar international order to a multipolar one as a matter of practical necessity—and this begins with exercising restraint in foreign policy. Finally, as a small but very real (and controversial) minority are the Neo-Isolationists, who stand for avoiding international entanglements and focusing on domestic issues, while opposing involvement in foreign conflicts or alliances, including NATO.

Pragmatists, as per their nature, are perhaps the most technically oriented (broadly understood) of the lot. Because of this, intra-pragmatcist debates center on how foreign policy issues should be practically approached, rather than debating underlying principles and values. Defense Prioritizers, for example, focus on addressing the highest kind of national interests—strategic interests—from a military perspective. Less martial are the National Developmentalists: devout Hamiltonians who approach issues from an economic perspective, firmly believing that considerations about the nation’s economy and national industry should form the true basis of foreign policy decisionmaking. After all, a nation cannot fight a war if it can’t even produce the requisite hardware and ammunition, which in turn requires all sorts of supply chains and industrial capacity. Diplomatists, meanwhile, approach problems from a diplomatic perspective, and take the view that far more could be done to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives via burden-sharing and off-loading responsibilities to American allies and partners—and that the U.S. foreign policy community in general, from the diplomatic corps to the intelligence community, does a poor job understanding what is actually happening abroad.

These various groupings are not equal in terms of size, political strength, and influence. When you factor in their diverse interests and agendas, one can start to see how collaboration and competition, both within and without, become necessary. This leads to constant politicking, as each sub-faction seeks to form a coalition with like-minded groups on one issue or another. This, however, also creates the potential for failure, which is what the Republican Party may be experiencing right now.

The NatCon Revolution and its Discontents

For the past thirty-odd years, the Republican Party’s foreign policy has been dominated by primacists, particularly neoconservatives and neoliberals. Restrainers maintained a steady opposition to this state of affairs—especially paleoconservatives. Trump’s election and presidency shattered the GOP establishment’s dominance over policy, with primacists (neoconservatives and neoliberals) specifically targeted for their culpability in advocating for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, among other ruinous and expensive foreign interventions, geoeconomic and trade policies, and so on.

The political movement that Trump spawned, the National Conservatism (NatCon) movement, is playing the long game, aiming to take over the GOP and its various institutions. Already it has achieved measurable progress, helping elect new legislators and influencing sitting ones. Yet while the movement seems to be coalescing on its domestic policy prescriptions, foreign policy remains muddled. There are five reasons for this, and they all have to do with factional dynamics.

First, there is sharp disagreement between the various sub-factions over what America’s immediate foreign policy priority should be. Paleoconservatives and other culture-war-focused groupings have established a dominant position within the NatCon movement, and argue that tackling domestic cultural issues, especially the “woke” movement, should be of utmost concern. They contend that America’s orientation toward a primacist foreign policy is significantly influenced (if not wholly determined) by liberal ideology. Thus, fundamentally reorienting U.S. foreign policy toward greater restraint requires focusing on fighting the culture war at home.

Others are of a different opinion. Primacists, many pragmatists, and even some other restrainer sub-factions take the view that focusing overwhelmingly on the domestic culture war is misguided at best, and politically reckless at worst—especially given that the U.S. public is more concerned about inflation, the economy, and other material issues. Many of these sub-factions instead argue that addressing China should be America’s foremost foreign policy priority, only to be met with counter-arguments (including from within their own sub-factions) that an aggressive focus on countering China risks opening the door for neoconservatives to take over again. These voices, which include many national developmentalists, contend that the primary focus should be addressing pressing material realities—the international competition for key resources, the state of the economy, and so on—and that China should be the focus insomuch as it serves as a threat by which various policies and budgets can be justified.

Second, even without fully determining what Republicans’ foreign policy priorities should be, there is strong disagreement over how they should be addressed. Consider, for example, the intra-pragmatist debate on China. Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, perhaps the most prominent defense prioritizer, strongly advocates that the United States should pursue a strategy of denial to contain China’s territorial ambitions, with Taiwan being key to this entire endeavor. Meanwhile, David P. Goldman, a notable national developmentalist and Spengler columnist for Asia Times, views this as a misguided endeavor—the real competition with China is happening in the realms of technology and economics, and America will lose if it does not properly prioritize, fund, and reform how it conducts research and development.

Given an environment of limited resources and political capital, such debates over what should be politically prioritized matter a great deal.

Third, the very framing of these debates—focusing on pressing priorities—means that various topics receive practically zero consideration. There is, for example, almost no discussion on what NatCon (and Republican) policy toward Africa and Latin America should be, to say nothing about what Republican policy toward specific countries within these regions should be. At most, there are general calls to challenge Chinese encroachment and, in the Latin American context, for the reimposition of the Monroe Doctrine—an idea certainly not welcome by the region’s inhabitants. Diplomatists are in veritable despair at the lack of consideration being given to these issues.

Fourth, Republicans (and conservatives in general) are currently in an unfavorable position in regard to foreign policy hiring. The profession, by its nature, imposes various requirements on its practitioners: holistic proficiency in a variety of intellectual subjects (history, economics, diplomacy, military science, etc.); strong critical thinking skills; knowledge of a foreign language (or several); an understanding of and exposure to foreign cultures, customs, and mores; a strong capacity for writing/arguing well; geographical residence in more-expensive urban environments for proximity to relevant/key institutions; and so on. Not all of these are necessary for an individual to be involved in foreign policy decisionmaking, of course. But even then, the requirements are such that foreign policy tends to be an elite-dominated profession, with a minor tendency to skew to the political Left due to the concentration of jobs and institutions in major metropolitan cities, which trend politically liberal.

As such, conservatives tend to have a harder time recruiting professionals in foreign policy-relevant fields. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that most existing conservative non-university supplementary educational institutions overwhelmingly focus on teaching conservative political philosophy, to the detriment of other subjects. This affects foreign policy factional composition. For example, there are far more paleocons than pragmatists, relative to the general population. Particularly rare are Republican Diplomatists with experience living abroad or serving in the State Department. The overall resulting lack of expertise and experience means that Republicans, and especially the NatCon movement, face an uphill battle.

Fifth, restrainers are constrained by the fact that major key institutions and talent pipelines—Congressional offices, think tanks, major publications, government agencies, and so forth—remain politically dominated by primacists. Pragmaticists suffer from the same issue but to a lesser degree, as they can collaborate with and take advantage of primacist-dominated institutions and programs. Although both factions have begun building new rival training programs, policy journals, popular magazines, professional associations, and policy-focused think tanks, along with efforts to change existing institutions, these will take time, financing, and concentrated effort. Moreover, worries over who specifically controls these new institutions and the agenda-setting process may hamper overall efforts.

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

Republicans’ inability to advance from agreement on underlying foreign policy principles has left them stuck, unable to formulate and implement a coherent foreign policy. In the meantime, the party has become vulnerable to being outflanked by Democrats, who now take NatCon/Republican ideas and pursue them with vigor.

For instance, though the Trump administration reintroduced protectionism and industrial policy into public discourse, arguing such measures are necessary to bring back manufacturing jobs from China, it is Democrats who have marched ahead with these changes. See no further than the Inflation Reduction Act, de facto a $500 billion green industrial policy bill, or the CHIPS Act, which two commentators accurately described as a “market-shaping measure designed to eliminate systemic geopolitical risk to the supply of critical goods, while also recasting the socioeconomic geography of domestic industrial production.” In other words, the sort of stuff that Republican national developmentalists advocated for during the Trump administration.

Other examples abound. The 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) essentially builds upon the Trump-era 2018 NDS. The Biden administration’s trade policy is a continuation of Trump’s policy, with some improvements. Likewise, the push toward great power competition, pioneered by the Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy, has been kept and expanded.

Republican restrainers are in an increasingly awkward position: unable to fully claim credit for restrain-oriented policies—such as Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the potential forthcoming repeal of the Iraq War authorization for the use of military force. Their positions are being normalized, but by Democrats. Meanwhile, restrainers are also confronting the reality that the present Republican Party gridlock has created an opening by which primacists can reassert themselves. This is playing out in debates over U.S. support for Ukraine, what should be done about Mexico’s drug cartels, the contours of U.S. China policy, and so on. Pragmatists, on the other hand, are growing frustrated by the situation and a perceived lack of Republican seriousness on various issues—and are reconsidering their options, especially in light of Democrats’ newfound interest in adopting pragmatists’ preferred policy prescriptions.

Much can still change in the coming months, especially as the U.S. Republican presidential primary begins to heat up. The campaign trail will force both candidates and their supporters—including would-be foreign policy advisors, key institutions, and others—to become serious about their foreign policy agenda. Whether this will be enough to overcome existing divisions and disagreements, however, remains to be seen.

Carlos Roa is the Executive Editor of The National Interest.

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