'Hard power': McConnell warns Trump against 'isolationist' nominees

16 December 2024

Although Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota) will replace Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) as GOP leader in the U.S. Senate in January 2025, McConnell plans to serve out the remainder of his term (which won't end until January 2027). And critics of President-elect Donald Trump are hoping that McConnell will resist some of his more controversial nominees — including former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Trump's pick for national intel director) and anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Trump's choice for director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).

McConnell hasn't specified which nominees he will vote for or against. But the Senate minority leader, according to Axios' Hans Nichols, is indicating that he won't vote for isolationist nominees.

McConnell expressed his views on foreign policy in a 5000-word essay published by Foreign Affairs on Monday, December 16.

In the essay, McConnell writes, "America will not be made great again by those who simply want to manage its decline. Trump would be wise to build his foreign policy on the enduring cornerstone of U.S. leadership: hard power…. Donald Trump will inherit a world far more hostile to U.S. interests than the one he left behind four years ago."

Axios' Hans Nichols notes that McConnell "has been a staunch supporter of sending aid and munitions to Ukraine and was critical in helping to pass a $60 billion package in April."

Noting all the MAGA Republicans who opposed aid to Ukraine, McConnell said, at the time, "I sort of felt like I was the only Reagan Republican left."

Nichols stresses that McConnell has a very hawkish resumé.

"As the longest-serving Senate leader in history," Nichols explains, "McConnell has long been a champion of the kind of muscular interventionism that defined the Republican Party during the Cold War and the post-9/11 aftermath. He supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and then the 2007 troop 'surge' pushed by then-President Bush to defeat an Iraqi insurgency that was inflicting heavy casualties on U.S. troops."

Nichols continues, "He has long been a hawk on China, as well as a reliable voice in support of Taiwan. He backed then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi on her visit to Taiwan, in defiance of China's disapproval. More recently, he's been deeply critical of his Republican colleagues for supporting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán."

Read Axios' full article at this link and Sen. Mitch McConnell's full Foreign Affairs essay here.

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