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Only a consistent “America First” agenda that puts the needs of Americans over the interests of foreign nations, including Israel, has the slightest chance of uniting these discontents under a common umbrella.

By Michael Rectenwald

Ousted from the Republican Party by Donald Trump, the neoconservatives have remade themselves into Democrats, hoodwinking the left into supporting their program of global military interventionism.

Condoleezza Rice may be a master of realpolitik, an international policy wonk, and a well-polished presenter of officialdom, but she is not a capable political theorist and certainly not a credible historian. 

If she were the former, in her essay in Foreign Affairs, (“The Perils of Isolationism,” September/October issue)  she would not equate, or conjoin at the hip, “democracy” and “the free market.” Nor would she conflate political “isolationism” and economic “protectionism.” If she were a historian, she (presumably) would not deride the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the halcyon days of the free market, as a time of economic stagnation. And if she were both a political theorist and a historian, she wouldn’t tout the Bretton Woods conference and the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as the preconditions for “the free movement of goods and services” that “stimulated international economic growth.” 

But Rice’s words are meant to be anything but precise. They intentionally blur political and economic categories. Does she expect us to believe that domestic economic welfare is equivalent to the expansion of state influence and power? Does she expect us to believe that economic globalization is the same as political globalism?  

Rice speaks not only for herself. She represents the outlook, not only of a segment of the political right, but also of the “left” as well. (I put “left” in scare quotes to denote the actually existing left and not some Platonic ideal left that supposedly preexists it.) 

Rice speaks the native language of the singular “uniparty” that includes the following front men and women: the Bushes, the Clintons, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. She speaks the language not only of the now-defunct right-wing neoconservative Project for a New American Century but also of the more circumspect and Democrat-supporting, but nonetheless fundamentally neoconservative think tank, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). 

The language of this contingent is more telling for what it hides than for what it reveals. It glosses over the tragic and costly mistakes of the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. But, more fundamentally, through a now-familiar legerdemain, it presents the interests of the state as identical to the interests of the people who live under the state.

Nothing could be clearer than the distinction between these interests in the present moment, especially in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the ineffectual federal response to the disasters. Just prior to Helene’s landfall, the Biden-Harris administration approved military aid packages for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan totaling more than  $17 billion—with $8.7 billion earmarked for Israel, $8 billion for Ukraine, and $567 million for Taiwan. Most of this aid came in addition to the $95 billion package bundled for the same three recipients of U.S. foreign military aid in February 2024. 

After the disaster struck seven Southern states and damages had been estimated at over $100 billion, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “does not have the funds to make it through the season.” Kamala Harris soon promised those affected a measly $750 per family, reputedly for food, hotel rooms, and other immediate needs. (Has anyone in this administration bought groceries or stayed in a hotel lately?) Whether FEMA spent money on immigrants is beside the point. Except for social welfare entitlements and the billions earmarked for climate change mitigation in the Inflation Reduction Act, domestic spending on help for those who work for a living and pay taxes is anemic.

Two days after Mayorkas cried poor mouth, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on X an aid package for Lebanon: 

The U.S. is at the forefront of humanitarian response to the growing crisis in Lebanon, announcing nearly $157 million in assistance today. We are committed to supporting those in need and delivering essential aid to displaced civilians, refugees and the communities hosting them.

The U.S., we should remember, paid for and supplied the bombs dropped on southern Lebanon and Beirut. Now we must also pay for aid to the “recipients” of said bombs. And to the cost of these can be added that of maintaining U.S. ships, troops, and fighter jets deployed to the Middle East. 

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