The Republican War Machine Never Dies

The escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has Americans debating the future of a “conservative” American foreign policy.

President Trump campaigned on a promise to keep the United States out of World War III while creating a solution to international problems in Ukraine and the Middle East.

He blustered that Europe should be forced to pay for the upkeep of N.A.T.O. a relic of the Cold War that currently creates more problems than it solves.

He virtually guaranteed that he would force China to bend a knee to the United States.

Americans voted for this and for “America First.”

They forgot that Trump is tied to the Republican Party.

The 1860s G.O.P. is the original “righteous cause” nightmare which has resulted in American boots on the ground in over 100 countries across the globe.

Granted, Republicans did not drag the United States into World War I or World War II, and Democrats were as responsible for proxy wars during the Cold War as Republicans.

But the dirty little secret is that none of this would have been possible without Lincoln’s crusade to “save the Union” in 1861.

Both Washington and Jefferson insisted that American foreign policy should be dedicated to non-intervention. Jefferson’s stamp on foreign policy in his First Inaugural Address proved to be foundational. Future presidents cited Jefferson more than Washington as the lamp of experience in the early nineteenth century. Both were right.

The Republican Party forced a new direction. Americans had to bring the righteous cause of “liberty, democracy, and freedom” to the world.

Even John Quincy Adams argued that the United States should refrain from imposing American institutions on other countries. He did, after all, help craft the Monroe Doctrine, a Jeffersonian bedrock of American foreign policy, that is until the 1860s.

When Lincoln”revolutionized the Revolution” in 1863, Republican leadership decided to make foreign policy decisions based on “righteous cause” mythology. The result? American empire.

The Spanish American War, the Filipino-American War, American involvement in virtually every country in Central America and the Caribbean including creating the country of Panama, American interest in Albania and Greece, and by the twentieth century American military conflicts across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas are all the result of the American “righteous cause” mission.

Wars were sold to a reluctant American public on “humanitarian” goals. Nothing has changed in 2025.

The Southern tradition has, at times, offered a counterweight to this Republican vision.

Southerners eagerly fought with their Northern comrades in every post bellum American war. This was part of “reconciliation”. Northerners adopted Southern heroes like Jackson and Lee in order to gain much needed Southern support and manpower. To this day, white Southern men still compose the largest segment of the American military. It’s the martial and patriotic spirit of the Southern people.

But leading Southern men, including Washington and Jefferson, have long insisted that war and empire should not drive American foreign policy.

John C. Calhoun insisted in 1846 that “peace is preeminently our policy.” Claude Kitchin of North Carolina thundered in 1917 that:

“This Nation is the last hope of peace on earth, good will toward men. I am unwilling for my country by statutory command to pull up the last anchor of peace in the world and extinguish during the long night of a world-wide war the only remaining star of hope for Christendom. I am unwilling by my vote to-day for this Nation to throw away the only remaining compass to which the world can look for guidance in the paths of right and truth, of justice and humanity, and to leave only force and blood to chart hereafter the path of mankind to tread.”

Men like J. William Fulbright considered American involvement in Vietnam to be a dangerous departure from the American tradition.

And conservatives like Pat Buchanan have warned against an aggressive American foreign policy for decades.

These are all Southern men. There is a clear anti-imperialist, anti-righteous cause foreign policy tradition in America, particularly South of the Mason-Dixon.

Those are the views that sparked support for Donald Trump beginning in 2016.

But when you vote Republican, you are going to get a Republican.

President Trump has just proven that the Republican war machine never dies.

Nor does Abraham Lincoln.

The upcoming battle for the soul of American conservatism regarding foreign policy will need the Southern tradition.

Too bad much of it has been erased over the last half-century. Maybe that was always part of the plan.

After all, if you eliminate Robert E. Lee, you’ll never know that he predicted our current mess in 1866:

“The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it.”

The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily the views of the Abbeville Institute.

Brion McClanahan

Brion McClanahan is the author or co-author of six books, How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America (Regnery History, 2017), 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her (Regnery History, 2016), The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers, (Regnery, 2009), The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012), Forgotten Conservatives in American History (Pelican, 2012), and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes, (Regnery, 2012). He received a B.A. in History from Salisbury University in 1997 and an M.A. in History from the University of South Carolina in 1999. He finished his Ph.D. in History at the University of South Carolina in 2006, and had the privilege of being Clyde Wilson’s last doctoral student. He lives in Alabama with his wife and three daughters.

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