Former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is expected to start not one but two contests inside the Republican Party this week.
Haley is set to become the second major declared candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. But if she announces, she will also spark a battle between former President Donald Trump and the people who advised him on foreign policy.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former national security adviser John Bolton are all at least mulling bids for the White House in 2024. Like Haley, they navigated Trump’s foreign policy positions but have traditionally been more hawkish than their old boss.
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Haley is about to make a major announcement about her political future on Wednesday in South Carolina, where she served as governor. South Carolina is also where Trump buried former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s 2016 campaign after directly attacking former President George W. Bush and the Iraq War in a Republican primary debate.
By winning the military-friendly state’s GOP primary less than a decade after Ron Paul was practically booed off the stage at a South Carolina Republican debate for making antiwar comments, Trump sent a message that the party had moved on from the Bushes and their approach to foreign policy.
Haley, Pompeo, Pence, and Bolton are all to varying degrees throwbacks to the Bush years — Bolton enjoyed a stint as Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations via recess appointment — though they supported Trump during his term and appropriated his “America First” rhetoric. Trump still had to draw from Bush-era talent when staffing his administration.
“America First is not America alone” was a phrase memorably uttered by H.R. McMaster, one of Bolton’s predecessors as Trump’s national security adviser, and Gary Cohn, the onetime National Economic Council director the former president dubbed a “globalist.”
Haley tried a version of this in her speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, marrying the Bush and Trump visions as she castigated the Democratic ticket.
“Joe Biden and the Democrats are still blaming America first,” Haley said. “Donald Trump has always put America first.”
But the address was an explicit homage to a leading neoconservative from yesteryear.
“I’ll start with a little story. It’s about an American Ambassador to the United Nations,” Haley said. “And it’s about a speech she gave to this convention. She called for the reelection of the Republican president she served … and she called out his Democratic opponent … a former vice president from a failed administration.”
“That ambassador said, and I quote, ‘Democrats always blame America first,’” she continued. “The year was 1984. The president was Ronald Reagan. And Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick’s words are just as true today.”
Only Bolton openly clashed with Trump before he left office, and he is also the only one likely to make overt his foreign policy differences with his erstwhile boss as a major part of any campaign. When possible, the others will contrast themselves with President Joe Biden instead.
Trump is the lone top-tier Republican candidate to have broken with Biden on the war in Ukraine, which he has vowed to resolve diplomatically. Trump warns that Biden is risking nuclear war with Russia.
While Trump frequently criticizes Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, the 45th president wanted to pull out the troops at an even earlier date. It is a position he has not recanted as some Republican lawmakers hint support for maintaining a residual U.S. force in the war-torn country.
Foreign policy is an area where Trump hopes to highlight his differences with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who is seen as the biggest threat to the former president winning the Republican nomination.
“Trump is the peace president and he’s the first president in two generations to not start a war, whereas if you look at DeSantis’ congressional record, he’s voted for more engagement and more military engagement overseas,” a Trump associate told Politico.
DeSantis’s foreign policy views and record are far more ambiguous than those of Haley, Pompeo, or Bolton. Pence voted for the Iraq War as a member of Congress during the Bush years.
In addition to wanting to keep the focus on Biden, these Republicans might also hesitate to be drawn into a foreign policy argument with Trump: They own parts of his record. Pompeo was in the talks with the Taliban and North Korea. All of them will want to take some credit for initiatives like the Abraham Accords.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), a newly elected populist lawmaker to watch, made foreign policy central to his Trump endorsement ahead of the 2024 primaries.
“Donald Trump’s presidency marked the first real disruption to a failed [foreign policy] consensus and the terrible consequences it wrought,” Vance wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “That fact, more than any single accomplishment, is the enduring legacy of Mr. Trump’s first term. But there is much more to do, and I’m supporting him for president in 2024 because he’s the only person certain to do it.”
The headline on Vance’s piece was “Trump best’s foreign policy? Not starting any wars.”
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Earlier this month, Trump declared that Biden is “now doing what he said 10 months ago would lead to World War III: He is sending in American tanks.”
But before Trump can press this argument with Biden, he is going to have to have it with Republicans — including several who played a role in implementing his foreign policy.
