Foreign Affairs<\/a> magazine, McConnell, 82 \u2013 who retires as the GOP Senate leader at the end of this term in 2027 \u2013 takes issue with a strand of foreign policy thinking in the party\u2019s pro-Trump \u201cMake America great again\u201d (Maga) movement, which casts China as the US\u2019s biggest threat and advocates turning away from the war in Ukraine to tackle challenges in Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHe also urges continued robust support for Nato, the military alliance which Trump has often criticised and has threatened to withdraw US backing from unless European members increase their share of defence spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Warning Trump that he would confront a more dangerous world when he returns to the White House in January \u2013 and pinning much of the blame on Joe Biden\u2019s outgoing administration \u2013 McConnell writes: \u201cThe response to four years of weakness must not be four years of isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a coded rebuke to senior pro-Trump figures such as JD Vance, the incoming vice-president, McConnell dismisses the idea that Ukraine should be abandoned in favour of an all-out confrontational approach towards China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEven though the competition with China and Russia is a global challenge, Trump will no doubt hear from some that he should prioritize a single theater and downgrade US interests and commitments elsewhere,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSuch thinking is commonplace among both isolationist conservatives who indulge the fantasy of \u2018Fortress America\u2019 and progressive liberals who mistake internationalism for an end in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He accuses some members of his own party of \u201cretrench[ing] in the face of Russian aggression in Europe\u201d, although he does not spare the left, which he says is reluctant to confront Iran and support Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it is the swipe at Republican \u201cisolationism\u201d that is certain to attract more attention. McConnell, who has a tense relationship with Trump \u2013 calling him \u201cstupid\u201d and \u201cdespicable\u201d after his 2020 presidential election defeat \u2013 will have a platform to push his foreign policy agenda in the Senate term, when he will become chair of the subcommittee on defence appropriations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump has frequently voiced misgivings about US military aid for Ukraine and has claimed he would end its war with Russia in 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For his part, Vance is on record as saying he does not \u201creally care what happens to Ukraine one way or another\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taking aim at those views directly, McConnell writes: \u201cRepublicans who consider Ukraine a distraction from the Indo-Pacific should recall what happened the last time a president sought to reprioritize one region by withdrawing from another. In the Middle East, [Barack] Obama\u2019s premature withdrawal from Iraq left a vacuum for Iran and the Islamic State (also known as Isis) to fill.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump can only effectively confront China and the adversaries, he adds, by continuing to back Ukraine: \u201cA Russian victory would not only damage the United States\u2019 interest in European security and increase US military requirements in Europe; it would also compound the threats from China, Iran, and North Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
McConnell, who has said he will feel \u201cliberated\u201d by no longer holding the Repbulican leadership in the Senate, is also supportive of the US\u2019s European allies \u2013 saying many of them have boosted their defence spending commitments \u2013 while taking a swipe at Hungary, whose far-right prime minister, Viktor Orb\u00e1n, has been feted by Trump and his Maga acolytes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAfter major surges in their defense budgets, US allies on the continent now spend 18% more than they did a year ago, a far greater increase than the United States,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there are \u2013 inconveniently, for Orb\u00e1n\u2019s Republican admirers \u2013 exceptions to this trend, he continues. \u201cOne of the West\u2019s most glaring vulnerabilities to the influence of Russia \u2013 and China and Iran \u2013 is Hungary\u2019s self-abnegating obeisance to those countries,\u201d McConnell writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
theguardian<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Republicans\u2019 outgoing US Senate leader takes issue with foreign policy thinking in party\u2019s Maga movement Mitch McConnell, the Republicans\u2019 outgoing leader in the US Senate, has called on Donald Trump to avoid an \u201cisolationist\u201d foreign policy during his looming second presidency \u2013 and urged him to back up a surge in American \u201chard power\u201d by continuing to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":35977,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4131,23611,1230,2229],"class_list":["post-35976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-foreign-policy","tag-mickey-mcconnell","tag-trump","tag-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35978,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35976\/revisions\/35978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}