Hawks, isolationists, and real estate developers: Inside the factions battling to shape U.S. foreign policy

Four major factions are commonly identified as leaders in the competition to shape U.S. foreign policy under Donald Trump. The first, representing the radical populist wing led by Vice President JD Vance (often seconded by Tucker Carlson), is fixated on rebuilding America at home. Its members call for an immediate end to aid for Ukraine, the freezing of ongoing conflicts, abandoning America’s informal role of global policeman, and imposing steep protectionist tariffs even on traditional allies (whom they openly regard as free riders).

The populists’ central argument — that “forever wars” are ruinous — is shared in part by the second faction, whose leading ideologue is former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby (backed by Senator Josh Hawley). These advocates of strict strategic prioritization argue that America's overstretched defense industrial base cannot sustain its current count of confrontations on multiple fronts and that Washington should thus redeploy its naval forces and advanced technologies to the Indo-Pacific for what they see as an existential struggle with China. Under this scenario, responsibility for Europe's security — and for Ukraine's future — would be shifted onto the Europeans themselves.

Both of these camps are fiercely opposed by the traditional Reaganite hawks, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio (and his predecessor as National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz). They embrace the doctrine of “peace through strength,” arguing that an American retreat from Europe would only signal the kind of weakness that could encourage Beijing to invade Taiwan. Accordingly, they argue that the United States must maintain overwhelming military dominance across all key regions of the world in order to pressure the informal axis of Russia, China, and Iran, while simultaneously pushing NATO allies to increase their defense spending.

The fourth faction, made up of business-oriented investors led by Jared Kushner, seeks to reconcile the financial interests of the Saudi monarchy with a pro-Israel vision of the global order.

At the center of this political cacophony stands Trump himself. A transactional pragmatist, he has shown little hesitation in alternating between these mutually contradictory approaches (his critics like to joke that he invariably echoes the views of whichever adviser spoke to him last). He readily borrows Vance's isolationist rhetoric to mobilize his core electorate and shares Colby's fixation on the threat posed by China, while at the same time deliberately appointing uncompromising hawks to key positions. Critics describe this as foreign policy schizophrenia, whereas supporters argue that Trump has turned the chaos and unpredictability of his own personnel decisions into his greatest political asset.