TRUMP'S MUDDLED, ON-AND-OFF MILITARISM WON'T SPLIT THE GOP AT ALL

In The New York Times, Tyler Pager and Luke Broadwater tell us that President Trump's approach to the conflict between Israel and Iran could divide the right:

As Israel pummels Iran with waves of airstrikes, President Trump is navigating the divides within the Republican Party over whether the United States should get involved in another foreign conflict.

On one side are the isolationists who fear that Israel could pull the United States into another Middle East war. And on the other are the Iran hawks and Israel supporters who have been calling for just this sort of military action for years.

Mr. Trump appears caught between the two sides, veering back and forth as he tries to distance the United States from Israel’s assault while celebrating the success of the attacks and warning Iran that more is coming.

“This, right now, is going to cause, I think, a major schism in the MAGA online community,” Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and podcaster, said Thursday on his podcast.

Not really, Charlie. I'll explain below.

Trump's thoughts about the use of military force have always been somewhat mysterious. On the one hand, he seems like a rage-driven, reckless idiot who would happily nuke Tehran or Beijing -- or Chicago or Sacramento -- just to show us all who's boss. On the other hand, he has often seemed to shy away from the use of military force, or at least using military force the way a normal president would, against a foreign enemy. Yet now he's acting like a strongman obsessed with the military, but only in domestic contexts. Elsewhere in the Times, Peter Baker suggests, with good reason, that that seems peculiar:

When President Trump first sought to stage a military parade in Washington, a four-star general argued against it, telling him that “it’s what dictators do.” Mr. Trump was unbothered by the comparison, and so on Saturday tanks will roll down the streets of the nation’s capital for the first time in decades.

Nor was Mr. Trump evidently concerned about being accused of authoritarian excess for deploying troops to Los Angeles to quell protests against his immigration crackdown. If anything, he seemed to revel in the moment, vowing to “hit” anyone who so much as spit at a police officer and even threatening “very big force” against protesters in Washington.

Yet as a real war broke out this week in the Middle East, Mr. Trump seemed reluctant to get involved, declining to join Israel in its aerial blitz against Iran’s nuclear facilities despite years of chest-thumping threats of “obliteration” against the Islamic regime. While he authorized U.S. forces to help defend Israel from Iran’s subsequent retaliation, in keeping with past practice, Mr. Trump made clear that he would not target Iran himself, at least for now, and instead urged it to return to the negotiating table.

The seemingly disparate postures of recent days — strongman at home, peace-seeker abroad — speak to Mr. Trump’s complicated relationship with the military. He has ordered more troops to Los Angeles and Washington than he currently has stationed in Syria and Iraq combined. He seems more willing at the moment to use the military against Americans than against Iranians. He celebrates a show of force on U.S. soil even as he denounces “endless wars” outside its borders.

I agree that Trump has a "complicated relationship with the military" -- a complicated psychological relationship. He always wants to be the tough guy, and being the commander in chief of a huge, powerful military makes him happy, but something about warfighting gives him the heebie-jeebies. It easy to say that he was a Vietnam-era draft dodger and leave it at that, but so were George W. Bush and (most notably) Dick Cheney. They were willing, even eager, to send other people's kids to die in combat. Why isn't Trump?

I think he can't bear the notion that if he were to deploy troops in combat, people other than himself -- generals, dead and wounded servicemembers, risk-taking medal winners -- would steal his spotlight. I also imagine that he's discussed various military incursions with generals, including crackpot ideas like bombing Mexican drug cartels, and the leaders of the service branches have told him how they think those campaigns would unfold: slowly (over a period of months or years) and with setbacks along the way. Trump doesn't want that. He wants a war that's all winning, and that takes about as long as a special two-part episode of a reality TV series.

Early in his time as a presidential candidate, I imagine that advisers who have actually thought through their isolationism (Steve Bannon?) gave him ways of describing his own fears that made them sound like a right-wing ideology. He benefited from the fact that the Bush-era war on terrorism was unpopular, even among GOP voters. He also benefited from the fact that Democrats in the Clinton, Obama, and Biden years haven't lived up to the right's stereotype of the party as a collection of hippie pacifists. At some point in the construction of Trump's rhetoric on this subject, someone undoubtedly tossed out the phrase "Peace through strength." Boom -- Trump and his people had created the illusion of a coherent belief system.

But will Trump's cooperation with Israel alienate genuine isolationists in Trump's coalition? And on the other hand, will his decision to defer to Netanyahu upset the hawks?

Nahhh. Some MAGA pundits will be upset, as will anti-Semites in the MAGA rank-and-file, but most of his people will be fine with whatever he does. For GOP base voters, the correct military policy is usually "whatever a Republican president wants to do" and "whatever is the opposite of what Democrats want to do." They loved Ronald Reagan when he was saber-rattling against the Soviet Union and they loved him when he was negotiating with the Soviet Union. They hated Russia until they realized that Trump didn't, and they really turned pro-Russia when Joe Biden began offering miltary aide to Ukraine. They hate Muslims, but loved George W. Bush (at least during his first term) and still love Trump no matter how much they've cozied up to the Saudis. In short, GOP voters have no coherent foreign policy views apart from "GOP good, Democrat Party bad."

Congressional Republicans might have better-constructed ideologies, but do any of them ever abandon Trump? Do hawks like Lindsey Graham break with him when he attacks Volodymyr Zelenskyy? It never happens.

As for the domestic deployment of troops, in L.A. and in today's parade, I think it's exactly what the GOP base wants. Republican base voters don't want the military to fight for principles. They want the military to make them feel good. They want the troops and tanks to make them feel tough. They know the protesters in L.A. aren't armed, and that's perfect -- Trump is punching down, which means it's a feel-good war. (See also Reagan in Grenada and George H.W. Bush in Panama.) They think the parade owns the libs. That's all they want from the military.