Biden's Middle East trip: Following in Trump's footsteps
WATCH: Biden looks poised to betray his campaign promise to sideline Saudi Arabia. Does this really serve America's interests?
Responsible Statecraft
Responsible Statecraft is a publication of analysis, opinion, and news that seeks to promote a positive vision of U.S. foreign policy based on humility, diplomatic engagement, and military restraint. RS also critiques the ideas — and the ideologies and interests behind them — that have mired the United States in counterproductive and endless wars and made the world less secure.
Top photo credit: Gemini AI
The death of 'America First'
February 06, 2026
In 2019, John Bolton described how he defined “America First."
"The idea that actually protecting America was the highest priority,” he said. A fair, though vague, point by one of the most hawkish men in Washington at the time.
Bolton continued, “In 2008, John McCain, the Republican nominee, had as his slogan ‘Country First.’ Now who in this room wants to guess what country he was talking about?”
The United States obviously. But what was Bolton really trying to say? With a straight face, he added, “So explain to me what's so different, at least at the bumper sticker rhetorical level, between the McCain and Trump approaches.”
Oh boy.
A major reason John McCain lost the 2008 presidential election is because Americans wanted a change in the disastrous interventionist foreign policy of the Bush administration, and the Arizona senator, who had been in Washington since 1982, was only promising more of the same. In 2016, Donald Trump was promising a less interventionist foreign policy, something President Barack Obama had also pledged, but ultimately failed to deliver as he escalated a major killer drone war through the aughts.
McCain was clearly the pro-war, neoconservative candidate. Obama ran as an antiwar candidate. So did Trump.
The Trump phenomenon was supposed to be a changing of the old Republican guard, however imperfectly, for a new foreign policy ethos that was closer to Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul than Bill Kristol and David Frum. That’s exactly why so many neoconservatives and War Party Republicans got behind the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
So seven years ago, when Bolton tried to redefine Donald Trump’s America First brand as a continuation of McCain-Bush interventionism, I laughed. Did Bolton really think the conservative base was this gullible?
I’m not laughing anymore.
Hawks, including old neoconservatives, now present pro-war interventionism as America First all the time.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the neoconservatives’ preferred presidential candidate in 2016 to continue the Bush-Cheney foreign policy legacy in the same way McCain once tried to do, is perhaps more effective at rebranding America First than any other Trump official. He says America First means U.S.-led regime change in Venezuela, a potential American takeover of Greenland, and threatening a new war with Iran. Regime change in Cuba is also on the table.
Vice President JD Vance says that America First could mean negotiations with Iran, but could also mean bombing Iran. “We’re running out of time,” he also warns, echoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s three-decade long claim — that Iran is on the cusp of developing a nuclear weapon.
Last month Vance framed ousting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as being an American national interest, “In our neighborhood, the United States calls the shots. That's the way it's always been. That's the way it is again under the President's leadership.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said seven months before the U.S. struck Venezuela, “to put America first, we will put the Americas first. We will do this by confronting shared threats across this hemisphere, serious threats that require a serious response.”
In June, Hegseth announced that the U.S. had “obliterated” and "devastated the Iranian nuclear program.”
"What you're watching in real time is peace through strength and America first," Hegseth said just before those June attacks.This week he said the Pentagon was “more than prepared” to bomb Iran again should it refuse negotiations over its nuclear program, something Americans were told was already destroyed last summer.
Frustrated that his base wasn’t entirely in lockstep behind those Iran strikes, Trump told Michael Scherer at The Atlantic that he decides what America First is. “Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that.”
No one is saying that Trump always stuck to a restraint America First script. He clearly didn’t and doesn’t. His first term was littered with interventionist decisions that often contradicted his rhetoric.
But he is further away from those days than ever before, aided by supporters and surrogates who are happy to appropriate that script.
Take steadfast neoconservative Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been allowed to hijack MAGA with zeal, even going so far as to say Trump’s mission is to “Make Iran Great Again” by the U.S. waging war on it. The president has deployed the same motto without irony.
Pro-war conservative personalities in Trump’s base, like Mark Levin, have also taken these cues.
Is “America First” so empty that it is essentially unusable, if not dead?
Those who have embraced the anti-interventionist spirit of America First, like populist former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and libertarians like Congressman Thomas Massie and Senator Rand Paul, are now loathed by Trump in exchange for golf rounds with Sen. Graham. Trump just called Massie a “moron” at the National Prayer Breakfast.
Libertarian historian Brion McClanahan wrote approvingly of Trump after he delivered a major foreign policy campaign speech in April 2016: “
Trump’s traditional American foreign policy is a refreshing departure from the bomb-away mentality of the modern Republican Party. Certainly Ron Paul offered a similar reprieve from American adventurism during his failed presidential bids, and Pat Buchanan made nonintervention a core theme of his run for the presidency in the 1980s and 1990s, but Trump has been able to rally more people around his candidacy and thus has made nonintervention sexy again.”
“Perhaps the endless wars and pointless American bloodletting will finally stop under a Trump administration,” McClanahan added. “In forty years, historians might call this period ‘America First.’ Or maybe it will be the Age of Trump.”
Historians might call this time America First. Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham might call it that, too. But so much of it won’t be. Not anymore. The people in charge have ruined that.
But it certainly is the Age of Trump.keep readingShow less
A mushroom cloud expands over the Bikini Atoll during a U.S. nuclear weapons test in 1946. (Shutterstock/ Everett Collection)
Nuke treaty loss a 'colossal' failure that could lead to nuclear arms race
February 05, 2026
On February 13th, 2025, President Trump said something few expected to hear. He said, “There's no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many. . . You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons . . . We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive.”
I could not agree more with that statement. But with today’s expiration of the New START Treaty, we face the very real possibility of a new nuclear arms race — something that, to my knowledge, neither the President, Vice President, nor any other senior U.S. official has meaningfully discussed.
The decision to start a nuclear war can be made by a single individual—the President of the United States—with no requirement that he first consult with anyone. A nuclear war could also be started at any moment by Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, or any other leader of a nuclear weapon state. Or, it could be triggered by mistake.
A single use of a tactical nuclear weapon, either by accident or design, could trigger a flurry of escalating responses with far more powerful strategic weapons that would cause incalculable loss of life, widespread radiation poisoning, and destruction on a scale unlike anything seen in human history. We all — regardless of political affiliation — must reaffirm what Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev said 40 years ago: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
For the past eighty years, the probability of mutually assured destruction has deterred the use of nuclear weapons. But in today’s increasingly dangerous and unpredictable world, with mercurial leaders like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, we cannot rely on deterrence alone. Existing nuclear arms control treaties are either no longer adhered to by Russia or the United States, or, as in the case of New START, have expired.
That represents a colossal failure of leadership by both the United States and Russia. There is no greater threat to humanity than a nuclear war, yet there are no negotiations underway to replace the treaty, nor are there discussions to consider a new generation of limits on nuclear weapons.
My colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Ed Markey, and several others in Congress, as well as the arms control community, have sought to counter this complacency. But the danger of a new nuclear arms race has received far too little attention from Congress and the Administration, and with today’s expiration of the New START Treaty, it is staring us in the face.
The United States, and our allies, must urgently seek to reinvigorate negotiations on a verifiable replacement for New START, with more effective mechanisms to prevent the development, proliferation, and use of nuclear weapons. Until then, we and the Russians should agree to continue abiding by the limits under New START. Despite our stark differences with the Russians, they have as much interest in preventing an unwinnable nuclear war as we do.
We must also invigorate discussions with China, which has some 600 nuclear weapons. That number is expected to more than double in fewer than ten years.
If the U.S. and Russia fail to replace New START despite it being in both countries’ national security interest, there are other steps that we, Russia, and China should take—short of negotiating a new treaty—to help reduce the risk of a nuclear war, whether due to a false alarm, error, or other misperception.
For example:
- Creating joint early warning centers to monitor missile launches;
- De-targeting, so any accidental launch of a nuclear armed missile lands in the ocean;
- Removing all nuclear weapons from high-alert status;
- Reducing incentives to respond quickly to an unconfirmed nuclear attack;
- Reducing the number of deployed nuclear weapons; and
- Renouncing first use of nuclear weapons and eliminating the President’s authority to launch nuclear weapons without congressional approval.
Since the 1980s, thanks to negotiators in both countries, the United States and Russia curtailed an unrestrained nuclear arms race that had led to the deployment of staggering numbers of increasingly destructive weapons that could not rationally be justified for deterrence or any other purpose. The START Treaty and New START were historic achievements.
Twelve months ago, President Trump spoke of the need for the U.S., Russia, and China to stop building more nuclear weapons. Yet while his National Security Strategy calls for “the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent,” it says nothing about preventing another nuclear arms race. With respect to New START, he reportedly said, “If it expires, it expires.”
As the New START Treaty fades into history, one commentator has suggested that “one likely successor to nuclear weapons’ sole dominance on the strategic value ladder could be AI technology. . . Either AI technology itself will become the primary strategic weapon—or it will enable the rapid creation of alternatives that render nuclear arsenals increasingly irrelevant to real-world outcomes.”
It is only a matter of time—and probably far less time than we think—before the application of AI technology to warfare creates a whole new impetus for global instability. But even as AI becomes more versatile as a disruptive and destructive force, nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war are not going to disappear.
So, I urge President Trump to elevate nuclear arms control to the top of his national security agenda. Even the modest steps I’ve outlined to reduce the chance of a catastrophic mistake or miscalculation resulting in the use of nuclear weapons should be among our highest national security priorities.
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Top image credit: U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff looks on during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., December 29, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
As US-Iran talks resume, will Israel play spoiler (again)?
February 05, 2026
This Friday, the latest chapter in the long, fraught history of U.S.-Iran negotiations will take place in Oman. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and President Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will meet in an effort to stave off a war between the U.S. and Iran.
The negotiations were originally planned as a multilateral forum in Istanbul, with an array of regional Arab and Muslim countries present, apart from the U.S. and Iran — Turkey, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.
Iran insisted — and won — a shift to a bilateral format with the U.S. in Oman, focused exclusively on the nuclear file. Washington initially refused, only to be persuaded by Turkey and Gulf allies, who fear the regional fallout of what a war may bring.
The fact that Washington agreed to hold talks after their cancellation in Istanbul speaks to the leverage countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have on Washington. The U.S. may dismiss Iranian threats of regional retaliation in the case of an attack, but its own partners are more directly threatened by the consequences — a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, retaliatory strikes on their own soil hosting U.S. bases and personnel, and the general fallout from Iran’s disintegration as a result of a prolonged war. Mindful of these dynamics, Tehran has adroitly leveraged its neighbors’ fears to win another chance to avoid a war it does not want, at a moment of an increased external pressure and domestic turmoil.
Yet, the regional leverage is finite. It can persuade Trump to get to the table, but it cannot force Washington and Tehran for a deal either side does not want or cannot accept.
Iran’s very insistence on controlling the venue, format, and agenda signals a critical reality: even under an immense external and domestic pressure, Tehran is not coming to capitulate, but to negotiate from a position of resistance.
This sets the stage for a fundamental clash. Trump, after boasting of having amassed “an armada” in the Persian Gulf, has painted himself into a corner: he now needs a loud, quick victory — military or diplomatic — or risk losing face. Iran is not offering the unconditional surrender that could be presented as such a win. A military action, however, would be highly risky, unpredictable, prolonged and likely involving U.S. casualties. In other words, it would be nothing like a flashy Venezuela operation to kidnap that nation’s president Nicolas Maduro.
This is a crisis of Trump’s own making, however. The administration keeps insisting that Iran can have no nuclear weapon — Vice-President JD Vance repeated the theme in a recent interview. But if that is indeed a real red line, then Washington is forcing down an open door. Iranian officials have consistently signaled that they are not interested in weaponization. Araghchi and Witkoff were negotiating on this basis in the first half of 2025, until Israel attacked Iran, and then the U.S. joined.
Remarkably, even after the U.S.-Israeli attack, Tehran still wants to negotiate, and Araghchi is fully authorized to represent its position. It is true that Iran keeps insisting on the right to domestic enrichment of uranium, but even Iranian officials admit that no such enrichment is taking place since the U.S. strike on Fordow and Natanz in June 2025.
If Washington’s goal is to codify this endgame — “no enrichment” as opposed to “no weaponization” — it has to offer Tehran an immediate and implementable sanctions relief, including removing both primary and secondary sanctions on trade and investment. Such a proposal would put a stark choice in front of the leaders in Tehran: accept economic relief at a time of an unprecedented internal upheaval in exchange for giving up what is now a largely theoretical enrichment right.
Since Tehran insists it seeks no nuclear weapons, what purpose does the accumulated highly enriched uranium (up to 60% which is close to weapons grade) — under the rubble in Fordow — serve anyway, other than perpetuating the crippling sanctions regime? If Washington were to make such a proposal, chances are it would at least spark some internal debate within the Iranian system between those who seek normalization and stabilization on the one hand, and hardline maximalists on the other. A compromise solution could be found, such as a regional consortium with the participation of Saudi Arabia to manage civilian nuclear fuel, providing strict guarantees to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.S.
The problem is not the absence of a technical solution; it is the rejection of its political premise. If the nuclear issue is technically solvable, why are we on the brink? Because for key U.S. ally, Israel, the Iran issue is not about its nuclear problem, and much less about “freeing” Iranians from theocracy. Many in Israel and in Washington are pushing Trump to go for regime change.
Israel is also concerned about Iran's ballistic missiles because it’s the last real deterrence Iran has against a total Israeli domination in the region and Iran’s own transformation into a new Syria — a state so hollowed out that it can be bombed at will. For Iran, missiles are not bargaining chips; they are the non-negotiable pillars of its national defense.
Does that mean that Tehran should resist at all costs talking about the missiles with Washington? No. Talking is not the same as making unacceptable concessions. At a minimum, talks could provide a platform for Tehran to convey its strategic outlook and concerns directly to the Americans.
Trump obviously wants to solve the “Iran issue” for good. His non-ideological transactionalism could in fact play in Tehran’s favor. Trump does not appear to be buying the argument, advanced by both Republican and Democratic hawks, that talking to Tehran would legitimize the regime that just killed thousands of its own people.
Yet Trump is also not interested in drawn-out negotiations. But the kind of a strategic realignment of Iran from an enemy to at least a neutral that he could claim as a major win is not in the cards for as long as Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is in charge. He sees “resistance” to the “Great Satan” as an ideologically non-negotiable pillar of the Islamic Republic, safeguarding which is his main priority, even to the detriment of Iran’s national interest.
Khamenei’s thoughtless taunting of Trump on social media doesn’t help either. But even putting the ideological rigidity aside, the main reason why Tehran seeks to limit talks to the nuclear issue alone is a profound lack of trust in Washington, and, on the face of Trump’s own track record — withdrawal from the JCPOA, bombing of Iran in the midst of negotiations, acquiescence to nearly every Israeli wish — it is difficult to fault Iranians for that.
If the talks in Oman are to avert a disastrous regional war, putting Americans in harm's way and shattering the global economy, Trump should quit listening to the Israeli government and instead heed the advice of Qataris, Omanis, Saudis, Turks and Egyptians, all of whom urge him to engage in real diplomacy with Iran, and not use it as a mere prelude to war.
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