Long-time hawk and critic of President Trump Republican Mitch McConnell has announced that he would not seek re-election to the U.S. Senate.
The perennial incumbent from Kentucky, who consistently opposed what he saw as “isolationism” in the Republican party, was first elected in 1984 and has represented his home state ever since. He is up for reelection in 2026.
McConnell was and is a regular voice of opposition to what he calls the “isolationist movement” in the Republican Party. A long-time supporter of American extension overseas, McConnell supported Buch’s 2002 Iraq War Resolution, as well as further troop surges to the country. Historically, he was hawkish toward Russia as well. He opposed the 2010 ratification of the New Start nuclear reduction treaty between Washington and Moscow, consistently supported sanctions, and worked with Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer to send additional aid to Ukraine in 2024.
McConnell has long invited public clashes with President Trump, particularly recently over the Ukraine War. McConnell still supports aid to the country, while Trump previously threatened to cut aid. He also voted against some of Trump’s key appointments, notably Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence and Pete Hegseth as Secretary of the Department of Defense.
After announcing his departure from party leadership in 2024, McConnell warned against “right-wing flirtation with isolation and decline.”
“Standing up to China will require Trump to reject the myopic advice that he prioritize that challenge by abandoning Ukraine,” remarked McConnell. “A Russian victory would not only damage the United States’ interest in European security and increase U.S. military requirements in Europe; it would also compound the threats from China, Iran, and North Korea.”
He also criticized Trump’s diplomatic style, saying that “Trump sometimes undermined these tough policies through his words and deeds. He courted Putin, he treated allies and alliance commitments erratically and sometimes with hostility,” concluding that “these public episodes raised doubts about whether the United States was committed to standing up to Russian aggression, even when it actually did so.”
McConnell is not only the longest-serving sitting senator but also the longest-serving Senate party leader in the United States. He became Minority Leader in 2007 and led the Senate GOP until 2024. During his last term, the 83-year-old struggled with regular health problems, including repeated falls and extended “freezes” during press briefings and conferences.
McConnell vowed to reject calls to “give up on American primacy” and to continue fighting what he described as isolationism in the GOP.
Aaron is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft and a contributor to the Mises Institute. He received both his undergraduate and masters degrees in international relations from Liberty University.
Top Photo: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) listens as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting Republican Congressional leaders about tax reform at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
This is one perspective in a Responsible Statecraft ‘debate’ over the value of federal aid for ‘soft power’ programs, including regional studies, think tanks, USAID, and academic exchanges. See a counterpoint by Adam Ratzlaff, here.
It is undeniable that the social sciences are under attack from the Trump Administration.
A sense of incuriosity about the world seems to pervade the various cost-cutting measures which are inconsistently applied to many aspects of the federal government by organizations such as DOGE. Obvious flaws in the argument for such bureaucratic downsizing become apparent when the President announces a record breaking 1 trillion dollar defense budget for the coming year.
The problems with a brute force only approach to foreign affairs are manifold, and it can be easy to see the ending of funding for social science research and student exchange programs as uniformly negative across the board, particularly with dramatic scenes such as the closure of the U.S. Institute for Peace playing out in the news.
And yet, amidst the chaos, a chance for an honest reckoning about what did and did not work with the old soft power machine is undeniably necessary. For those wishing to pivot to a restraint-focused foreign policy, many of these institutions served as ideological self-reinforcement mechanisms that created a monoculture which upheld rampant interventionist narratives.
Far from contributing to peace, they often served as erudite and fashionable justifications for endless war. Even the protests to keep many of these organizations open emphasized their role in power projection and providing competitive services against other countries.
The Fulbright Program, for example, took part in the noble goal of allowing international exchange for students engaged in topics with an international focus to live and study abroad. The logic behind this, however, was tied to the vision of its founder, the late Senator J. William Fulbright, which was liberal internationalism. The dominant ideology of the postwar- and especially post-Cold War era, this world view preached cosmopolitanism but had a disturbing trend of universalizing all international issues into that of a cosmic struggle, opening the potential of endless interventionism as the default position of the up and coming professional managerial class.
Such institutions are part of a global network of so-called ‘soft power’ which is less about being worldly in a way that fosters understanding of the world as it is, but rather seeks to create a global cadre of evangelists bent on changing the world in ways amenable to the project of American civic missionaries.
These groups serve as a kind of screening process that limit the ideological and world view and intellectual diversity of people entering the foreign policy field all while claiming to be purveyors of multiculturalism.
Take USAID, for example. While the organization undeniably did many things that benefited people abroad as well as facilitated U.S. diplomacy in certain sectors, these causes were often human shields for the actual goal of soft regime change and infiltration into the affairs of sovereign states. The faux-president of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, received $52 million from USAID to claim to be some kind deposed legitimate ruler when he was anything but. This followed years and years of USAID-funded attempts to depose Nicolas Maduro, following failed efforts to overturn his predecessor Hugo Chavez.
More relevant to the echo chamber of interventionism, however, is the effect these organizations had on reinforcing narrative control within the United States. In much the same way that scholarships and exchange programs can just as easily create a monoculture feedback loop, so too did USAID-backed funding networks prop up activists and political networks that could claim to be independent sources and activists when interviewed by U.S. media while they were actually being funded by the United States government.
The Trump Administration’s attack on free and open scholarship, particularly in regards to Israel and Palestine, is a very real threat to open and critical inquiry on foreign affairs. But it is a continuation, not a divergence, from trends within academic, media, and NGO establishments that see a consensus building around endless war, sanctioning, and interventionism in the service of a groupthink fueled ideology.
This network is effectively a velvet glove placed over the mailed fist of a declining quest for global hegemony. If we are to save the humanities and an actual robust and worldly education for future diplomats and policy makers, we must reconceptualize what it means to be worlds away from the missionary impulse of the colonial administrator and into that of the culturally and politically tolerant scholar. Of what use can education and exchange be if it does not assist in adapting to the world as it really is rather than what one country’s aspiring elite wishes it to be?
keep readingShow less
Top photo credit: A man with his face and body painted, celebrating the Alliance of Sahel States, is seen at the Festival sur le Niger, also known as Segou'Art, as it occurs in the wake of Mali and its neighbours Niger and Burkina Faso leaving the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), in Segou, Mali February 6, 2025. REUTERS/Aboubacar Traore
The decision by the military-led Alliance of Sahel States to impose a 0.5% import duty on goods from the nations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has added a new twist in the rift plaguing the West African bloc.
The tariff, which exempts only humanitarian aid, threatens to upend free trade and provoke retaliation, effectively creating a trade war within the region at a time when Africa’s exports to the crucial U.S. market face new challenges.
The Alliance of Sahel States (AES) comprises Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger — Sahelian countries racked by a wave of coups that overthrew pro-Western regimes between 2020 and 2023. Launched as a security pact formed in 2023 in response to ECOWAS’ threat to take military action to restore the democratic order in Niger, the AES has grown into a rival bloc with its own regional aspirations.
The AES countries have also switched international alliances by ending ties with their former colonial power, France, and expelling troops of other Western nations, including the United States, while befriending Russia from which it has received military support.
The AES trio is at the epicenter of jihadist violence that has rocked the entire Sahelian region. Last year, Washington closed a $100 million drone base and withdrew some 1,000 troops at Agadez in compliance with a demand by the junta in Niger. Strained relations with ECOWAS nations like Nigeria have also stalled joint military operations like the Multinational Joint Task Force that has mounted important counter-terrorism operations in the Lake Chad Basin.
Just last week, Niger dumped French and announced Hausa as its new official national language, following a pattern already set by neighboring Burkina Faso. The three countries have also pulled out of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, but, curiously, retained their membership in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA/WAEMU), which means they remain tied, through the common CFA franc currency, to France’s sphere of influence.
The new tariff is the AES’ most audacious economic measure yet. It has the potential to escalate the price of food and other essential commodities while disrupting trade flows across the region.
“I could imagine a slowdown in demand by AES consumers for certain ECOWAS goods,” Danielle Resnick, a Senior Research Fellow at International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), told RS. But the impact could be much worse for the alliance member states, which are already among the world’s poorest nations, she noted. “Adding this tariff will increase the price of imports, including food, for their consumers.”.
The three AES countries are all classified as a major global hunger hotspot with a significant portion of their populations experiencing food insecurity and acute hunger in early 2025. Both Burkina Faso and Niger rely on their ECOWAS neighbors – Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire and Nigeria – to meet their food and electricity needs.
Compared to ECOWAS’s total GDP of $2.091 trillion, the AES can boast a combined GDP of only $62 billion.
At the same time, the three AES countries are landlocked; hence their heavy reliance on imports via ports controlled by their ECOWAS neighbors. In 2022, for example, 92% of the cargo unloaded at the port of Lomé, Togo, was destined for Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. This makes them especially vulnerable to any counter-measures the ECOWAS nations may choose to take in retaliation for the AES’s new levy.
In 2023, when ECOWAS countries closed their borders and cut vital supply to Niger, the country was nearly brought to its knees.
Nevertheless, the AES tariff on its own is not so large as to disproportionately divert trade. ECOWAS countries can easily navigate the headwinds it might bring by diversifying its export markets. “Another scenario is that ECOWAS retaliates with its own import duties,” Resnick noted.
Given the truculent character of key actors on both sides of the divide, as well as the geopolitical dynamics behind the rift, this scenario – amounting in effect to a trade war – cannot be ruled out.
But this will only make a bad situation worse. A regional trade war is the worst possible scenario at a time when Africa is bracing for the consequences of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff plans and their implications for world trade. Trump has levied a 10% baseline tariff on all U.S. trading partners and an additional 14% tariff on countries that charge higher tariff rates on American goods, although the latter has now been suspended for 90 days.
The new tariffs affect African countries like Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, whose exports to the U.S. have enjoyed preferential treatment under the U.S. flagship trade program, the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA).
Since 2000, AGOA has helped eligible sub-Saharan African countries export about 6,400 products duty-free to the U.S., leading to the growth of local manufacturing while creating between 300,000 direct and 1.3 million indirect jobs in its first decade. The new U.S. tariffs means the future of this important cornerstone of U.S.-Africa relations now hangs in the balance.
As of this moment, it is unclear whether AGOA will be renewed when it expires at the end of September.
If so, Africa’s exports to the U.S. will lose their competitive edge and decline in the longer run. The effects would be uneven, but the most devastating impacts would be felt in Lesotho, Mauritius and Madagascar, all of which host significant apparel industries that are highly reliant on the U.S. market. Overall, the U.S. is Africa’s third largest trading partner, after China and the EU. In 2022 alone, the value of ECOWAS exports to the U.S. came to $9.4 billion, up 38.8% from the previous year.
With its large population and a combined GDP of $2 trillion, sub-Saharan Africa possesses the wherewithal to absorb some of the worst impacts of the growing global trade crisis. To do so, however, it must better develop its internal market, a difficult prospect given the history of sometimes acrimonious relations among African countries that have hindered the realization of the goals of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
As a result, African countries trade more outside the continent than within it. For example, intra-African trade in 2023 stood at $192.2 billion, just 14.9% of total African trade, and the global share of intra-African exports and imports actually declined from 14.5% in 2021 to 13.7% in 2022. Within the region, intra-ECOWAS trade stood at less than 12% in 2023 of total trade by member countries.
The unfolding crisis in global trade calls for Africa to strengthen itself by leveraging the immense potential that exists for creating a single continental market encompassing 54 countries with a combined nominal GDP of $3.4 trillion.
To reach that potential and remove all barriers to continental free trade, AfCFTA’s ambition will require far more cooperation and commitment than has been evident to date. A trade war between AES and ECOWAS goes in the opposite direction.
keep readingShow less
Top Photo: An aerial view of the Pentagon, in Washington, District of Columbia. (TSGT ANGELA STAFFORD, USAF/public domain)
An aerial view of the Pentagon, in Washington, District of Columbia. (TSGT ANGELA STAFFORD, USAF/public domain)
In 2011, Marc Andreessen penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal proclaiming that “Software is eating the world.” Andreessen argued that every industry — even national defense — would have to embrace the “software revolution” sooner or later.
Now, Andreessen’s acolytes just have to convince the Pentagon – so long as it’s their software the department buys. Last week, the Atlantic Council launched an effort in partnership with dozens of defense industry executives — several of whom are funded by Andreessen’s firm a16z — calling on the Pentagon to usher in an era of “software-defined warfare,” a term which includes artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
In his opening remarks, the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig claimed that policymakers adopted over 70% of the recommendations from a previous commission on defense acquisition. In other words, government officials are likely taking note of the Atlantic Council’s new report.
Pointing to the threat of China, its authors argue that the Pentagon should quickly embrace software-defined warfare by increasing reliance on digital weapon testing tools, cutting software funding restrictions, and prioritizing commercial technologies. For instance, it recommends the Pentagon “enforce commercial as the default approach for software” instead of building its own custom software.
Roberto Gonzalez, a professor at San Jose State University and author of a recent paper on how Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial-complex, told RS in an interview that these recommendations could remove critical checks and balances; “Once you’re going full commercial and abandoning efforts in-house to produce technologies that might be of use for the Pentagon, you are putting yourself entirely at the mercy of these firms,” said Gonzalez.
The Atlantic Council’s recommendations echo those of a Pentagon commission tasked with reforming the department’s budgeting and acquisition process, known as Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE). Much like the Atlantic Council’s Commission on “software-defined warfare,” the PPBE commission was largely composed of individuals with ties to the defense industry.
Both groups recommend that the Pentagon eradicate restrictions on software funding by using research and development, procurement, or operations and maintenance funding for the “full cycle of software development, acquisition, and sustainment.” The argument is that software programs require iterative development, rendering the acquisition system’s industrial-era life-cycle stages irrelevant.
The problem is that removing funding restrictions threatens the Pentagon’s ability to evaluate program cost growth and, ultimately, its ability to terminate defective programs — many of which are dangerous and unnecessary.
"Beware of promises to speed delivery of weapons by cutting regulations,” explained Quincy Institute Senior Research Fellow William Hartung. “They may go well beyond cutting unnecessary paperwork to eliminating essential functions like independent evaluations of weapons cost and performance or guidelines to help Pentagon officials reduce price gouging.”
Additionally, the Atlantic Council Commission recommends that the Pentagon modernize test and evaluation infrastructure by simulating the “capability viability” of “digitally enabled technologies.” In other words, the Pentagon should rely on digital engineering tools and simulators to test new technologies rather than testing them in real life — which they suggest slows down the timeline for deployment while presenting operational security challenges.
Digital simulation to test and evaluate weapon systems is not new. In fact, the most expensive weapon acquisition program in U.S. history — the F-35 fighter jet, now expected to exceed $2 trillion over the course of its life cycle — can attribute some of its schedule delays to its Joint Simulation Environment (JSE).
The JSE is a digital training and testing tool designed to evaluate the F-35’s potential performance in a heavily defended airspace. The Pentagon completed testing the F-35 through the JSE in September 2023 after over seven years of development, during which time the department produced F-35s at a rate commensurate with a program already cleared through testing and evaluation.
Lockheed Martin was the primary contractor responsible for producing the F-35 while reluctantly cooperating with the Navy to develop the JSE. One can only imagine the cost growth and schedule delays possible for a software program built and tested by its own developers without any funding restrictions.
“With talk of boosting the Pentagon budget to $1 trillion per year and the procurement of complex, software-driven products on the rise, it's quite possible that more regulations may be needed to avoid shouldering the taxpayer with costly systems that do not work as advertised,” said Hartung.
Perhaps most striking about the report, however, is the fact that the authors barely mention AI. The commission is sponsored almost entirely by defense technology companies that create AI software and autonomous weapons. Gonzalez explained that if you try to sell AI to the Pentagon, some top brass may see you as a snake oil salesman. “Software, by contrast, has been around for a long time and seems less mysterious. It makes you think about floppy disks instead of autonomous swarms,” he said.
Software is much more than floppy disks. +972 Magazine reported last year that Israel employs a software known as Lavender that assigns a 1-100 score to almost every Gazan based on how likely it is they are a militant, even though it has a 10 percent false positive rate. Israeli Defense Forces then use a separate software called “Where’s Daddy?” which tracks when targets are home and marks them for bombing. In its report, the Atlantic Council makes the case for investment in “AI-enabled and software solutions” by pointing to their use by the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to address challenges with “automatic-target recognition.”
The report claims that the commissioners and consulted experts on the report participated in a “personal, not institutional, capacity.” However, the commission’s recommendations, if accepted, would pay dividends for the employers of these commissioners — the likes of which include Trae Stephens of Anduril, James Taiclet of Lockheed Martin, and Mark Valentin of Skydio. The commission is co-chaired by former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who is now a partner at Red Cell, a venture capital firm that invests in military start-ups such as Epirus.
The Atlantic Council's project director even closed the report launch event by telling the audience to consider investing in the commission sponsors.
“Our foundational sponsors (are) Booz Allen Hamilton, CAE, Helsing, Lockheed Martin, and Second Front Systems. As well as Aalyria, Accrete AI, Adarga, Domino Data Lab, Edge Case Research, Fathom 5, Fortem Technologies, Kodiak Robotics, Latent AI, Peraton, Primer AI, SAAB, Saronic, Scale AI, and Skydio. Phew, that was a list,” she said.
“For those looking to invest, those are companies you might want to look at,” she added.
In true DC fashion, industry-funded think tanks are happy to provide portfolio recommendations on top of national security advice — for the right price.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.