The GOP’s history of endangering American and global security

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct who was president when the Berlin Wall fell. We regret the error.

Republican support for Trump’s trashing of NATO and defunding Ukraine is just the latest demonstration of GOP myopia about the role of the United States in world affairs. The total American economic and military aid to Ukraine has so far amounted to just one-third of 1 percent of U.S. economic product — a lesser percentage than that in eleven NATO member states. Yes, most NATO members spend barely 2 percent of GDP on defense, but Europeans have given more economic aid to Ukraine than has the U.S., the leader in military contributions.

GOP leaders were not always so short sighted. Teddy Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Even before Woodrow Wilson called for a League of Nations, William Howard Taft proposed a League to Enforce Peace. Warren G. Harding summoned a conference of the great naval powers in 1921-1922, the first arms control conference in history. Dwight D. Eisenhower held the first Cold War summit with Soviet leaders in 1955 to improve East-West tensions. Richard Nixon met with Mao Zedong in 1972 to begin normalizing relations with China.

On balance, however, Republicans have often acted like a wrecking ball to shatter American and global security. After WWI, Republicans spurned Wilson’s League of Nations, leaving Europe to deal with an angry and vengeful Germany. Their inward-looking trade policies in the 1920s helped bring on the Great Depression. Though Eisenhower sought peace with the USSR, his CIA caused enduring problems by helping to overthrow legitimate governments in Iran and Guatemala, and by trying and failing to do so in Cuba. When Hungarians revolted against Communist rule in 1956, Ike just watched Soviet tanks run them down.

To weaken Democrats in the 1968 elections, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger sabotaged a Vietnam peace deal negotiated in Paris. Having won the 1968 and 1972 elections, Nixon kept the war going and expanded it to Cambodia until American forces were compelled to depart Saigon in disgrace. In 1973, Nixon and Kissinger fostered a coup in Chile that replaced a leftist but popular government with a military dictatorship. A few years later, President Ronald Reagan broke U.S. and international law as he backed rebels fighting a leftist regime in Nicaragua.

The Berlin Wall fell after Reagan’s presidency, but he drove a spear into the prospects of containing the nuclear arms race with his “star wars” defense program. If the United States could build a barrier against Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Kremlin would keep working to improve its strategic missiles. Billions of dollars later, there is still no reliable defense against ICBMs, but George W. Bush killed serious arms limitation by withdrawing from the antimissile defense treaty signed by Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev in 1972. This is still an aggravation to U.S.-Russia relations in 2024.

The very worst blow to U.S. security was the “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush in 2003. Its harmful consequences continue today — more than two decades of dangerous and fruitless American involvement in the unending chaos of the Middle East. Compounding these and other problems, the Bush administration “un-signed” U.S. adherence to the International Criminal Court. Bush also maintained U.S. refusal to align with most of humanity in joining the Law of the Sea, even though this neuters America’s ability to demand that others obey these international accords.

There was some hope for better Middle East relations when the United States and five partners negotiated the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, but this breakthrough was scuttled by Donald Trump, setting the stage for Tehran to become another nuclear-armed threat to world security. Trump also set back hopes for controlling global warming by withdrawing from the Paris climate accords.

Now most GOP politicians follow Trump’s zeal for scrapping the most successful alliance in history and cutting aid to the heroes blocking Russia’s dictator from further assaults on the free world. Reversing Teddy’s maxim, these politicians chatter loudly and carry no stick.

Walter Clemens is an associate at the Harvard Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and professor emeritus of Political Science at Boston University. He wrote “The Republican War on America: Dangers of Trump and Trumpism” (Westphalia 2023).