Donald Trump campaigned on ending America’s “forever wars” in the Middle East. In office, however, he opened up a new front in those conflicts by striking Iran. However the current conflict turns out, Trump’s trajectory bears a striking resemblance to that of Barack Obama. Like Trump, Obama campaigned against America’s involvement in the Middle East. Yet despite Obama’s soaring rhetoric and promise of a “pivot to Asia,” he proved unable to extricate the United States from the region. To the contrary, he bombed Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2014, with effects arguably as catastrophic as those of Bush’s intervention against Saddam Hussein. The stewardship of America’s “forever wars” thus passed from the neoconservatives of the Bush White House to the liberal humanitarians of the Obama era and then to the national populists under Trump.
Which will be the next faction to take up the baton? Currently, the strongest candidates for the role are the members of the Democratic coalition affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Like Obama and Trump before them, this new crop of populists is gaining traction as vocal critics of US foreign policy. Like Trump when he was in the opposition, these opponents now criticize the president from the political position that he abandoned. For instance, Abdul el Sayed, a DSA ally currently running to be Michigan’s Democratic candidate for the Senate, is standing on a de facto America First platform of the left, attacking the Trump administration for embroiling itself in a regional war that serves Israeli interests more than US ones.