WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is challenging President-elect Donald Trump to reject isolationist voices within their party and build his foreign policy around military strength, arguing that if the U.S. withdraws from global involvement, “its enemies are only too eager to fill the void.”
In an essay published Monday in Foreign Affairs, McConnell took the rare step of directly warning Trump as he plans to leave office in the coming weeks. The Kentucky Republican plans to remain in the Senate and has made clear that his top priority will be pushing for the United States to maintain and improve its global strength.
“The time to restore American hard power is now,” McConnell wrote, arguing that military preparedness must replace “both the left’s belief in hollow internationalism and the right’s flirtation with isolation and decline.”
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McConnell has long resisted the growing isolationist wing in his party and this year made an aggressive, ultimately successful effort to pass aid to Ukraine, even as many in his party in Congress openly opposed it. But the essay is his most direct warning yet to Trump and his allies and advisers, including newly elected Vice President J.D. Vance, an Ohio senator who has been one of the loudest voices against aid to Ukraine.
Trump has spoken out against “forever wars” even before his first term and has long spoken positively about Russian President Vladimir Putin. He made clear during his campaign that he would take action to quickly end the war in Ukraine and has called on Putin to immediately reach a ceasefire with Ukraine.
He has also said he would be open to reducing military aid to Ukraine and withdrawing the United States from NATO.
McConnell wrote that Trump “deserves credit” for reversing some Obama-era restrictions on aid to Ukraine during his first term and for allowing the transfer of lethal weapons to Kiev. But he writes that the former and future president “sometimes undermined these tough policies through his words and actions,” including his relationship with Putin.
“He wooed Putin, he treated allies and alliance commitments erratically and sometimes hostilely, and in 2019 he withheld $400 million in security aid from Ukraine,” McConnell wrote. “These public episodes raised doubts about whether the United States was prepared to resist Russian aggression, even if it actually did so.”
Trump should “commit to significant and sustained increases in defense spending,” McConnell advised, as well as investments in the defense industry and access to new military capabilities.
McConnell’s essay comes after years of an intensely complicated relationship with Trump, in which he aligned himself when it served his purposes in the Senate while criticizing him behind his back and, to a lesser extent, in public. He did not speak to Trump for more than three years after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters, but endorsed him earlier this year after it became clear he would be the Republican presidential nominee.
The essay also comes as speculation continues about McConnell’s new role as a grassroots member, whether he will oppose some of Trump’s nominees and otherwise publicly challenge him now that he has been freed from the responsibilities of leadership.
However that turns out, McConnell has made clear that he wants to cement his legacy by pushing the party to embrace the US’s role as a global leader.
He writes that Trump “will undoubtedly hear from some that he should prioritize a single theater and downgrade U.S. interests and commitments elsewhere,” including by elevating Asia at the expense of interests in Europe and the Center -East. But if “the United States continues to withdraw, its enemies will be eager to fill the void.”
“A Russian victory would not only harm United States interests in European security and increase American military needs in Europe; it would also increase threats from China, Iran and North Korea,” McConnell wrote.
