Elliott Abrams Launches Group to Chart GOP Foreign Policy

The debate over what, exactly, a Republican foreign policy should look like began with the fallout from the Iraq war. It gained steam with the GOP's 2016 nomination of Donald Trump, who spurned many of what had once been core GOP foreign policy principles, and was a throughline of his presidency.

We didn't get many answers. Now, a new organization aims to define the contours of a foreign policy vision for the post-Trump GOP that unites American internationalists across the political spectrum. Named after former senator and cold warrior Arthur Vandenberg (R., Mich.), the Vandenberg Coalition will advocate a platform of conservative internationalism—characterized by a strong military, maintaining alliances, and fair trade, all of which the coalition's leaders believe counter U.S. adversaries, keep the country safe, and protect the interests of working Americans.

"There is a great tradition of Republican and conservative internationalism that starts with Arthur Vandenberg and goes right on through Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and right on to today, but it was divided in 2016," said Elliott Abrams, the chairman of the group. "Some of us were ‘Never Trumpers,' and many of us were in the administration. We thought this coalition should reunite now because we were divided over Trump, but we were not divided over policy: over China, Iran, Russia, or the defense budget. Now is the time to get this started, and we've had a terrific reaction."