Age of Iron: On Conservative Nationalism

by Colin Dueck

The rise of a populist conservative nationalism in the United States has triggered unease at home and abroad. Riding the populist wave, Donald Trump achieved the presidency advocating a hardline nationalist approach. Yet critics frequently misunderstand the Trump administration's foreign policy, along with American nationalism. In Age of Iron, leading authority on Republican foreign policy Colin Dueck demonstrates that conservative nationalism is the oldest democratic tradition in US foreign relations. Designed to preserve self-government, conservative nationalism can be compatible with engagement overseas. But 21st century diplomatic, economic, and military frustrations led to the resurgence of a version that emphasizes US material interests. No longer should the US allow its allies to free-ride, and nor should it surrender its sovereignty to global governance institutions. Because this return is based upon forces larger than Trump, it is unlikely to disappear when he leaves office.

Age of Iron describes the shifting coalitions over the past century among foreign policy factions within the Republican Party, and shows how Trump upended them starting in 2015-16. Dueck offers a balanced summary and assessment of President Trump's foreign policy approach, analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. He also describes the current interaction of conservative public opinion and presidential foreign policy leadership in the broader context of political populism. Finally, he makes the case for a forward-leaning realism, based upon the understanding that the US is entering a protracted period of geopolitical competition with other major powers. The result is a book that captures the past, present, and, possibly, future of conservative foreign policy nationalism in the US.

Genres: Politics

240 pages, Hardcover

Published October 23, 2019

About the author

Colin Dueck is a Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and a non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He studied politics at Princeton University, and international relations at Oxford under a Rhodes scholarship.

Reviews

[Alan Tomkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most intelligent, cogent, and interesting analysis of foreign policy, past and present, that I have yet read. The focus is on the various forms of conservative nationalism, as contrasted with Wilsonian liberal internationalism. The author gives credit where credit is due, particularly to FDR's and Eisenhower's implementations of internationalist approaches much superior to Wilson's. The author also even handedly examines the shortcomings, demonstrated and potential, of each form of foreign policy. He ends the book with a qualified assertion as to which types of foreign policy strategies and tactics are most likely to best serve the United States in the post Trump era to come. I found this relatively short book to be very educational and edifying. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in geopolitics.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very helpful book to read for the current book I'm working on, which is about conservative views of terrorism since the 1960s. Dueck takes a wide-angle view on conservatism and US foreign policy, charting out a typology of conservative approaches to global affairs. His 3 basic categories are A. neoconservative type internationalists. B. Non-interventionists like Buchanan or Taft C. Hard line primacists who believe that the US should attempt to maintain its position as the world's most powerful nation but do so without being constrained by alliances, institutions, law, and nation-building projects. He clearly identifies with the latter-most position, and he makes a good case for this version of primacy (or at least, active strategic balancing against Russia and China on the "world island) as opposed to strategic restraint.

A big point of this book is that Trump's approach to foreign policy isn't really new in US history. He's returning to the salience of the hard-liners and mixing that with some anti-globalist, protectionist, . But Trump's deviations on foreign policy may be more stylistic than substantial (at least in the first term, a this book came out in 2020). The biggest things Trump rejected are immigration, free trade, nation-building wars, and adherence to alliances in which the US bears a disproportionate burden. But the Republicans as a whole remain fairly split between more internationalist and nationalist/protectionist wings. It will be interesting (also terrifying) to see how this plays out in the next few years

Dueck partially defends Trump's foreign policy as a welcome break from overly ambitious and optimistic foreign policies of his predecessors. He makes some fair points, especially about how the American people seem to have rejected the hegemonic, globalizing, interventionist bipartisan consensus of the first 2 decades of the post-Cold War era. But I also thought Dueck sane-washed Trump a little bit by arguing that there's a method behind the sudden lurches in policy, the threats to leave NATO, the echoing of authoritarian rhetoric, and policy-making by tweet. Digging into journalistic accounts of his presidency on FP shows that it was really the responsible foreign policy officials around him who restrained his impulses and created this more transactional approach to USFP. I frankly think Trump's worldview is incredibly simplistic and that he's profoundly ignorant and incurious about world affairs (Dueck doesn't mention that Trump is borderline "unbriefable"). Surrounded by a different, more obsequious (or just plain crazy) set of advisors, it would be easy to see Trump take USFP in highly destructive directions.

Overall, I like Dueck's concise and clear analysis. I find him to be a very balanced thinker. This is a short and well-argued book if you are interested in the topic of conservative internationalism in US history. Still, I also would have liked a little more discussion of what conservative nationalism actually means, and what makes it different from liberal forms of nationalism.