The Militarism of the 'Jacksonians'

Hardline militarists are never going to deliver the kind of change that restrainers and non-interventionists want.

Jordan Michael Smith has written a long essay on the changes in Republican and conservative foreign policy thinking. The entire piece is worth reading, but I want to focus on the discussion of “Jacksonian” foreign policy. Smith describes the bulk of the GOP as “Jacksonian” in its leanings:

Jacksonianism is as much a gut instinct as it is a coherent set of ideas, a hyper-patriotic expression of anger and resentment at those designated as globalists or internationalists. Political parties are heterogeneous, and not all of the new right-wing perspectives can be classified in this way. Some oppose all interventions in other countries, while still others counsel restraint but favor selective interventionism. But Jacksonianism is the dominant strain at work, especially among the grassroots.

The “Jacksonian” label has never been very useful as a way of distinguishing one group of hawks from another. In practice, “Jacksonians” are simply hawkish by default and don’t take much prodding to endorse expansive foreign policy goals. If you were a “Jacksonian” Republican in 2002-03, you almost certainly supported the invasion of Iraq and cheered on regime change just like your “Wilsonian” and “Hamiltonian” allies did. “Jacksonians” didn’t and don’t believe in nation-building, but most of them have no problem with attacking other nations on the flimsiest of pretexts. In other words, “Jacksonians” are much more likely to support an unnecessary war than they are to oppose it at the beginning when it matters.

Insofar as “Jacksonian” Republicans sometimes express reservations about certain interventions (e.g., Libya or Syria), this usually happens because the president ordering the intervention is a Democrat and their partisanship leads them to find reasons to object to something they would otherwise support or at least tolerate. I submit that the same thing accounts for at least some of the skepticism we hear today from the Republican side about U.S. support for Ukraine. When we turn to specific issues, we will find that “Jacksonians” almost never disagree with conventional hawkish views because for all intents and purposes they are conventional hawks. These are the people Van Jackson calls the nationalist militarists, and I think that label describes them very well.

I don’t hold out a lot of hope that a “Jacksonian moment” will lead to “preventing overreach and curbing the default hawkishness that still predominates in Washington,” because the record show that when push comes to shove “Jacksonians” do not usually stand up to overreach or hawkishness. In most cases, they rally behind both. To the extent that they raise objections, they are typically criticizing the means being used for certain policies rather than the ends themselves. Like liberal hawks under Bush, they will quibble with how the administration is doing things but will not question the policy as such. When someone from their party is in power, most of them won’t even quibble.

If “Jacksonians” are displacing an earlier generation of establishment hawks, that should not lead us to conclude that the former are significantly less hawkish. There is an ongoing effort on the part of some hardliners to rebrand themselves as something else, but it isn’t persuasive. Smith quotes Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation saying, “It’s highly unlikely that there is going to ever again be a Republican president who is ‘hawkish,’” but that makes no sense unless we strip the word hawkish of its normal meaning. It is not only likely that the next Republican president will be conventionally hawkish, but I would bet that it is a near certainty.

The good news is that the popularity of “Jacksonianism” in the GOP and in the country has been exaggerated. The assumption has been that “Jacksonians” represent most rank-and-file Republicans in the country, but that assumption is mistaken. This is something of a hobbyhorse of mine, but after all these years I’m still not convinced that there are all that many “Jacksonians” out there. When Americans’ foreign policy views have been broken down according to the four “types,” very few Americans fall into the “Jacksonian” category.

The Eurasia Group Foundation’s survey has been tracking this for several years, and the results are surprising if you assume that “Jacksonians” make up most of one of the major parties. According to the survey, only 13% of Americans fit this group while 44% are Jeffersonians and 33% are Wilsonians. Among Republican respondents, a little less than a third fall under the “Jacksonian” label. While we can say that “Jacksonians” definitely exist, they do not make up most rank-and-file Republicans. If they are now enjoying more influence than in previous decades, that does not bode well for the future of Republican foreign policy, since it is likely to remain at least as hardline and militaristic as it has been and could easily become worse.

According to the same survey, Jeffersonians remain the largest group in the country and in the GOP, but as always they remain underrepresented and unorganized. If we are going to have a more peaceful and restrained foreign policy, we will need to organize Jeffersonians in both parties to demand major changes. Hardline militarists are never going to deliver the kind of change that restrainers and non-interventionists want, and four years of Trump should have been more than enough to prove that.