J.D. Tuccille: Lindsey Graham was the only hawk Trump listened to

The late senator made his peace with the president and gained tremendous influence over foreign policy

One-time Trump critic turned presidential confidant Lindsey Graham, the senior senator from South Carolina, died on the weekend. The hawkish politician’s death is likely to affect America’s relations with the world. With the Republican Party’s shift towards populism, nationalism, and isolationism, Graham left his mark as an advocate for continued — and often violent — engagement with other nations.

He argued for U.S. involvement in NATO and support for Ukraine and Israel at a time when many others around the president seemed inclined to have the country go it alone. It’s likely that his absence will lead to significant policy shifts. Recommended Videos While President Donald Trump has made headlines with his skepticism towards American military alliances and his confrontations with trade partners and ostensibly friendly nations, the conflicts could have been much sharper.

As early as 1987, the then-real-estate developer took out newspaper ads arguing that U.S. allies don’t pay their fair share of the tab for mutual defense. While Trump continuously prods other NATO members to pay more, as president he hasn’t openly pushed for withdrawal from the alliance — an idea he entertained in the past. The administration’s consent for Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles also runs contrary to the president’s skepticism of the country and its president.

Support for Israel — the site of the other major conflict at the moment — has been less in question given Trump’s long-time affection for the world’s only majority-Jewish country. But that might not be the case if many of those around the president had the chief executive’s undivided attention. They haven’t up to this point.

“I can’t die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out and do Israeli-Saudi normalization,” he reportedly joked as he felt unwell shortly before his death from an aortic tear. The topics he mentioned are telling.

Trump entered politics as a critic of America’s military adventures. He opposed the Iraq war at least as far back as 2004. Ironically, he charged in 2012 that then-President Barack Obama would “attack Iran in order to get re-elected” — words that have come back to haunt him as his administration launches air strikes against that country’s government.

Whatever the president’s inclinations and despite his White House biography’s claim that he put “a stop to endless wars,” Graham has always been there to nudge the administration towards aggressive engagement with the world. Last September, Politico attributed a strategy of burying penalties for Russia in federal funding bills to “Graham, who has been pushing his colleagues and the administration for months to embrace a measure that would impose secondary sanctions on” Russia’s allies for their support of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The move left lawmakers opposed to such interventions stuck with a choice between voting for sanctions or letting federal workers go without paychecks.

On a similar note, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte called Graham “a powerful advocate for America who believed strongly in the NATO Alliance and was actively working to bring an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine.” According to the Associated Press, “(for) decades Lindsey Graham traveled the globe selling a vision of the United States as a nation willing to use its military might to protect democracies around the world.” By contrast, Vice-President J.D. Vance has pushed to end U.S. military support for Ukraine, says that “NATO has failed to carry its fair share of the burden for literally decades,” and has lately become extremely critical of Israel and its government.

As the heir apparent to Trump’s nationalist MAGA movement, you’d think Vance would have more traction with the president. But, despite Trump’s often harsh words for foreign leaders, America’s current foreign policy (unlike economic policy) demonstrates more of Graham’s thinking than that of Vance. Graham’s influence with President Trump is a demonstration of the power of political reinvention.

A decade ago, Graham described the then-presidential hopeful as “unfit for office.” He accused Trump of running “a campaign on xenophobia, race-baiting, religious bigotry.” Trump won anyway, and Graham made his peace with the new chief executive.

After the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Graham said “he’d never been so humiliated and embarrassed for the country.” But, as he had after Trump’s first White House win, Graham once again connected with the man who had clearly remade the Republican Party as a personal vehicle. “If he ran, it would be his nomination for the having,” Graham said of a potential Trump return to politics in a 2021 interview even as he worked with the Democratic Biden administration to achieve his foreign policy vision.

Of course, Trump did run again, took the nomination, and returned to the presidency. And Graham was there to greet him and guide him in an international and warlike direction. With Graham gone, there’s no obvious successor to continue his interventionist, war-hawk advocacy.

Ukraine, NATO, Israel, and general engagement still have fans in Washington, D.C., but few of them have President Trump’s ear to the same extent as the South Carolina legislator. Just as important, such internationalist cheerleading is out of step with the American people. Americans are divided over NATO, Ukraine, and Israel.

Democrats tend to be more skeptical of Israel, with Republicans more dubious of NATO and Ukraine, but support for all three has weakened. According to Quinnipiac University pollsters, “60 per cent of voters think the U.S. military action against Iran was not worth it.” With Graham’s passing, Americans seem inclined to less engagement in the world rather than more.

The time is ripe for Graham’s isolationist rivals to fill the gap left by his death. Lindsey Graham excelled at playing the Washington, D.C., political game to win his way in an environment moving away from his interventionist views. But his time appears to have come and gone.

National Post