Divisions on the right between those who believe in a global system backed by US military power and others who see that system as a drain on US resources are not new. That schism has persisted for decades.
The latter group, which has often included ultra-nativist and racist figures, was pushed further to the fringes after the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001.
The US responded to those attacks by launching a global “war on terror”, with conservatives strongly backing US interventions in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
But those wars came to be seen as bloody and prolonged failures, as the public started to become more sceptical of US involvement abroad.
“Young people in particular who witnessed these disastrous wars are not sold on the benefits of this global US security architecture or the ideology that leads to interventions abroad,” Mills said.
Since first taking office in 2017, Trump has mostly continued the routine use of US military force overseas, overseeing drone strikes across the Middle East and Africa and assassinating Iranian General Qassem Soleimani during his first term in office.
During his second term, he has openly mused about using military force to seize control of the Panama Canal and Greenland.
But experts said he has also grasped the political benefits of pitching himself as an anti-war candidate and critic of a foreign policy establishment that has become discredited in the eyes of many voters.
In his 2024 presidential campaign, for instance, Trump promised to bring a swift end to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, where Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 49,617 Palestinians — a figure that experts said is likely an undercount, given the thousands of bodies still buried beneath the rubble.
Trump’s stance on Ukraine has pleased many on the right, who see his actions as evidence of a transactional approach that puts US interests first.
The president, for instance, has pressured Ukraine to grant the US access to its mineral resources as compensation for the cost of US military assistance. This week, he even floated shifting control of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure into US hands.
But Trump has been more hesitant to apply similar pressure to Israel, even as the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discards a ceasefire that Trump himself boasted about achieving.
“In general, I think we’ve seen the Trump administration taking certain decisions that reflect a willingness to buck convention in ways that some people find alarming, such as moving closer to Russian preferences to end the war in Ukraine,” said Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an anti-interventionist think tank.
“But I think Israel has its own gravity, and policies related to Israel are not going to be impacted by some of those same impulses. It seems to have become something of a blind spot for this administration, as it was for Biden.”
That inconsistency points to larger tensions within Trump’s coalition.
While ambivalence and even outright animosity towards Ukraine has become common on the right, foreign policy writer Matthew Petti, an assistant editor with the libertarian-leaning Reason Magazine, said the conservative movement is being pulled in different directions when it comes to Israel, a longtime US ally.
“The newfound aversion to foreign wars, especially in the Middle East, has sat uncomfortably with the right-wing cultural affinity for Israel,” he told Al Jazeera via text.
“The question has become impossible to ignore lately, as Israel has become the main justification for US entanglement in the region.”
He explained that while a larger generational debate over Israel and US foreign policy plays out, the far right is specifically riven with internal divisions.
Some, for example, see Israel as a valuable template for muscular nationalism. By contrast, figures like Nick Fuentes, who embraces an unflinching anti-Semitism, oppose Trump’s embrace of Israel.
How those contradictions will work themselves out within Trump’s movement remains to be seen.
While public support for Israel has weakened in recent years, particularly among young voters, the Republican Party remains largely in favour of robust US assistance to the Middle Eastern country.
And Trump himself appears to be little swayed by the internal divisions over his strikes on the Houthis.
“Tremendous damage has been inflicted upon the Houthi barbarians,” he wrote in a social media post on Wednesday. “They will be completely annihilated!”
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