WASHINGTON — Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is challenging President-elect Donald Trump to reject the isolationist voices within their party and build his foreign policy around military strength, arguing that if the U.S. retreats from global engagement, “its enemies will be only too happy to fill the void.”
In an essay published Monday in Foreign Affairs, McConnell took the rare step of warning Trump directly as he plans to step down from his post in the coming weeks. The Kentucky Republican plans to stay in the Senate and has made clear that his top priority will be pushing for the United States to maintain and improve its global strength.
“The time to restore American hard power is now,” McConnell wrote, arguing that military readiness should override “both left-wing faith in hollow internationalism and right-wing flirtation with isolation and decline.”
McConnell has long pushed back against the growing isolationist wing in his party, making an aggressive, ultimately successful push this year to pass aid to Ukraine when many in his party in Congress were openly opposed to it. But the essay is his most direct warning yet to Trump and his allies and advisers, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, an Ohio senator who was one of the loudest voices in opposition to the Ukraine aid.
Trump has railed against “forever wars” since before his first term in office and long spoken favorably of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He made clear during his campaign that he would move to end the war in Ukraine quickly and has called on Putin to reach an immediate ceasefire with Ukraine.
He has also said he would be open to reducing military aid to Ukraine and pulling the United States out of NATO.
McConnell wrote that Trump “deserves credit” for reversing some Obama-era limitations on assistance to Ukraine in his first term and authorizing a transfer of lethal weapons to Kyiv. But he writes that the former and future president “sometimes undermined these tough policies through his words and deeds,” including his relationship with Putin.
“He courted Putin, he treated allies and alliance commitments erratically and sometimes with hostility, and in 2019 he withheld $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine,” McConnell wrote. “These public episodes raised doubts about whether the United States was committed to standing up to Russian aggression, even when it actually did so.”
Trump should “commit to a significant and sustained increase in defense spending,” McConnell recommended, as well as investments in the defense industry and access to new military capabilities.
McConnell’s essay comes after years of an intensely complicated relationship with Trump, aligning with him when it served his purposes in the Senate while criticizing him behind his back and, to a lesser extent, in public. He did not speak to Trump for more than three years after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters, but endorsed him earlier this year after it became clear that he would be the GOP presidential nominee.
The essay also comes as there is speculation about McConnell’s new role as a rank-and-file member, whether he will oppose some of Trump’s nominees and otherwise challenge him publicly now that he is freed from the responsibilities of leadership.
However that may play out, McConnell has made clear that he wants to cement his legacy by pushing the party to embrace the U.S. role as a global leader.
He writes that Trump will “no doubt hear from some that he should prioritize a single theater and downgrade U.S. interests and commitments elsewhere,” including by elevating Asia at the expense of interests in Europe and the Middle East. But if “the United States continues to retreat, its enemies will be only too happy to fill the void.”
“A Russian victory would not only damage the United States’ interest in European security and increase U.S. military requirements in Europe; it would also compound the threats from China, Iran, and North Korea,” McConnell writes.