'Flexible' George W Trump has right on his side

The best essay for understanding right-wing support for Donald Trump's war against Iran was published in National Review in 2023, at the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion.

- Ross Douthat

Written by Tanner Greer, a conservative writer and China analyst, it argued that the official populist repudiation of George W Bush and neoconservatism masked a deep continuity between the Iraq-era conservative mainstream and the Trump-era new right.

Both the Bush-era hawks and the Trumpian right, Greer suggested, were profoundly concerned with civilisational decadence and how it might be escaped. Both yearned for national purpose, both displayed a “vitalist drive” both looked for ways to break out of the limited horizons imposed by liberal convention wisdom and post-Cold War consensus.

Neoconservatives then cared more about democracy and human rights, officially, than most Trump supporters now, but the Iraq hawks cared most profoundly about power in a way that’s entirely relevant today: The famous quote from a Bush official about how “when we act, we create our own reality” directly anticipated the Trump-era belief that “you can just do things”.

In the Trump era, the zone of action was supposed to be the administrative state, immigration policy and higher education, rather than the Middle East. But it’s not surprising that the same spirit could be extended to a new round of war-making, a friend/enemy battle with the mullahs rather than the liberal elite as the existential threat.