Marco Rubio Is Rebooting the Neocons for the MAGA Era

In his infamous guide to ruling, Niccolò Machiavelli also offers a warning to ambitious advisers: Power belongs to the prince. Those who attempt to channel that power for their own purposes may not be able to control the outcome — and won't last long in court.

During President Donald Trump's first term, numerous foreign policy aides learned this lesson the hard way, including George W. Bush-era neoconservative holdovers who sought to channel the mercurial president's instincts into a more familiar orthodoxy. They could not. Trump jettisoned adviser after adviser, and by the end of 2020 we still didn't have a clear MAGA foreign policy vision — aside from a consistent opposition to the post-World War II consensus.