Notes on Trump Taxonomies

The Bush administration hawks always contained at least two distinct groups. One was neoconservatives, under which label all of them were often grouped. The other was what we might call American hard power unilateralists. In the brief pre-9/11 China focus period, both groups approached the world in a fairly similar light. In the post-9/11 everything is terrorism world they grouped together even more so. In many respects the world views are similar: hard power, hegemony, a world of threats. But it’s a very helpful prism for understanding how and why the people who made up that world have lined up in the age of Trump. It explains why many or most foreign policy types in the Bush world have generally been averse or hostile to Trump. But men like John Bolton and Dick Cheney (and it seems Don Rumsfeld too) have been pretty big fans from the beginning.