There's a long-standing thread of American thought that would get you a long ways towards anti-imperialism: "we shouldn't send troops to die in a country most Americans can't find on a map." Could get a little farther with "we should not be paying for death and destruction across the globe."
Avoiding that would be a huge part of the challenge. The possibility also highlights the need to have deeper political support. At least the VP needs to be on the same page; one unicorn candidate probably wouldn't get it done.
The DPRK meeting is a perfect embodiment of the "upside" to Trump's foreign policy: noisy, not anything a regular president would do, and ultimately did not change the status quo even slightly.
And of course the downside is getting us closer to war with Iran (twice, I believe) than we've been in decades.
it’s a Pentagon/security state adventure
Worth noting that the current war has its roots in the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which enjoyed bipartisan support (with John McCain notably traveling to the country). This project then survived the Trump presidency only to mature under Biden.
Any settlement Russia will take is one that will be favorable to Russia, because Russia is winning. They've been winning for a while and there's no likely way that will change. Ukraine will lose some now or lose more later.
Insisting on even a neutral settlement (much less one that will punish Russia, which is Zelensky's stance) is not a serious negotiating position. It'd be like Germany in 1917 insisting on a favorable outcome; if you lose a war you don't get to win the peace.
the PSL could win this Presidential race and it wouldn’t change a thing foreign policy wise
I do think a dedicated, sophisticated anti-imperialist could change things from the office of the president. The problem is the best we'll ever get from Democrats is "I oppose this war and this war only, and we totally could have won and had the best intentions but my opponent, our local puppet, or both tragically mismanaged it."
I trust Trump about as far as I can throw him... But dudes clearly speaking to a public sentiment here.
Reiterating all this (that Trump doesn't really care, won't have total control of foreign policy, and this is mostly a play to popular sentiment), there's a lesson here in how to present ideas so that people agree with them.
Talking about a single issue and giving a humanist position on it will beat an ideological position that necessarily (because it's your whole ideology!) invokes other issues. Trump could have given an eloquent anti-imperialist take (lmao) and it would not have played as well. But "we need to stop all this killing?" Who's going to disagree with that? It reveals all the NATO freaks as the monsters they are for playing geopolitics with people's lives. Same as if you talk about healthcare in terms of "the richest country in the world shouldn't have people choosing between medicine and rent" instead of starting with the ideological basis for that belief.
Not to say you should never get into ideology, just that the humanist justification for positions should be at the forefront, because it keeps the discussion focused and is harder to oppose. It does help to think about how best to present these ideas; that's a lot of what politics is.
cucking to Putin
Imagine you're some Ukranian conscript who spends their days watching buddies get blown up. I bet your top, #1 priority is whatever interpersonal relationship Trump and Putin have.
Damn this "managed democracy" guerilla marketing for Helldivers 2 is out of control
Representative Brad Sherman also said that the US should "think of whether we stay a signatory" to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC.
The U.S. already isn't party to the Rome Statute, and in fact has legislation on the books to invade The Hauge if the ICC issues a warrant for U.S. personnel.
This asshole is the guy saying we just don't understand the complexities of the real world, and we should leave things to The Adults In The Room.
Shades of 2020
We need more people to take us seriously, they get taken seriously by default.
Somewhere, Colin Powell is looking up and smiling
I'm not going to vote for someone giving full-throated endorsement and material support for genocide. If that isn't a red line, nothing is.
It's like some sort of big cat, but made of something more fragile than flesh and blood
Lmao just what I was thinking
"I'm no military mastermind, but..."
Where these wars happened anyway, they either weren’t between states (but civil wars or insurgencies instead), they were so lopsided in numerical or technological terms that they were over before they really began (e.g. Desert Storm) or they happened in Africa where it’s easy not to notice them for the rest of the world. There were a few exceptions, e.g. Iran-Iraq, but they don’t really change the general picture.
Some terrible history right here. Writes off a ton of "total war"-style conflicts (presumably the post-WWII phase of the Chinese Civil War, plus the entire Korean War, plus the independence struggle of Vietnam from 1945-1975) because... if they're civil wars or insurgencies (extremely fuzzy categories to begin with) they don't count? Doesn't address a few peer conflicts between India and Pakistan that thankfully stopped soon after they began. Doesn't address the wars Vietnam fought against China and Cambodia in the late 70s/early 80s. Writes off another whole category of lopsided wars that are still incredibly destructive, especially when you look at the effects of long-term destabilization (Yugoslavia and Libya come to mind). Handwaves Africa for no good reason, and recognizes a glaring example of exactly what they're talking about (Iran-Iraq) but ignores it as an exception (it's really not!). Doesn't even think of comparing the damage done by industrialized warfare to mass killings in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Latin America.
Blaming Kiev for breaking some non-existent taboo against total war is a stretch, too. There are many times Kiev could have defused the situation (from 2014 all the way to the aborted ceasefire agreement soon after the war began), but fighting a whole-ass army the only way one can fight a whole-ass army is a response you'd expect from basically any country in Ukraine's situation (it was a prerequisite to getting a deal as good as they had right after the start of the war, too).