Cartoon by Stephane Peray

Guess who doesn't want war with Iran? Trump supporters 

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 12 books on international affairs

The Guardian: Supporters of Donald Trump who hoped that he would adopt a new, less interventionist foreign policy for the United States have ample reasons to feel disappointed. The administration’s increasingly belligerent policy toward Iran, which may lead to war, is just the most recent case in which the president has betrayed those supporters.

During his presidential campaign in 2016, Trump repeatedly condemned Washington’s regime-change wars and nation-building crusades. Much to the shock and fury of the other Republican candidates, he did not confine his criticism to policies that Barack Obama’s administration pursued; instead he excoriated George W Bush for the Iraq war and the seemingly endless military mission in Afghanistan.

An increasingly war-weary American public seemed receptive to Trump’s message. Even a sizable faction of Republican voters broke with the party’s more conventional presidential candidates, who continued to express rote endorsements of Bush’s actions and the underlying policy rationale. Those voters also reacted favorably to Trump’s demands for greater burden-sharing by Washington’s allies in Europe and east Asia.

It is hard to measure just how large a factor Trump’s break with the bipartisan orthodoxy on foreign policy was in his demolition of opponents in the Republican primaries and his upset victory over Hillary Clinton in the general election. But it certainly was a factor. Even voters who were wary about some of Trump’s other policy views – and questions about his character and demeanor– were uneasy about Clinton’s hawkish record.

As secretary of state, she had been a key architect of the Obama administration’s ill-advised military intervention to unseat Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi – a move that created chaos in that country. After she left office, Clinton lobbied heavily for a similar US intervention to help rebels overthrow the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad. Perhaps most troubling, she pushed for a highly confrontational policy toward Russia, even comparing President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler. Antagonizing a nuclear-armed power did not seem like a prudent strategy to worried voters who then gravitated toward Trump’s call for improved US relations with Moscow.

Once in office, though, it was not long before Trump’s actions contrasted sharply with his campaign rhetoric. Vice-President Mike Pence and the secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, quickly assured the European allies of Washington’s undying devotion to its Nato commitments. Trump himself voiced similar sentiments. Although he also continued making brusque demands for greater burden-sharing, such comments undercut the latter message >>>