“Neocon” may have become a dirty word, but after a few years, their agenda is back in play.
And no doubt many of their players, too.
After being banished to the wilderness for plunging the nation into a 20-year war, the neocons fell flat with the Trump base in Ukraine and lost the thread with MAGA in Israel. Venezuela and the Western Hemisphere are another matter. The neocons have evolved, and regime change is back on the menu.
How? Rather than pushing “democracy” and “freedom” like George W. Bush’s famous second inaugural speech at the height of the Iraq War, neoconservatives have adopted the prevailing MAGA/New Right language of “America First” to inject regime change back into fashion.
If you don’t think so, just listen to what Marco Rubio – once a reliable foot soldier for neoconservative foreign policy on Capitol Hill since his election to the Senate in 2011 – has to say about Nicolas Maduro today. He insists that Maduro is “not the President of Venezuela and his regime is not the legitimate government,” but a “corrupt, criminal and illegitimate (regime)” that undermines “America’s national security interests.”
Meanwhile, he calls Maduro an “enemy of humanity” who “has strangled democracy and grasped at power in Venezuela” and announced a $50 million bounty on his head. Since then, there has been a massive military buildup in the region and talk of bringing the lead narco terrorist to justice.
This hasn’t been lost on observers, even in conventional Right circles. “You thought I was joking when I said Trump was the greatest neoconservative president we’ve had in ages,” National Review’s Jim Geraghty exclaimed in a recent column.
Supporters of Trump say the president is still allergic to “regime change wars” and that the administration is only interested in short, sharp actions against drug cartels and Maduro. Yet Trump hasn’t fully denied that aspiration either. In fact, he teases a little about it every day. The President has even confirmed that he gave the CIA – who know a thing or two about assassinations and toppling governments – the authority to conduct covert operations in and around Venezuela.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
So what is different about today? Trump’s populist base elected him because he espoused a nationalism that promised a foreign policy focused on American interests and our own backyard: cracking down on illegal immigration and drugs being top priorities. Going after cartels fits neatly into a “return of the Monroe Doctrine” and “pivot back to the Western Hemisphere.”
“Both inside and out of the administration there are many MAGA-aligned thinkers who want a more regionalized strategy in place of a globalist or imperial American foreign policy. They tend to be for less engagement with the Middle East and Europe and more attention to the Western Hemisphere,” noted Modern Age editor Daniel McCarthy.
“Where that outlook intersects with neoconservatism is that the neocons have, of course, long wanted regime change and the promotion of liberal democracy in Latin America. Since there’s a fight on to define what the Monroe Doctrine means in the 21st century, the neocons have an advantage in that they already have a plan for Latin America and for Venezuela in particular.”
McCarthy points to neoconservative Elliott Abrams, who has probably set the record for Washington comebacks since his conviction in the Iran-Contra Affair. Abrams was in the thick of Reagan’s destabilizing attempts to overthrow communists in Latin America in the 80s. He has shown up in both Republican and Democratic administrations, always promoting regime change as a way to advance American interests in the region. He now runs the neoconservative Vandenberg Coalition and drove Trump’s failed policy to overturn Maduro during his first administration (Rubio was in on that too). Abrams is not on the inside today, but has been all over mainstream media for his quick takes on recent anti-narco military operations.
“There was less emphasis on the Monroe Doctrine in the first term, but now the neocons interested in Latin America are adapting their ideas for a Monroe Doctrine framework, and since there isn’t a fully articulated alternative on the non-neocon MAGA right, the neocons are in a position to influence the agenda,” charged McCarthy.
One may wonder who “they” are when the most visible neocons of the early 21st Century are now Never Trumpers who seemingly spend most of their time tweeting about “No Kings” and the total collapse of American democracy. Bill Kristol, David Frum, Elliot Cohen, Jen Rubin – they are part of a domestic commentariat who, even if they supported what Trump was doing in the Caribbean, wouldn’t say so publicly (except for maybe on Gaza).
The folks at the reliable neoconservative Hudson Institute, however, are railing against the realists (they call “isolationists”) in Trumpworld on Ukraine and Israel, and are now dipping their toe into the Americas. They hosted regime change advocates in a recent forum, where CSIS’s Eric Farnsworth trotted out the new language in support of regime change:
“I think in the biggest sense, to have Venezuela free and prosperous and return to democracy that is absolutely in the U.S. interest, to say nothing of, if I can say, the interests of Colombia and Brazil and Peru and Ecuador and Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean countries and the countries, frankly, in Europe where, like Spain, where Venezuela has intervened in elections and things like that.”
Carrie Filipetti, the executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition and a former Trump official, channeled the president’s Venezuela policy. They assert the “rise” of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang and Maduro’s rejection of Trump’s diplomatic overtures have forced the White House to take more kinetic action. Secretary Rubio has designated TdA as a foreign terrorist organization.
“The United States has made it very clear that we are not afraid to use precision strikes on entities that we think are a direct threat to American security,” said Filipetti. “I would argue that the Maduro regime and its narco trafficking is much more of a direct immediate threat to the United States, even than the Iranian nuclear program, though I do very much support that we use the strikes on that program as well.”
By conflating the threat of drugs to the homeland with Maduro and his “illegitimate” regime, neoconservatives have found a wedge to push between the populist America Firsters and the realists/restrainers who had much success in throwing cold water on aggressive status quo policies in both Ukraine and Gaza.
One could say that they started seeding this ground in embracing “national conservatism” in the early days of the Trump Administration. In fact, at the recent 2025 “NatCon,” speakers like Daniel Horowitz played up this idea of renewed “Peace through Strength” and acknowledged conservatives were “traumatized” by the long wars wrought by the Bush II crowd in the early aughts.
“Because of this trauma, we (think) that we are going to get more Baghdads and Kabul, we’re going to get sucked in and we are going to die… What Trump demonstrated (in Iran), he eschewed this false dichotomy. We don’t want war” he said. “The way you break this trepidation and fear…. you break their stuff and you leave.”
“That is what America First means – you break it and you leave.”
Of course, young Horowitz, who was likely in grade school during the wars, misses the glaring holes in his eloquent treatise. “A military intervention in the region is likely to have the opposite effect as intended – it could spur a massive refugee crisis, elevate anarchic narco groups, and tempt China to quietly intervene to make Washington waste its time,” The American Conservative’s editor Curt Mills tells Antiwar.com. And that’s just the attacks on the boats and prospective “targeted strikes” on Venezuela. Fantasies of “just arming” or fomenting the opposition inside to get what Washington wants is equality stupid, say critics.
Seems like reasonable advice, but it runs up against a powerful and wealthy constituency that includes the Venezuelan and Cuban exile communities in South Florida and the U.S. Capitol. And the opposition itself, led by Maria Machado, knows the way to Trump’s heart. Right now, regime change is through a drug war, and the opposition is in “constant communication” with Trump’s people on drug movements out of Venezuela, according to POLITICO.
“If you had Pablo Escobar as the president of Colombia, going after Pablo will be the same thing as making political change possible,” said Leopoldo López, who POLITICO describes as a Venezuelan opposition activist.
McCarthy is right, there is no “fully articulated alternative on the non-neocon MAGA right.” But there needs to be one. No one thinks Maduro is a good guy or that drugs and gangs aren’t a problem. But the base seems to be dazzled by bombs when just yesterday they were ecstatic for a reinforced crackdown on the border, which is one of the best ways to keep drugs and gangs out. While it might not be as sexy, the U.S. Coast Guard is trained in maritime drug interdiction; it could use more resources, too. The military as drug cops? Not their job.
Most effective in the meantime is just calling the neoconservative agenda for what it is and reminding MAGA why they hated it in the first place. One shouldn’t get away with slapping lipstick on a pig and calling it a new, beautiful thing. And that includes the regime change shenanigans going on in Latin America today.
