John Quincy Adams

Trump Adopts Neocon Regime Change: Was His MAGA A Hoax?

Lawrence , , , , , , , , ,

March 10, 2026

As the world is submerged in the second week of President Trump’s unprovoked military onslaught against the nation of Iran, questions about “who the president really is,” have arisen. Has he morphed into a neo-conservative, or was MAGA a fraud, just a vehicle for President Trump to get elected?

President Trump over the course of two elections condemned preemptive military intervention, regime change, endless wars, and nation building. America First opposed these neo-conservative (neocon) policies and was supposed to concentrate on building up America and improving the lives of its citizens. President Trump is a failure.

President Donald Trump, after a year of obsessively but unsuccessfully attempting to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has turned to war and regime change throughout the world. There can be no question that President Trump is violating the U.S. Constitution and is dangerously involving the United States in a new Middle East war. There was no imminent danger to the U.S. from the nation of Iran that necessitated the bombing attack beginning on February 28, 2026. Those early morning preemptive missile strikes bring to mind an eerie remembrance of March 20, 2003, when President George W Bush launched his neocon inspired invasion  of Iraq in pursuit of regime change. President Bush and his circle of advisors arrogantly believed they would remake Iraq in their Western image.

Regime Change VS Iran

Iran does not possess the level of enriched uranium necessary to produce a nuclear weapon. Iran did not have a missile delivery system capable of reaching U.S. There was no imminent danger. Despite various efforts to spin or massage the message, President Trump himself publicly admitted that he is pursuing regime change against the government of Iran. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and others have now tried to provide a fig leaf for the president’s war policy. Rubio claimed on Monday March 2, that Israel was planning to attack Iran and therefore in anticipation of Iran responding with attacks on the U.S. homeland, the U.S. was in imminent danger, necessitating preemptive action against Iran. This convoluted argument whether true or not, was rebuked the next day when President Trump stated that it was he, who was forcing Israel’s hand. Days later, President Trump boldly declared that he had to take out Iran’s clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,  before “he got me.” A few days later President Trump demanded to be involved in choosing the next leader of Iran. Regime change for any reason is still regime change.

In the short term, Americans are the big losers from President Trump’s war of choice. Oil companies will increase their revenues and make big profits as oil prices skyrocket. This will add more hardship to the American people, the majority of whom are already economically struggling. Defense production plants and arms manufacturers will expand from infusions of new government money, taxpayer debt. However, weapons and munitions do not increase the wealth of society, do not improve American’s standard of living.

Iran: A Strategic Nation

Iran has the right to process uranium for peaceful purposes. All nations, Iran included, have the responsibility to obtain the technology of nuclear energy to better provide for the welfare of their citizens. There has been no public evidence presented that Iran has other intentions. Descriptions of Iran’s nuclear energy program by western governments, are saturated with their geopolitical prejudices, with little intention to find a mutual pathway for development. Despite this negative narrative, Iran is a strategically and economically significant nation in the world.

Iran is a resource rich nation of ninety-three million people, seventeenth largest in the world, and second largest among Middle East nations. Iran’s oil reserves are estimated at 208 billion barrels-third largest in the world, and gas reserves at thirty-four trillion cubic meters-second largest in the world. China purchases 80% of Iran’s oil, 13.5% of China’s crude oil imports. Iran is a member of the BRICS, a leadership body of the Global South. Iran is also a strategic hub of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), bridging both the land based and maritime routes of the BRI.

In summary. Before President Trump launched his preemptive war on Iran, the following was known:

  • Iran did not possess the quality of enriched nuclear material capable of becoming a nuclear bomb.
  • Iran did not possess long range delivery systems that could reach the U.S.
  • The U.S. military and intelligence community assessed that the U.S. was in no imminent threat of a nuclear attack from Iran.

Significant US Regime Change Actions (1961–2026)

  • Cuba (1961): Failed CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs.
  • South Vietnam (1963): Support for a coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem.
  • Brazil (1964): Support for a military coup against President João Goulart.
  • Indonesia (1965–1967): Assisting in the ousting of President Sukarno.
  • Dominican Republic (1965): Military intervention to prevent a leftist government.
  • Chile (1973): Support for the military coup that ousted President Salvador Allende.
  • Grenada (1983): Invasion to remove the military government.
  • Panama (1989): Invasion to remove dictator Manuel Noriega.
  • Iraq (1991, 2003): The 2003 invasion directly removed Saddam Hussein.
  • Afghanistan (2001): Invasion to topple the Taliban regime.
  • Libya (2011): Backing the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.
  • Ukraine (2014): Involvement in the Maidan revolution.
  • Venezuela ( Jan 3, 2026): Abduction of President Nicolas Maduro
  • Iran ( Feb 28, 2026): Elimination of the country’s leadership, and the intuition of  bombing of Iran

Listed above, are overt U.S. military interventions into foreign nations to change their governments.

George Bush with Tony Blair, who advocated regime as the West’s right to intervene

Regime Change Always Fails

We know from historical experience of decades of war fighting, that nations can be weakened but not defeated by bombing campaigns alone. Boots on the ground are required to fully subjugate a nation. We also know well from U.S. military instigated regime change in this century, post kinetic war-fare plans are consistently faulty and bring unforeseen consequences. The lack of vision and propensity for fantasy has dominated all U.S. failed regime change deployments.

The most recent fiascos of regime change were President Bush’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and President Obama’s overthrow of Umar Gadaffi in October 2011. Bush’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein, based on false claims of Iraq’s involvement in the September 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., led to 500,000 to 1,000,000, deaths. For almost a quarter of a century following Bush’s unjustified invasion, this region of the world has suffered permanent instability and the creation of ISIS and its  terrorist offshoots, triggered by the U.S. destruction of Iraq. In the more than fourteen years since Obama’s overthrow and murder of Gadaffi, Northern Africa, across the Sahel and Sahara, have been in continuous chaos. Obama created the deadliest unstable region anywhere in the world.

Former President Barack Obama has acknowledged that the most significant mistake during his presidency was the failure to develop a comprehensive plan for the aftermath of the military intervention in Libya, rather than the decision to remove Muammar Gaddafi itself.

Regime change is not a substitute for a positive foreign policy. It has never been successful, and it should never succeed. One cannot expect to improve a nation by simply eliminating its leadership through military means. The nation state is not an empty construct to be coerced or manipulated by the militarily powerful. The modern sovereign nation state, created  by humankind, has advanced over several centuries. It is a precious institution, which human beings brought into existence as a means of organizing a language-culture-territory into a single sovereign entity, which can ensure continuation of its society into the future over successive generations.

No nation is perfect, but all nations can evolve, improve, and lessen their imperfection. All nations are in one sense, a continuous “work in progress.” Nations have different systems of governance derived from their history. However, all nations have an intrinsically common self-interest: the growth and development of their people. Nations are made up of human beings, who endowed with the power of creative reason, are capable of unlimited change. The art of diplomacy and statesmanship is to search for means to induce improvements of all nations. To support them on their path towards progress in accordance with the “common aims of mankind.” Genuine, thoughtful leaders find the most propitious methods to bring out the potential good of other nations. Deploying military force against another nation should be the very last resort against an aggressor.

Avoid Military Adventures

Secretary of State, (and future President), John Quincy Adams, speaking on July 4, 1821, in celebrating the Declaration of Independence, cautioned against misadventures of U.S. foreign policy:

Whenever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit….(emphasis added).

John Quincy Adams, Sectary of State, President, and Congressman

Twenty-five years earlier, President George Washinton, had also warned about foreign entanglements in Europe:

…nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is this slave to its animosity or to its affection, either which is sufficient to lead astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another, disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay whole of slight causes of umbrage and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. (emphasis added).

Trump: MAGA or Neocon?

President Trump’s foreign policies have become indistinguishable from the neocons that he spent many years attacking. The neocons, who emerged in the Republican Party during President Reagan’s administration, became dominant in the presidency of George W. Bush. The spiritual godfather of the neocons was Leo Strauss, a follower of Friedrich Nietzsche and Carl Shmitt, a leading political jurist for the Nazis. The neocons rejected America’s unique history as an anti-colonial constitutional Republic. They believed in the right of the “elites” to use “noble lies”-disinformation, to manipulate the citizens in order to achieve the “greatness” of America. They espouse the use of a muscular military to achieve “benevolent global hegemony,” to overpower “anti-democratic” governments that threaten U.S. domination. Neocons advocate U.S. military intervention to reshape the world in accordance with their values, and to preserve America’s hegemony as far into the future as possible.

Is this not the present world view of President Trump?

President Trump and the neocons eschew the existence of a shared vision of development, common to all nations, which should be the cornerstone of foreign policy and diplomacy between nations. It is by example and leadership that the U.S. should intervene. The U.S. Constitution commits the United States to provide for the general welfare of its citizens through their educated participation in our Democratic-Republic. The consequences of neocon instigated regime change, and military intervention are on full display in: Afghanistan twenty-four years later; Iraq twenty-three years later; and Libya fourteen years later.

Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the architects of the Iraq invasion

Neocons Reject America Heritage

Neocons explicitly rejected John Quincy Adams’ prophetic advice. It should be understood that the Monroe Doctrine, also written by Adams, for President Monroe, is antithetical to President Trump’s imperialist like domination in the western hemisphere.

According to journalist Jeffrey Steinberg, (1) leading neocons, William Kristol, and Robert Kagan, writing in the 1996 issue of Foreign Affairs, called for the overthrow of more than 200 years of American anti colonial tradition, singling out John Quincy Adams as their particular nemesis.

Conservative these days, they wrote, succumb easily to the charming old metaphor of the United States as a ‘city on a hill.’

‘They hark back… to the admonition of John Quincy Adams that America not go ‘abroad in search of monsters and destroy.‘ But why not? The alternative is to leave monsters on the loose, ravaging and pillaging to their hearts’ content, as Americans stand by and watch….when America is the giant because the America has capacity to contain and destroy many of the world’s monsters, most of which can be found without much searching, and because the responsibility for peace and security of the international order rests so heavily on American shoulders, a policy of sitting on top of the hill and leading by example becomes in practice a policy for cowardice and dishonor. (emphasis added)

Richard Perle center

Reshaping the Middle East

in November 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed an historic accord with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was assassinated by an extremist linked to the Likud Party. The neocons seized this moment to develop a strategy for the new Prime Minister, Benjamin  Netanyahu, which would reverse the potential for peace in the Middle East, as a result of the Oslo Accords.

Neocon Richard Perle, presented to Netanyahu in 1996 a new policy called, A  Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. This six page document was a blueprint to reshape the Middle East under Israel’s control, which including removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and weakening Syria.

President Trump is implementing an updated version of Clean Break today, following his support for Netanyahu’s  genocide of upwards of 100,000 Palestinians and the destruction of the West Bank.

MAGA has been severely fooled. Either President Trump has always been a closet neocon or has been morphed into one. Whichever it is, his policies are dangerous to the world, and he has increasingly become a threat to our American Republic.

  1. The ‘Ignoble Liars’ Behind Bush’s Deadly Iraq War

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica

It is Time for a New Security Doctrine for the USA: The Monroe Doctrine Revisited

Lawrence , , , , , , , , , , , ,
The last words of John Qunicy Adams
John Quincy Adams, (1767-1848), American Statesman, sixth President of the United States, Secretary of State for James Monroe, Diplomat, Senator, and Congressman (Courtesy phrases.org.uk)

February 14, 2022

While I do not agree with all the views of this essay below, the author raises an important historical analysis. United States was a far better nation when it was committed to the American System policies of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, and Franklin D Roosevelt. The USA has lost its way, suffering from a ratcheting down of its culture, which has resulted in an un-American foreign policy.

By Matthew Ehret, February 10, 2022

It should be clear that the USA is in desperate need for a new security doctrine more befitting those ideals laid out in her founding documents.

These principles were elaborated upon by President Washington himself who warned the young nation of avoiding the dual evils of foreign entanglements externally and party politics domestically.

John Quincy Adams extended these ideas further still by drafting the Monroe Doctrine which he knew could only work if America ventures “not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”.

That is to say, as long as the USA focused her efforts on fixing her own problems with a focus on internal improvements, then the Monroe Doctrine would be a blessing for both herself and the international community.

Sadly, other impulses within the US establishment of 19th century America had other ideas.

Working with a young protégé named Abraham Lincoln, Adams fought tooth and nail against the Spanish-American War of 1846 which saw a deep abuse of his doctrine.

After the last “Lincoln-republican” William McKinley was assassinated, Teddy Roosevelt’s “big stick” diplomacy launched a new 20th century trend that saw the USA extending its hegemony over weak states rather than keeping out foreign imperial intrigue as Adams had envisioned.

Another essential component of Adams’ security doctrine was shaped by his view that the international community as a whole should never be defined as a sum of parts to be dominated by a single hegemon like the British Empire had done for centuries.

Abraham Lincoln - Wikipedia
Abraham Lincoln,(1809 -1865), Sixteenth President of the Unites States, leader of the Whig Party and co-founder the Republican Party, won the Civil War to save the Union (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Adams understood the importance of seeing the world as “a community of principle” where win-win cooperation based upon the self-improvement of both parts and the whole would constantly bring renewal and creative vitality to diplomacy. It was a top-down systemic approach to policy that saw economics, security and political affairs interwoven into one unified system. This is an integrative way of thinking that has been sorely lost in the hyper theoretical, compartmentalized mode of zero-sum thinking dominant in today’s neo-liberal think tank complex.

It was for this reason, that Adams advocated the use of Hamiltonian national banking and large-scale infrastructure projects like the Erie Canal and railways throughout his years as Secretary of State and President. From this paradigm, if American interests would be extended across the continent or the world more broadly, it would not be through brute force, but rather by the uplifting of standards of living of all parties.

Over the years, we have seen small but powerful attempts to revive Adams’ overarching security doctrine.

We had seen it revived with President Ulysses Grant’s efforts to extend US industrial know-how to countries across the world during the 1870s. We saw it again with McKinley’s promotion of rail lines uniting the Americas in what was to become a new industrial renaissance for Latin America.

We saw it come alive again with FDR’s program for internationalizing the New Deal across China, India, Ibero America, the Middle East, Africa, and Russia.

Eisenhower made some noble moves towards this renewal by ending the Korean War and attempting his Crusade for Peace driven by US-Russian cooperation and advanced scientific investments into India, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Latin America. Eisenhower’s many positive plans were sadly derailed by a growing parasite in the heart of the US deep state which he addressed in his famous “military industrial complex” speech of 1960.

Governor To Be

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), thirty-second President of the United states, only president to serve four terms, created the New Deal, formed strategic alliance with Russia and China. (Courtesy of thoughtco.com)

Kennedy’s efforts to end the Vietnam war, revive FDR’s New Deal spirit in the 1960s, while seeking entente with Russia was another noble effort to bring back Adams’ security doctrine, but his early death soon put an end to this orientation.

From 1963 to 2016, tiny piecemeal efforts to revive a sane security doctrine proved short-lived and were often undone by the more powerful pressures of unipolarist intrigue that sought nothing less than full Anglo-American hegemony in the form of a New World Order whose arrival was celebrated by the likes of Bush Sr and Kissinger in 1992.

Despite his many limitations, President Trump did make an honest endeavor to restore a sane security doctrine by focusing American interests on healing from 50+ years of self-inflicted atrophy under globalized outsourcing, militarism, and post-industrialism. Despite having to contend with an embarrassingly large and independent military-intelligence industrial complex that didn’t get less powerful after Kennedy’s murder, Trump announced the terms of his international outlook in April 2019 saying:

“Between Russia, China, and us, we’re all making hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, including nuclear, which is ridiculous.… I think it’s much better if we all got together and didn’t make these weapons … those three countries I think can come together and stop the spending and spend on things that are more productive toward long-term peace.”

This call for a US-Russia-China cooperative policy ran in tandem with the first phase of the US-China Trade deal which went into effect in January 2020 guaranteeing $350 billion of US finished goods purchased by China. None other than George Soros himself suffered a public meltdown that month when he announced that the two greatest threats to his global Open Society were: 1) Trump’s USA and 2) Xi’s China.

US-VOTE-2020-DEMOCRATS-DEBATE-POLITICS
Joe Biden, 79 years old, forty sixth President of the United States, Will President Biden lead the US into war with Russia? (Courtesy of theverg.com

Of course, a pandemic derailed much of this momentum and the trade deal slowly broke apart. Despite these failures, the idea of returning the USA to an “American first” outlook by cleaning up its own internal messes, extracting CIA operations from the military, defunding regime change organizations like NED [National Endowment of Democracy] abroad and returning to a traditionally American policy of protective tariffs were all extremely important initiatives that Trump put into motion,  and set a precedent which must be capitalized upon by nationalist forces from all parties wishing to save their republic from an oncoming calamity.

One year into Biden’s “rules based international order”, the hope for stability and peaceful cooperation among the nations of the earth has been seriously undermined. Unlike Trump, who rightfully severed US cooperation with NATO, the current neo-con heavy administration has made absorbing Ukraine and other former Soviet States into NATO a high priority going so far as to assert that Russia’s invasion is immanent should NATO forces not protect “poor, peaceful Kiev.” No mention of Nazi-ridden Azov Battalions used by Nuland and the CIA to topple the former government in 2014 is ever mentioned of course.  8500 US troops have been told to be put on high alert and 2000 US troops have been deployed to Poland and Germany. Over 19 NATO war games have been planned for 2022 which will start this month, and even China is concerned that Biden’s “NATO-of-the-Pacific” agenda is seeking to enflame Taiwanese independence and absorb the rebellious island into the US military industrial complex.

When looking at Russian “red lines” from this standpoint and holding in mind the new form of a Eurasian Manifest Destiny emerging with Putin’s Far Eastern Vision, Polar Silk Road and China’s BRI, it is a rich irony that the spirit of John Quincy Adams’ security doctrine is alive in the world. Just not in the USA.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation 

Read my earlier posts:

U.S. Geopolitics Exposes Itself in CFR report on China’s Belt and Road-Will Africa benefit?

What’s Wrong with U.S. Policy for Ethiopia and Africa?

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 30 years. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com. Mr. Freeman’s stated personal mission is; to eliminate poverty and hunger in Africa by applying the scientific economic principles of Alexander Hamilton.