WASHINGTON — Make future military aid to Ukraine conditional on the country’s participation in peace talks with Russia. Banning Chinese nationals from purchasing real estate within a 50-mile radius of U.S. government buildings. Filling the national security sector with Donald Trump acolytes.
One of several groups trying to lay the groundwork for a second Trump administration if the former Republican president wins in November is out with a new policy book that aims to formulate an “America First” national security agenda.
The book, shared with The Associated Press on Thursday, is the latest work from the America First Policy Institute. Like the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” the group is trying to help Trump avoid the mistakes of 2016, when he entered the White House largely unprepared.
In addition to the policy efforts, the institute’s transition project has also worked to draft dozens of executive orders and develop a training program for future political appointees. Heritage has built an extensive employee database and offers its own policy manuals.
Both groups insist they are independent of Trump’s campaign, which has repeatedly tried to distance itself from such efforts, insisting that the only policies Trump supports are those articulated by the candidate himself.
Still, Fred Fleitz, the book’s editor, noted that he and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served for a time as Trump’s acting national security adviser and wrote several chapters, have been in frequent contact with the former president and have asked for feedback asked. and discussing topics such as Ukraine in detail.
“We hope this is where he is. We don’t speak for him, but I think he would agree,” said Fleitz, who previously served as chief of staff of the National Security Council.
He said he hopes the book will serve as “a guide that will provide an intellectual foundation for the America First approach” to national security “that is easy to use.”
“It’s a grand strategy,” Kellogg added. “You don’t start with the policy first. You start with the strategies first. And that’s what we did.”
The group views the current trajectory of U.S. national security as a failure, thanks to a foreign policy establishment it accuses of embracing an interventionist and “globalist” approach at the expense of America’s national interests.
While the book is short on details, it provides some guidance on how a future Trump administration might approach foreign policy issues such as Russia’s war against Ukraine. Trump has said that if elected he would resolve the conflict before Inauguration Day in January, but has declined to say how.
The book’s chapter on the war spends more time discussing how the conflict developed than on ending it. But it says the US should make future military aid conditional on Ukraine’s participation in peace talks with Russia.
It predicts that the Ukrainian military is likely to lose ground over time and advises the US against “sending weapons to a stalemate that Ukraine will ultimately find difficult to win.” But once a peace deal is in place, it states that the US will continue to arm Ukraine as a deterrent to Russia.
The authors appear to endorse a framework in which Ukraine “would not be asked to give up the goal of regaining all its territory” but would agree to diplomacy “with the understanding that this would require a future diplomatic breakthrough that is unlikely to occur sooner.” take place (Russian President Vladimir) Putin leaves office.”
It acknowledges that Ukrainians “will have difficulty accepting a negotiated peace that does not return all of the territory or, at least for the time being, hold Russia accountable for the carnage it inflicted on Ukraine. Their supporters will too. But as Donald Trump said at the CNN town hall in 2023, “I want everyone to stop dying.” That is also our vision. It’s a good first step.”
The book blames Democratic President Joe Biden for the war and repeats Trump’s claim that Putin would never have invaded had Trump been in power. The main argument in defense of that claim is that Putin viewed Trump as strong and decisive. Trump even felt comfortable with the Russian leader and hesitated to challenge him.
Most of the chapter is spent laying out a sometimes erroneous timeline of Biden’s handling of the war.
Going forward, it suggests that Putin could be persuaded to join peace talks if Biden and other NATO leaders offer to postpone NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period. It suggests that the US instead establish a “long-term security architecture for Ukrainian defense that focuses on bilateral security defense.” No explanation is given as to what this would entail. It also calls for imposing tariffs on Russian energy sales to pay for reconstruction in Ukraine.
The book is critical of Trump’s 2016 transition efforts and complains of a broad lack of preparation before Trump took office.
“The tumultuous transition of 2016/2017 has done President Trump and the nation no favors and has slowed progress and implementation of his agenda,” the authors wrote. For example, they note that Democrat Hillary Clinton’s transition team submitted more proposals before the election. than 1,000 names for future security clearances, Trump’s team submitted only 25.
The group says it has identified roughly 1,200 national security positions that the next administration will need to fill and urges it to be ready on Day 1 with Trump loyalists pushing “America First.” approach.
“It is not about reprisals against people or the politicization of government positions. It’s about making sure government employees do their jobs and keep politics out of their jobs,” Fleitz said.
The book portrays China as the most pressing threat to the country’s national security, eager to displace the US as the world’s largest power. It proposes a hawkish policy that builds on approaches from both the Trump years and the Biden administration, aiming to make Beijing’s policies “largely irrelevant to American life.”
It elevates economic concerns with China to those of national security and proposes a reciprocal approach that would deny Beijing access to U.S. markets, just as U.S. companies have been denied in China.
The book also recommends stricter screening of cyber and technology companies owned by U.S. adversaries, especially China, to ensure they are not collecting sensitive information. It also recommends that Chinese nationals be banned from purchasing real estate within a 50-mile radius of U.S. government properties.
It calls for visa restrictions on Chinese students seeking to study in the United States and banning TikTok and other Chinese apps over data privacy concerns. However, Trump has spoken out against a law that would force the sale of TikTok or block US access.
Analysts’ views on what an “America First” policy looks like often reflect the writers’ personal focus.
For Ellie Cohanim, a former Trump State Department deputy envoy charged with monitoring and combating anti-Semitism, “America First” looks a lot like a shopping list for the Israeli military.
The US should provide Israel with a squadron of “25 Lockheed Martin F-35s, one squadron of Boeing F-15 EX and a squadron of Apache E attack helicopters,” Cohanim wrote.
The US should give some of its billions of dollars in military financing to Israel in Israeli currency so that Israel can spend it domestically, and Washington should push the Arab states to foot and accept the bill for Gaza’s reconstruction that Israel suspends all political talks with the Gaza Strip. Palestinians are waiting for an indefinite period of mandatory deradicalization for the Palestinian people, she wrote.
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Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.