WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, Senator Jim Banks (R-Ind.) delivered remarks at a Vandenberg Coalition event on the future of conservative foreign policy. Coverage of the speech by Jewish Insiderbelow.
Click here to read on their website.
Speaking on Wednesday at an event organized by the Vandenberg Coalition, Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) attempted to lay out a middle path forward for conservative foreign policy balancing elements of the internationalism that has long dominated the party and the more restrictionist sentiments that have been ascendant in the Trump era.
The first-term Indiana senator argued that the U.S. has critical interests in the Middle East, in countering the threat from Iran and supporting Israel, even as he leaned into elements of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy that are controversial among Republican traditionalists. He framed that policy as a return to a Reaganite peace through strength approach.
Banks said that the U.S. “cannot accept another bad deal with Iran,” adding that he does not believe Trump would be interested in returning to a deal similar to the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Iran, Banks argued, is its weakest position in decades and “the president knows that he holds all the cards, and he knows how to play them. He is also the most pro-Israel president that we’ve ever had, so I fully expect him to put America and Israel’s interests first when it comes to dealing with Iran.”
Responding to a question about media figures who argue the U.S. should not be focused on the Middle East, the threats from Iran or supporting Israel, Banks described Israel as “our most important ally in the world.”
“Israel is a great catalyst for peace in a very dangerous part of the world,” Banks said.
He also framed anti-Israel protest groups such as Code Pink and antisemitic activists on college campuses as part of a campaign of “foreign influence in our society.” He said those groups must be forced to register as foreign agents, universities must be blocked from receiving funding from U.S. adversaries and antisemitic rioters should be deported.
Banks sought to draw links between the party’s Trump-era foreign policy and “what we know has worked in the past,” saying that Trump’s policies are “deeply rooted in Reagan-era peace through strength.”
The freshman senator also urged audience members not to refer to Republicans as isolationists. He called it “pejorative, offensive even, to working-class Americans to call them isolationists because you from time to time disagree with them about their thoughts about Ukraine or other parts of the world.”
“It doesn’t help our cause as we usher in this new approach to foreign policy,” Banks continued, expressing a preference for the term “realism … being realistic about America’s role in the world.”
He described the administration’s protectionist trade policy — which some prominent Senate Republicans have opposed — as a cornerstone of reorienting the U.S.’s foreign policy.
“He’s the first president of modern times that understands that our trade policy is national security policy,” Banks said. “President Trump is reorienting the global economy to diminish China’s role in the world and elevate America and our allies’ role.”
Banks noted that the Republican Party is very different today than it was in 2016 when he first came to Congress, framing his foreign policy prescriptions as part of a broader GOP approach to capture the country’s working class.
“The old GOP foreign policy establishment failed because the American people don’t support forever wars with unclear goals and no clear metrics for success,” Banks said.
Among other priorities, he said the U.S. needs to rebuild its defense industrial base, build more ships, increase the defense budget, streamline defense acquisitions, implement targeted stimulus for manufacturing, reduce dependence on China, root out foreign malign influence, focus on and devote more resources to the indopacific, draw down U.S. forces in Europe while leaning more on European allies and work to achieve a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.
In Europe, he called for European powers to do more to step up to counter Russia so that the U.S. can focus on China, which he described as a shared threat to Europe. But even as he called for reductions in U.S. forces in Europe, Banks said the U.S. should not give away its bases in Europe or surrender the role of Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, as has reportedly been discussed inside the Trump administration.
Banks argued that the U.S. needs to be “realistic” about the outcome of the war in Ukraine, and said that Trump has been right to be tough on both Ukraine and Russia. He said that Russia will likely receive some territorial concessions.
He added that Greenland “is so important to President Trump” because of both its strategic value and its natural resources.