The differences are not new . But the Trump Presidency and the war in Ukraine has amplified the them ;and it will be an interesting debate in the party through the primary season.
On one side there is the deep state uniparty Repub internationalists who still believe that America can reshape the world in it's image .....if necessary by force.
On the other side is a Realist foreign policy that can arguably be found in the nation's history as far back as the Jacksonian era. The far ends of the spectrum are neoconservatives of the Bush era ,and isolationists . Most GOP voters straddle the line .
Ron DeSantis' comments on the Ukraine war renewed the debate .
“
While the US has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness with our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”
The statists Repubs saw them as a blunder and focused on 'territorial dispute' .
Thursday he back tracked a little blaming Putin's Russia's invasion as the problem.
DeSantis brands Putin 'a war criminal' who should be 'held accountable' for Ukraine invasion (nypost.com)
To put an explanation point on his comments is that they came at the 20th anniversary of America's war in Iraq.
The sides are drawn .
The statist Repubs and never Trumpers saw the comment as an unforced error.
Lindsey Graham led the charge against him saying “
The Neville Chamberlain approach to aggression never ends well.”
That was a cheap smear that does not accurately reflect DeSantis' policy. But the appeaser label works well to end debate for people who have not thought it true. In the simple world every aggressive act is 'Hitler'.... every leader standing up is 'Churchill' everyone who is cautious about a war is 'Chamberlain' . But not all wars are a Munich moment and the US does not have a national interest in every war. Our intentions in Iraq were good. But that did not lead to a good outcome .
The Slimes explains that De Santis never aligned himself with the Bush internationalists social engineering view of foreign policy.
“I think he’s kind of dead-center where Republican voters are, which is to say that he’s neither an isolationist nor a neoconservative, he’s just a Jacksonian,” said David Reaboi, a conservative national security strategist whom Mr. DeSantis has hosted at the governor’s mansion.
The DeSantis Foreign Policy: Hard Power, but With a High Bar - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
They note that this is a policy that he has always had at least since his days in the military and certainly in his time in Congress.
Mr. DeSantis’s former House colleagues could not recall him ever worrying about whether girls got an education in Afghanistan or whether democracy could be spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, they recall him expressing a hard-nosed and narrow view of the American national interest.
Declared and undeclared GOP candidates lined up in the debate . Pence ,Haley ,Scott all appear to be all in for America to get more deeply committed to Ukraine (although Scott wants accountability for the $$$$$ spent) .
Trump would probably agree with DeSantis if he wasn't in a campaign mode that trashes his biggest rival. Trump has said that Ukraine is not a compelling US national interest .
Vivek Ramaswamy thinks that our focus on Russia-Ukraine makes us take our eyes off the real threat from China....and that the war illustrates a self imposed wound by the west for becoming dependent on Russian energy .