The 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance, crafted by hawkish Pentagon staffers in the George H.W. Bush administration, was an early formulation of the neoconservatives’ post-Cold War vision, laying out an agenda to ensure U.S. global dominance. Panned at the time, many of its ideas have nevertheless persisted, with one scholar noting that while Trump may have stripped “ethical pretense” from the 1992 DPG formula, he continues to insist that U.S. “military dominance must be unquestioned.”

Neoconservatives and like-minded hawks have sought to burnish their public images in the wake of President Trump’s bumbling foreign policy moves, presenting themselves as reasonable counterweights to an out-of-control administration. However, as the case of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies demonstrates, there is always more than meets the eye with the neocons.

The Standard served as the flagship journal of neoconservative opinion and activism for more than two decades, before shutting down in 2018. Its closure, which came as its owners chaffed at the magazine’s vocal anti-Trump line, spurred speculation over whether “neoconservatism has been cast out of the Republican coalition.”

According to Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “democracy has been a disaster for minorities in the Middle East” and “’inclusive authoritarianism’ might be a better alternative.” The irony of this idea was not lost on observers. One writer quipped: “This guy literally runs an outfit called the Foundation for Defense of Democracies!” FDD, a bastion of neoconservative political activism, became a major policy force during the George W. Bush administration and has returned even stronger in the Trump era. Stocked with ideologues supporting aggressive anti-Iran and “pro-Israel” policies, FDD has also been one of the few organizations defending Trump’s refusal to take serious measures against Saudi Arabia over their war in Yemen and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Bolton’s hostility towards the president has set him up as a protagonist in the undoing of the Trump presidency, even if his refusal to testify in the impeachment trail may be tied to a tell-all book deal. But the former national security adviser’s complaints about political “drug deals” in Ukraine by Trump cronies must not disguise the true legacy of this notorious war hawk, like his rabid promotion after 9/11 of a go-it-alone America waging wars across the Middle East.

Robert Joseph is a former State Department hawk who has long championed aggressive U.S. approaches on Iran, like scraping the Iran nuclear deal. Since becoming a lobbyist for the cultish Iranian opposition group the Mojahedin-e Khalq-e Iran (MEK), Joseph has pressed the case that there is a “viable” opposition to the government in Tehran, claiming at a recent congressional hearing that the MEK-associated National Council of Resistance of Iran is a “formidable alternative to the mullah’s tyranny.”