The New Right: Ukraine Marks Major Foreign Policy Shift Among Conservatives

June 22, 2022

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Zoom Webinar

An event sponsored by The Quincy Institute and The American Conservative

The hawkish wing of the GOP is losing ground to a new crop of conservatives who, thanks to the space opened up by Trump’s challenge to Washington’s foreign policy orthodoxy, are now leading the push against mainstream views on Russia and Ukraine. These conservatives want to bring back a focus on U.S. national interests in foreign policy and are very much on the forefront of the debate over the role the U.S. should play in the Ukrainian conflict, NATO expansion, and the best way to end the war without escalating a nuclear confrontation with Russia. They have been attacked by opponents on both sides of the ideological spectrum as neo-isolationists and worse, but their message may be resonating with a war weary American public skeptical of Washington’s leadership on this and other foreign policy fronts.

Questions remain, however: can this movement transcend partisan politics, i.e, a future Republican takeover of Congress and the White House? What about the issue of China? Does the New Right have the capacity of working with equally committed groups in the middle and the left, despite the polarizing politics of our time?

Join a conversation featuring Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief at The Federalist; Saurabh Sharma, president of American Moment; Emile Doak, executive editor of the American Ideas Institute, and George Beebe, Grand Strategy Director at the Quincy Institute. Kelley Vlahos of the Quincy Institute will moderate.

Panelists

Mollie Hemingway

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is editor-in-chief at The Federalist and a Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College. A Fox News contributor, she is a regular member of the Fox News All-Stars panel on “Special Report with Bret Baier.” Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, National Review, GetReligion, Ricochet, Christianity Today, Federal Times, Radio & Records, and many other publications. Mollie was a 2004 recipient of a Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship and a 2014 Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute. She is the co-author of the book Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Court.

Saurabh Sharma

Saurabh Sharma is the President of American Moment and co-host of Moment of Truth. Saurabh has written for numerous news and opinion outlets including The American Mind, American Greatness, The American Conservative, The Daily Caller, The Spectator US, National Review Online, The Daily Texan, and Texas Scorecard. He has also been awarded fellowships from the National Journalism Center, The Claremont Institute, and the Conservative Partnership Institute.

Emile Doak

Emile Doak is the executive director of the American Ideas Institute, which publishes The American Conservative. He is a graduate of Georgetown University, where he studied political philosophy and theology, and previously worked in education before returning to the field of his studies. His writing has appeared in First Things, Front Porch Republic, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, and elsewhere.

George Beebe

George Beebe is Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute. He spent more than two decades in government as an intelligence analyst, diplomat, and policy advisor, including as director of the CIA’s Russia analysis and as a staff advisor on Russia matters to Vice President Cheney. His book, The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe (2019), warned how the United States and Russia could stumble into a dangerous military confrontation.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos (Moderator)

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and editorial director of its online magazine, Responsible Statecraft. Previously she served as executive editor, managing editor, and longtime foreign policy/national security writer at The American Conservative magazine. She also spent 15 years as an online political reporter at Fox News.