In the apparent madness of Donald Trump's second presidency, where the White House echoes with the chants of "America First", two figures stand out as unlikely architects of a new Right Wing Order: Charlie Kirk and Michael Anton. 

Kirk, the 31-year-old firebrand whose assassination in September 2025 sent shockwaves through the MAGA faithful, was the movement's youthful evangelist, mobilising a generation of disaffected voters with viral podcasts and campus crusades. 

Anton, the erudite Claremont Institute scholar and former member of the National Security Council (NSC), provided the doctrinal scaffolding – a sophisticated rationale for Trump's transactional nationalism that now shapes the administration's 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS).  

Together, they embody the MAGA doctrine's dual dynamics: Kirk's populist fervour, which turned abstract grievances into electoral dynamite, and Anton's intellectual rigour, which translated those grievances into a foreign policy blueprint, rejecting the liberal international order. 

It's a made-in-MAGA heaven symbiotic fusion that has propelled Trumpism from fringe rebellion to governing philosophy. As the US navigates escalating tensions with Iran, a fragile Ukraine ceasefire, and a resurgent China, their combined influence reveals a MAGA foreign policy not of isolationist retreat, but of hyper-nationalist dominance – coercive, unilateral and unapologetically imperial. Yet, this "new MAGA imperialism" risks fracturing alliances, emboldening adversaries and eroding the very global hegemony it seeks to reclaim.  

Is MAGA digging the empire’s own grave?

Charlie Kirk's ascent was meteoric, a tale of digital influencer skills, charisma, and political messianism that has recast conservatism for the TikTok era. Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA) in 2012 at just 18 years of age, a student organisation that mushroomed into a 500,000-strong network of campus chapters by 2024. Under his helm, TPUSA waged cultural guerrilla warfare, publishing "Professor Watch Lists" to expose "leftist bias" and hosting AmericaFest rallies that drew tens of thousands of young people decked in red MAGA hats. 

Kirk's podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show, amassed millions of downloads, blending fiery monologues on border security with endorsements of Trump's 2024 campaign. His mantra: conservatism isn't elitist – it's a rebellion against "woke" elites who peddle endless wars and open borders.  

Kirk's intellectual contribution to MAGA lay in its domestication of foreign policy critique. In his 2020 manifesto, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future, he framed Trump's "peace through strength" as a populist antidote to neoconservative follies – the $8 trillion quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan that hollowed out the American heartland. "MAGA isn't isolationism," Kirk wrote, "it's realism for the forgotten man." He lambasted "forever wars" as elite deceit, linking them to domestic decay: porous borders inviting "foreign spies," energy dependence empowering OPEC tyrants. 

On his show, episodes dissected the US drone strike that killed Iran’s General Soleimani's in 2020 as a model of targeted deterrence – swift, unapologetic, and bloodless for American troops. Kirk's genius was accessibility; he turned dense concepts like "strategic autonomy" into memes, rallying Gen Z voters who propelled Trump's 2024 youth turnout to 49% among men under 30.

But Kirk's influence extended beyond rhetoric. As a White House regular, he vetted MAGA loyalists for key posts, including Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary – a Turning Point alumnus whose anti-woke military reforms echo Kirk's campus purges. Post-assassination, Trump's Truth Social eulogy called Kirk the "heart of MAGA youth," crediting him with flipping swing states like Arizona. Kirk's death, allegedly at the hands of a "radical left" operative, has since been weaponised by Trump allies to justify crackdowns on NGOs and universities – framing critics as "enemies within" in a chilling echo of authoritarian regimes.

In foreign policy terms, Kirk's legacy is the grassroots firewall: a mobilised base that pressures Trump against hawkish pressures and lapses, demanding restraint abroad to fund border walls at home.  

Maga’s Machiavelli

Enter Michael Anton, the patrician counterweight to Kirk's street-fighter. At 56, Anton is MAGA's Machiavelli – a former Wall Street speechwriter turned NSC strategist whose pseudonymous 2016 essay "The Flight 93 Election" urged conservatives to crash the plane of establishment GOP into Trumpism or perish. 

Published under the pen name Publius Decius Mus, it went viral, framing a then-likely Clinton's victory as civilisational suicide. Anton's prose was surgical: the liberal order had bred "spiritual sickness," with endless interventions abroad masking elite self-interest. Trump, he argued, offered not ideology but salvation – a "national-political defense of the Constitution."  

Anton's background spans Bush-era NSC stints and Rupert Murdoch's media empire, but his MAGA pivot crystallised in a 2019 Foreign Policy essay, "The Trump Doctrine." He distilled Trump's approach to a pithy imperative: "Don't be a chump." 

Eschewing neoconservative moralism and liberal multilateralism, Anton posited a realism rooted in power balances – US hegemony not through global policeman, but through economic leverage and red-line enforcement. 

Globalisation, he contended, was Rome's velvet glove over empire; Trump merely stripped it bare, prioritising "America's interest through a more narrow lens." No more "principled" crusades toppling dictators; instead, tariffs on Vietnam for IP theft, sanctions starving Iran's mullahs, and NATO allies stumping out 5% GDP or facing obsolescence. 

Anton's Claremont writings, like "America and the Liberal International Order" (2017), rejected post-WWII institutions as enablers of decline – eroding borders, homogenising culture, and bankrolling Europe's welfare while America footed the bill.  

This intellectual scaffolding found real-world influence in Anton's government roles. In Trump's first term, as Deputy Assistant for Strategic Communications on the NSC, he shaped messaging that sold the Abraham Accords as "deal-making" triumphs, not Wilsonian peace. 

His 2018 Washington Post op-ed on ending birthright citizenship tied immigration to national security, prefiguring MAGA's "invasion" narrative. Returning in 2025 as Director of Policy Planning at State – under Secretary Marco Rubio – Anton has been the quiet force behind Trump's foreign policy reboot. He led technical talks with Iran in Oman, pushing a "maximum pressure" sequel to Soleimani, and joined Riyadh summits brokering a Ukraine endgame with Putin proxies. But his crowning achievement? Lead authorship of the 2025 NSS that operationalises "America First" as grand strategy.  

Anton's imprint on the NSS? A doctrine of "strategic unilateralism," where alliances are transactional – NATO as protection racket, not sacred covenant; China as existential foe demanding decoupling; and Russia to be contained via energy dominance. The NSS elevates domestic fortification – border walls as "first line of defence," diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) purges in the Pentagon as readiness imperatives – mirroring Kirk's holistic security vision. It rejects Biden's "democracy vs. autocracy" binary, opting for pragmatic spheres: let Europe handle its backyard, while America polices the Indo-Pacific with tariffs and carrier groups. 

Anton reconciles Trump's ad-hoc style – tariff tweets, golf-course diplomacy – with coherent realism, arguing that true strength lies in restraint from folly, not from engagement. As Rubio praised, it's a "groundbreaking" blueprint to "perpetuate Trumpism beyond Trump."  

Kirk-Anton Maga Axis

The Kirk-Anton axis is MAGA's secret alliance: populist mobilisation meets elite articulation. No direct collaboration – Kirk's world was arenas and algorithms, Anton's think tanks and transition memos – but their orbits overlapped in Claremont's intellectual hothouse and Trump's inner circle. 

Kirk hosted monarchist Curtis Yarvin on his podcast, echoing Anton's flirtations with post-liberal thinkers; both decried the "ruling class" as foreign policy saboteurs. 

TPUSA chapters distributed Anton's essays, while Kirk's rallies amplified "Trump Doctrine" soundbites. Their combined force has transformed the GOP: from Reagan's shining city on a hill to Trump's fortified bunker. In 2024, Kirk's viral ground game – door-knocking and TikTok blitzes – paired with Anton's elite networking delivered Trump's mandate.  

This intellectual tandem has yielded tangible policy wins. The NSS codifies Kirk's anti-interventionism: no boots in Ukraine beyond $50 billion in "loans," but $100 billion for border tech. It mandates "energy independence 2.0," echoing Kirk's oil-drill advocacy to kneecap Russia's war chest. 

On China, Anton's containment – decoupling supply chains, arming Taiwan – aligns with Kirk's "China virus" rants, framing Beijing as borderless invader. The result? A foreign policy that's leaner, meaner and more domestically attuned – $2 trillion in tariffs revenue redirected to infrastructure, not aid packages.  

Maga’s imperial and internal contradictions

Yet, this MAGA doctrine harbours imperial contradictions. Anton's "narrow lens" risks alienating allies: NATO's 5% demand has prompted European scepticism, while Ukraine's half-measures embolden Putin. Kirk's internal focus – purging "disloyal" bureaucrats – breeds paranoia, as seen in post-assassination probes of Soros-funded groups. Trump's Vietnam tariff flip-flop (46% to 20% for hotel and golf course perks) exposes the doctrine's crass transactionalism, undermining Anton's high-minded realism. 

Globally, it accelerates multipolarity: BRICS nations court a US-weary Europe, while Iran's nuclear brinkmanship tests "maximum pressure." This is hyper-nationalist elite populism masquerading as anti-imperialism – dominance via coercion, not consent.  

The MAGA movement, once a monolith of "America First" restraint, is slowly also revealing schisms and tensions, fault lines between its populist hardcore – fuelled by online influencers like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene – and the hawkish insiders wielding power, such as Rubio and evangelical allies. 

Trump's escalatory threats of full Iran invasion after the June 2025 strikes, his covert ops and naval buildup against Venezuela's Maduro (framed as narco-crackdowns but eyed as regime-change), and unyielding Israel backing amid Gaza's starvation crisis have ignited this schism.

Hardcore isolationists see these Trump administration policies as betrayals of anti-forever-war vows, warning of quagmires draining resources from borders and economy. Carlson labels Iran support "complicit in endless war," while Bannon and Greene slam Venezuela hawks as "neocons in MAGA clothing," fearing a Latin quagmire. On Israel, young Gen-Z MAGA voices like Charlie Kirk questioned billions in aid as un-"America First," with Greene dubbing Gaza a "genocide" and polls showing under-30 support collapsing to just 9%.

Yet, power players usually prevail: Rubio eyes Venezuelan oilfields, the largest in the world, and wants to "finish the job" on Iran, rhetoric that echoes traditional GOP hawks like Lindsey Graham, who frame interventions as vital security. 

Trump, aware of base fury, hedges – praising "precision" strikes while floating diplomacy – but his flexibility bends toward action, risking midterm backlash and a "massive schism" that Kirk suggested could "disrupt our insanely successful presidency." This tension tests MAGA's soul: populist purity or pragmatic power? 

The Trump administration remains, for all its claims, in the American’s empire’s driving seat, responding to the realities and imperatives of state power. MAGA talk helps mobilise his base but Donald Trump is now also a man of the hegemonic American state. He has to govern, not just campaign.

From my vantage point, Kirk and Anton represent an in-system rupture: the old foreign policy establishment – think tanks like CFR, foundations like Rockefeller – leaning into MAGA's insurgent networks. Claremont and TPUSA aren't just influencers; they're power brokers, perpetuating Trumpism through personnel pipelines. 

Anton's NSS ensures doctrinal longevity, while Kirk's martyrdom cements cultural hegemony. But sustainability? Doubtful. Endless wars may end, though empires fight interminable fires on their peripheries, and endless grievances fuel division at home and distrust abroad. Trump's empire, built on and fuelling Kirk’s and Anton’s ideas, may yet crumble under its own weight.  

Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics and associate dean of research in the School of Policy and Global Affairs at City St George’s, University of London, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and writes the American Imperium column at The Wire. He is an International Fellow at the ROADS Initiative think tank, Islamabad, on the board of the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences, USA, and on the advisory board of INCT-INEU, Brazil. Author of several books including Foundations of the American Century, he is currently writing a book on the history, politics, and crises of the US foreign policy establishment.

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