Ron DeSantis has presidential aspirations that may, in time, prove to exceed the realities of his ambition. But it is by no means clear how far these will go.

DeSantis’ tilt at the White House is being made from a distant second in the Republican Party race. The top pick remains, at least in the Grand Old Party (GOP), the seemingly immoveable Donald Trump. With each indictment, the latter’s credentials as a persecuted anti-establishment figure grows.

As for his background, DeSantis, this Floridian native “with blue-collar roots,” read history at Yale, graduating in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts. During a stint as teacher at Darlington school, a private boarding institution in Rome, Georgia, he enjoyed playing the provocateur. A former student recalled him playing “devil’s advocate,” reasoning that “the South had good reason to fight [the Civil War], to kill other people, over owning people – Black people.”

At Harvard, he completed his Juris Doctor, after which he made a career in the Naval Judge Advocate Generals’ Corps (JAG). From 2004 to 2010, DeSantis served on active duty in the Navy as a judge advocate general. In 2007, he had a stint advising Captain Dane Thorleifson, SEAL commander for Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah, Iraq, about the legality of special operation tasks in the area.

His records also reveal a spell with Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO), responsible for overseeing the detention of hundreds of prisoners captured in Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Most were held for years without charge. When a number went on hunger strike in 2006, DeSantis allegedly advised a commanding officer that force-feeding could be used. Former Guantánamo detainee Mansoor Adayfi has also made the claim that DeSantis “watched” him struggle as he was being force fed. “He was smiling and laughing with the other officers as I screamed in pain.” For the record, DeSantis was dismissive, calling the claims fabricated.

In terms of foreign policy, what would a DeSantis White House look like? Populist, most certainly. And, most likely, with heavy hues of Make America Great Again (MAGA). But in doing so, he has not ditched, as Trump has, traditional Republicanism. The DeSantis product is blend and hybrid, one that emphasises US might abroad, but cautious about using it. Some have called this “Jacksonian” in disposition, named after President Andrew Jackson, a leader who frowned upon entangling alliances but was happy to use unilateral force when needed. Otherwise, domestic matters come first in the policy pecking order. As Alexander Ward writes, “The result is this: Go big and stay at home.”

A clue, though not necessarily a good one, can be gathered from his time as Congressman and House Foreign Affairs Committee member. DeSantis did, for instance, urge that Ukraine receive defensive and offensive weapons in 2014 and 2015, taking a hawkish stand against Russia and subscribing to the “Reagan school” of foreign policy. He condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea and co-sponsored a resolution in 2015 supporting elections free of Russian interference in Ukraine.

In an interview with conservative talk show host Bill Bennett in June 2015, DeSantis reiterated the points: “we in the Congress have been urging the President [Barack Obama] to provide arms to Ukraine. They want to fight their good fight. They’re not asking us to fight it for them. And the president has steadfastly refused.” To be indecisive before “someone like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin” was to whet “his appetite to create more trouble in the area. And if we were to arm the Ukrainians, I think that would send a strong signal to him that he shouldn’t be going any further.”

As presidential hopeful, however, he wonders whether Washington should bother itself about “things like the borderlands or over Crimea.” In responding to a questionnaire from the high profile conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, DeSantis expressed concern about Washington “becoming further entangled in a “territorial dispute” between Ukraine and Russia.”

There are the traditional bugbears of US foreign policy that DeSantis shares with Trump. He favours revoking China’s permanent normal trade relations status. Beijing, he argues, is “the No. 1 geopolitical threat this country faces.” As governor, DeSantis has taken an aggressive stance against what he sees as “the malign influence of the Chinese Community Party in the state of Florida.” He has also been a consistent opponent of the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), describing it in 2015 as “very, very dangerous.” Trump’s rejection of the JCPOA was duly applauded, as have any efforts to destabilise the regime in Tehran.

In matters of war and the use of force, DeSantis has previously denied suggestions that the US is weary. In a 2014 floor debate on the issue of how the US could defeat the forces of the Islamic State, he insisted that “Americans are willing to do what it takes to defend our people and our nation.” They were merely “weary of missions launched without a coherent strategy and are sick of seeing engagements that produce inconclusive results rather than clear-cut victory.”

On international trade, he opposes tariffs, favouring “lower barriers,” though takes exception to China. He expressed support for the very deals that Trump, himself citing populist arguments, rejected. As Congressman, he voted in favour of fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade bloc which Trump called the “greatest danger yet” to manufacturing in the US.

The populist bent of the DeSantis playbook finds shape in a hardened scepticism of policy making elites, the unelected liberal sort that refuse to acknowledge the sentiments of the populace and are bound to betray them. This fashioned rhetoric became very clear during the global pandemic, when DeSantis refused to impose strict lockdown measures in Florida and rejected what he termed “the biomedical security state.” “When you’re a governor and you get elected, they elect you to make the decisions. They did not elect me to subcontract our leadership to [chief medical advisor to the president Anthony] Fauci.”

In taking such positions, he was channelling the thought of the late conservative historian Angelo Codevilla, who argued for a “re-founding” of the US Republic in the face of “the bipartisan ruling class that controls nearly all our institutions,” forcing “Americans to act, speak, and thinking as if all that they had thought good were bad, and vice versa.” In line with such thought, we find DeSantis berating, in his book The Courage to be Free, that “arrogant, stale, and failed ruling class,” the same elite that aided China by rewarding it with “most favoured nation trade status,” backed and participated in open-ended conflicts (the “messianic impulse”), and “weaponized the national security apparatus by manufacturing the Russian collusion conspiracy theory.”

The foreign policy blueprint, for DeSantis, will certainly ring true in some wings of the GOP base. Hostility to China as the ascending power will be commended. His excoriation of the war-making, regime changers in the neoconservative wing of the party will also be cheered. The fundamental challenge here is whether he can prize enough support away from the rusted-on MAGAs who still see Trump, not only as the only viable option to defeat the Democrats, but one who was illegitimately thwarted of a second presidential term in 2020.

Dr Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.