by David P. Goldman
Donald Trump summed up his foreign policy at a September 10 press conference:
alot of people thought that my natural instinct is war; no, my natural instinct is actually peace. When we were on the debate stage, people used to say, “Will it be one week or two weeks before President Trump gets into a war?” But that’s not—I did rebuild our military. We have a military that — two and a half trillion dollars—new jets and rockets and tanks and ships and a lot of things we have. We have the newest, best military we’ve ever had. So, hopefully, we won’t have to use it.
Our nuclear program has been put into gear like never before, and in particular, hopefully, we won’t have to use that, because that’s a whole new level of destruction. And we never want to—just have to pray to God we never have to use that.
Or as Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported:
At a small campaign rally in Latrobe, Pa., President Trump on Thursday praised himself for wanting to “get along” with Russia and said that when he hears people talking about Russia in the news he “turns it off.”
“They always say, ‘Trump is radical, he is off the—he is too radical, he will get us in wars,’” Mr. Trump said. “I kept you out of wars. What happened in North Korea? I got along with Kim Jong-un. They said that’s terrible. It’s good that I get along. If I get along with Russia, is that a good thing or bad thing? I think it’s a good thing.”
“These maniacs,” he went on, mentioning Representative Adam Schiff, “always talk about Russia. They never talk about China. It is always Russia. I heard it starting again. They said somebody spoke to Russia—Russia, Russia, Russia. The total maniacs, shifty Schiff is a total maniac. I can’t even listen.”
“Getting along with countries and a good—is a good thing,” he added. “It is a very good thing, not a bad thing. It is a very good thing.”
Asserting American power without putting American boots on the ground ipso facto requires Washington to “get along” with other countries, most obviously so in the case of Syria, Iran, and North Korea. There is a delicate balance between putting pressure on regimes unfriendly to the United States in order to secure their good behavior, and importing great power tensions into regional problems.
Some will argue that President Trump’s record of success is mixed, and that he might have handled some situations better. But three things should be clear from the past three years of governance. First, “America First” reflects a vision for U.S. foreign policy, not a retread of isolationism. Second, the vision has produced some tangible successes. And third, although the Trump Administration’s record in foreign policy is imperfect, it has real accomplishments to show, in marked contrast to the disastrous performance of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations.
I do not write as a Trump apologist, although I supported him in 2016 and support him in the current presidential race. In particular I have been critical of his approach to China. Nonetheless, Trump’s record is vastly superior to the “Blame America First” stance of his predecessor, and to the utopian interventionism of the preceding Republican president.
President Trump won the 2016 Republican nomination in part by breaking with the end-of-history stance of the McCain-Romney wing of the Republican Party. The “Bush Freedom Agenda” had called for America to remake the world in its own democratic image by invading and occupying Afghanistan, Iraq and perhaps other countries, at the cost of trillions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of American lives.
Trump made clear what he opposed, but not what he proposed to do instead. His conduct of foreign policy has been improvisatory and sometimes contradictory, but highly successful in at least a few key theaters. A second Trump term could build on these successes; a Biden Administration would undo them in favor of a policy of great-power decline.
Quagmire No More
In 1989 the United States emerged from the Cold War as the world’s only superpower, with the military and economic muscle to impose its will where it pleased. It proceeded to atrophy this muscle, in two phases. The Clinton Administration decided that NATO had served its purpose as a military alliance and proceeded to reshape it as a humanitarian organization, expanding its membership to include countries that it had no capacity or need to defend. And the Bush Administration proposed an “end to evil,” as the ex-Republican turncoat David Frum titled a 2003 book he co-authored with Richard Perle.
This meant invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and—more importantly—imposing majority rule in Iraq. It also meant rhetorical support for the so-called color revolutions in former Soviet republics, with then-National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as cheerleader-in-chief. The results? Iraq’s Shi’ite majority became an ally of Iran, while the Russians responded by rebuilding a shattered military and intimidating their former subjects.
When Trump took office in January 2017, he had a weak hand to play. Iran was close to realizing its dream of a “Shi’ite Crescent” stretching from Hazara regions in Afghanistan to Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon on the Mediterranean. Russia had sent its military into Syria in 2015 to prop up the Assad government and continued to occupy large parts of Ukraine. The Obama Administration financed Iran’s aggression by restoring $56 billion of frozen Iranian funds according to Obama’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, or $150 billion, according to President Trump.
Unfortunately true Don had a “weak hand” to play. But Don had counted the cards and did not TRUMP any “good” tricks and made his contract!
Much to the chagrin of Rove and GWB!