Mr. Trump has proved to be an effective campaigner, but his populist bromides would be disasters if posed as actual policies.
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Rolling out an “America first” foreign policy, Republican front-runner Donald Trump vowed on Wednesday that if he were elected president, U.S. allies in Europe and Asia would have to fend for themselves if they did not pay more for the United States defense umbrella.
“We’ve made the Middle East more unstable and chaotic than ever before”, said Trump, lumping in Obama’s abandonment of USA ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, a record of recriminations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a refusal to enforce his own “red line” for military action after Syrian President Bashar Assad unleashed chemical weapons. Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the center’s publication, The National Interest, has written that “a Trump presidency would likely be a foreign policy debacle”.
An indication of how far removed most of the current presidential campaign has been from intelligent and useful debate on important public issues is the speech on foreign policy that Donald Trump gave in Washington on Wednesday.
Former South Korean vice foreign minister Kim Sunghan said Mr Trump would be “the first isolationist to be United States presidential candidate, while in the post-war era all the U.S. presidents have been to varying degrees internationalists”. He said we’re going to get out of nation-building but we’re going to create stability.
“He was actually attacking President Obama for abandoning our allies, and in the next breath he’s saying he going to abandon our allies”, Boot said.
Fresh off a sweep of five Northeastern primaries and on a clearer path to nomination, Trump repeated assertions that US allies must contribute more to worldwide security agreements, such as North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, to reap the benefits of American military protection.
Trump also assailed the Iran nuclear deal, which Clinton supports, and said the USA has faced “humiliation” at the hands of Iran.
Bruno Lete of the German Marshall Fund, a Brussels-based think-tank, agrees Europeans should do more to defend themselves. “And we have to be unpredictable starting now”, Trump said.
I don’t agree with his worldview, but to dismiss it as outside the mainstream of Republican foreign policy thinking is to ignore two truths: The concept of peace through strength is Republican orthodoxy and withdrawal from worldwide organizations, wariness of war and scrapping trade pacts all appeal to the Trump Republican voters who feel that the Washington GOP establishment is too internationalist.
Many elements of Trump’s speech were similar to his typical campaign remarks, but he delivered them in a more sober, restrained manner. They have to be good to us. Drawing a contrast with hawkish Republicans, he said “war and aggression will not be my first instinct”.
He also promised to eradicate the Islamic State but said the campaign against extremism – or “radical Islam” – is as much a philosophical struggle as a military one. “And so many other things are going to stop, that we’re going to make great trade deals, and we’ll make our nation rich again”.
On the ISIS, he said that the dreaded terror outfit’s days are “numbered”. Trump said he would work with Muslims to fight terrorism but he has already alienated them with proposals to block them from coming into the country, she said.
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Asked if this meant Trump was ruling out accepting money from big donors in the future, Manafort said Trump hadn’t made any decisions yet.
