Darth Omar
Russian asset
The candidacy and subsequent election of Donald Trump to the presidency caused a great deal of consternation among the U.S. foreign policy establishment, Democrat and Republican alike. His campaign rhetoric suggested that he had no coherent view of U.S. foreign policy, other than the gauzy commitment to “making America great again” and “America first.”
Trump criticized America’s overseas commitments, including the ongoing effort in Afghanistan; called into question the value of NATO; and argued the United States was being undone by its adherence to free trade. On the other hand, his bombastic language suggested he was ready to abandon the constraints on the use of force that traditionally have guided our military efforts. For instance, during the Republican primaries, Trump said that he would “bomb the shit out of ISIS” and supported the use of waterboarding terrorists and targeting their families. His inflammatory campaign rhetoric led many conservative foreign policy specialists to criticize him. At the time, many signed two letters taking him to task (full disclosure: I signed both). Today, many conservative foreign policy professionals remain adamant “NeverTrumpers.”
Even though Trump’s rhetoric often remains undisciplined, his actions as president suggest the emergence of something resembling a doctrine. It is important to note that the “doctrines” associated with presidents in the past—the “Truman Doctrine,” the “Nixon Doctrine,” the “Carter Doctrine,” and the “Reagan Doctrine”—were usually not the result of a coherent plan developed at the outset of a president’s administration but were instead attempts by outsiders to discern a pattern in the actions of a given administration. So it is with any attempt to describe a nascent “Trump Doctrine.”
https://amgreatness.com/2017/11/25/is-there-an-emerging-trump-doctrine2/
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Good article but I didn’t want to paste all of it.
The writer [Mackubin Owens]is a Never Trump-ish foreign policy wonk that contributes to the National Review. He opens by criticizing Trump for his non-coherent foreign policy, but then goes on to negate his own criticism by saying most presidents don’t have a coherent foreign policy at the outset lol.
Trump is different—-because Trump, I suppose.
But nonetheless, Owens does an excellent job of fleshing out the Trump Doctrine in foreign policy.
Here, he totally gets it:
__________________
Pillars of an Emerging Trump Doctrine
The first pillar is a healthy nationalism. This is not the nationalism caricatured by Trump’s critics; it is not a reflection of racism and disdain for foreigners. It is not ethnic or racial nationalism but civic nationalism, better described as patriotism. There is no evidence that President Trump is in any sense a racist; quite the contrary. But there is no question that he is a patriot, one who seriously believes that the purpose of American power is to advance the interests of American citizens.
[Owens gets an A+ for properly describing Trumpist nationalism]
As Walter Russell Mead has observed, nationalism properly understood should not be a dirty word. “A nationalist and patriotic elite produces leaders like George Washington, who aim to promote the well-being of the country they love. An unpatriotic and anti-nationalist elite produces people who feather their nests without regard for the common good.”
A healthy nationalism recognizes that the sole purpose of American power is—or should be—to secure the American Republic and to protect the liberty and facilitate the prosperity of the American people. It is not—or should not be —to create the “global good,” a corporatist globalism divorced from patriotism or national greatness.
The second pillar—and a corollary of the first—is a state-centric view of international politics, one that approaches international institutions and “global governance” with great skepticism. This is what President Trump calls “principled realism,” a term he first used during his May 2017 speech in Saudi Arabia. It is in the interest of the United States to advance U.S. political, military, and economic strength not to impose U.S. will on others but to “secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” As Henry Nau argues, “the goal [of U.S. foreign policy] is a ‘republican world’ in which free nations live side by side, responsible for their own defenses and economies, and cut deals with other nations, including authoritarian ones, to the extent their interests overlap.”
The Trump doctrine seems to hold that the United States should not cede sovereignty to international institutions in order to be embraced by the mythical “international community” nor should the purpose of U.S. foreign policy be to defend a rule-based liberal international order. Of course, the United States will support international institutions to the extent that they advance U.S. interests. Indeed, the United States led the way in creating the institutions of the post-World War II liberal order, most notably the United Nations and the Bretton Woods system, and then employed its power to underwrite that system. The choice to do so was not motivated by altruism but by the recognition that the freedom, security, and prosperity of the United States are best secured in a world where other states are also secure, free and prosperous.
Trump criticized America’s overseas commitments, including the ongoing effort in Afghanistan; called into question the value of NATO; and argued the United States was being undone by its adherence to free trade. On the other hand, his bombastic language suggested he was ready to abandon the constraints on the use of force that traditionally have guided our military efforts. For instance, during the Republican primaries, Trump said that he would “bomb the shit out of ISIS” and supported the use of waterboarding terrorists and targeting their families. His inflammatory campaign rhetoric led many conservative foreign policy specialists to criticize him. At the time, many signed two letters taking him to task (full disclosure: I signed both). Today, many conservative foreign policy professionals remain adamant “NeverTrumpers.”
Even though Trump’s rhetoric often remains undisciplined, his actions as president suggest the emergence of something resembling a doctrine. It is important to note that the “doctrines” associated with presidents in the past—the “Truman Doctrine,” the “Nixon Doctrine,” the “Carter Doctrine,” and the “Reagan Doctrine”—were usually not the result of a coherent plan developed at the outset of a president’s administration but were instead attempts by outsiders to discern a pattern in the actions of a given administration. So it is with any attempt to describe a nascent “Trump Doctrine.”
https://amgreatness.com/2017/11/25/is-there-an-emerging-trump-doctrine2/
_____________
Good article but I didn’t want to paste all of it.
The writer [Mackubin Owens]is a Never Trump-ish foreign policy wonk that contributes to the National Review. He opens by criticizing Trump for his non-coherent foreign policy, but then goes on to negate his own criticism by saying most presidents don’t have a coherent foreign policy at the outset lol.
Trump is different—-because Trump, I suppose.
But nonetheless, Owens does an excellent job of fleshing out the Trump Doctrine in foreign policy.
Here, he totally gets it:
__________________
Pillars of an Emerging Trump Doctrine
The first pillar is a healthy nationalism. This is not the nationalism caricatured by Trump’s critics; it is not a reflection of racism and disdain for foreigners. It is not ethnic or racial nationalism but civic nationalism, better described as patriotism. There is no evidence that President Trump is in any sense a racist; quite the contrary. But there is no question that he is a patriot, one who seriously believes that the purpose of American power is to advance the interests of American citizens.
[Owens gets an A+ for properly describing Trumpist nationalism]
As Walter Russell Mead has observed, nationalism properly understood should not be a dirty word. “A nationalist and patriotic elite produces leaders like George Washington, who aim to promote the well-being of the country they love. An unpatriotic and anti-nationalist elite produces people who feather their nests without regard for the common good.”
A healthy nationalism recognizes that the sole purpose of American power is—or should be—to secure the American Republic and to protect the liberty and facilitate the prosperity of the American people. It is not—or should not be —to create the “global good,” a corporatist globalism divorced from patriotism or national greatness.
The second pillar—and a corollary of the first—is a state-centric view of international politics, one that approaches international institutions and “global governance” with great skepticism. This is what President Trump calls “principled realism,” a term he first used during his May 2017 speech in Saudi Arabia. It is in the interest of the United States to advance U.S. political, military, and economic strength not to impose U.S. will on others but to “secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” As Henry Nau argues, “the goal [of U.S. foreign policy] is a ‘republican world’ in which free nations live side by side, responsible for their own defenses and economies, and cut deals with other nations, including authoritarian ones, to the extent their interests overlap.”
The Trump doctrine seems to hold that the United States should not cede sovereignty to international institutions in order to be embraced by the mythical “international community” nor should the purpose of U.S. foreign policy be to defend a rule-based liberal international order. Of course, the United States will support international institutions to the extent that they advance U.S. interests. Indeed, the United States led the way in creating the institutions of the post-World War II liberal order, most notably the United Nations and the Bretton Woods system, and then employed its power to underwrite that system. The choice to do so was not motivated by altruism but by the recognition that the freedom, security, and prosperity of the United States are best secured in a world where other states are also secure, free and prosperous.
