That may take some getting used to. But it sure sounds better than President Hillary Clinton. After Donald Trump’s resounding victory in Indiana last night, and Ted Cruz’s dropping out of the race, there’s no doubt now that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President of the United States.
And if you’re one of my faithful blog readers, you’re probably not surprised, because you may remember that the title of my blog back on March 2nd, a little over two months ago, was “It Looks Like It’s Gonna Be Trump vs. Hillary.” Now we’ll have to see if I was right when I really went out on a limb two weeks later, on March 16th, and predicted who the vice-presidential candidates would be – John Kasich for Trump and Julian Castro for Hillary. We’ll see.
Now let me shift gears. Virtually all the political pundits believe that Hillary is likely to beat Donald Trump in the general election. As far as I’m concerned, that would be a disaster for the country. For Donald to win, he’s going to have to step up his game, across the board, but especially with respect to foreign policy.
Since he tried to burnish his foreign policy credentials last week in a speech before the Center for the National Interest, in the rest of this week’s blog I’d like to focus on his speech, and what it tells us about foreign policy in a prospective Trump presidency. As I was busy doing my job as your representative in Washington, I wasn’t able to watch the speech live, but I saw some of the coverage it got in the news, both on T.V. and in the papers. More importantly, I got a copy of the speech and read the whole thing. If you’d like to read it yourself, here’s a link to it. Anyway, here are my thoughts.
First of all, I was going to title my blog this week “The World According to Trump.” I wrote this down the day after Trump’s speech, thinking it was a clever, maybe somewhat obscure, reference to a popular book and movie which came out over 30 years ago, “The World According to Garp.” (The movie starred the late Robin Williams.) Then I noticed that none other than the great Charles Krauthammer, in his op-ed about Trump’s speech, had used that same title, so I had to go back to the drawing board for a title. (What’s that they say about great minds thinking alike? HA!)
Now as for the speech itself, I’d heard many in the mainstream press pan the speech. But I have to say, after reading the whole thing cover to cover, it wasn’t half bad. Because of all the criticism I’d heard and read, I really hadn’t expected much. But I agreed with more of what Trump had to say than I disagreed with. And remember, that’s from someone who has not only served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee for 20 years, but also served as Chairman of both the Subcommittee on the Middle East and the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.
Trump’s absolutely right that the Obama/Clinton foreign policy has been “a complete and total disaster.” Trump goes on to say that putting “America First” will be the “overriding theme” of his presidency. Makes sense to me. As long as Trump doesn’t have in mind replicating the efforts of the America First Committee which emerged in 1940, with the express purpose of keeping America isolationist, and in opposition to standing up to Adolf Hitler and Nazi aggression.
Trump believes that our European NATO allies “are not paying their fair share.” And he’s absolutely right. That doesn’t mean it will be easy to get them to step up to the plate and pay for their own defense. Each of our NATO allies has agreed to spend at least 2% of their GDP each year for military defense. However, as Trump mentions in his speech, only 4 of the 28 NATO members are meeting their obligation. They are used to the U.S. picking up their slack. Trump says the American taxpayer can no longer afford to pay for these European deadbeats. Trump is right!
Trump points out that Obama’s agreement with Iran was a “disastrous deal.” And having negotiated a lot of deals himself, and written the bestseller “Art of the Deal”, Trump says Obama’s failure was “not being willing to leave the table.” And of course Trump’s right here again. Obama and Kerry obviously wanted a deal, any deal, more than the Iranians, and therefore got taken to the cleaners. It’s too bad our fearless leaders hadn’t modeled their negotiation strategy after Ronald Reagan, who famously was willing to walk away from the negotiations with Russia’s Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland, and was as a result roundly criticized by the American and world press. Soon after, Reagan was proven right when the Soviet Union collapsed of its own corrupt weight, the Berlin Wall came down, and Reagan literally achieved “peace in our time” without having to fire a shot.
Trump mentions the Obama Administration’s failure to exert “leverage on China necessary to rein in North Korea.” This is something I have recommended we do for some time – open discussions with our allies, South Korea and Japan, to discuss the possibility of them developing a defensive nuclear missile program. China won’t like this, and it is perhaps the only thing which will get China’s attention, and get them to put sufficient pressure on North Korea to get North Korea to behave. Trump didn’t specifically say in his speech if that’s his plan, but it’s mine, and if I have the opportunity at some point, I’ll share it with him, and perhaps it will become his plan.
Now a few things about Trump and his foreign policy that give me concern. First, Trump stated in his foreign policy speech that “our nuclear arsenal – our ultimate deterrent – has been allowed to atrophy and is desperately in need of modernization and renewal.” And that’s true. However, when he was asked by radio host Hugh Hewitt about our nuclear triad, Trump had no idea what Hewitt was talking about. (The triad is of course the three systems the U.S. maintains to deliver a nuclear weapon on the head of a potential enemy – by land, by sea, or by air.) It’s pretty scary that someone running to be Commander-in-Chief wouldn’t know this.
Second, Trump believes that NAFTA, and free trade in general, have been a “disaster” (he uses that word a lot) for the U.S. I agree with Trump that both Republican and Democratic Administrations have been too lackadaisical in enforcing U.S. trade rights under existing trade deals, but I believe free trade is good for the American economy, and creates far more jobs than are lost.
And finally, Trump says that U.S. foreign policy must be “disciplined, deliberate, and consistent.” And that “America is going to be a reliable friend and ally again.” But then at the same time, Trump says that our foreign policy should be “more unpredictable.” Predictable, unpredictable – which is it? I found this part of his speech just incoherent. Hopefully he’ll clarify what he means by this at some point.
That being said, overall I thought Trump’s foreign policy speech was pretty good. I would encourage him to follow up with a series of substantive, thoughtful, dignified speeches on a range of important issues which should be part of a presidential campaign, such as what he intends to do to improve the American economy; reform entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid so they’ll survive for future generations of Americans; and simplify and reform the far too complex American tax system. And that’s just for a start. Hopefully over-the-top accusations about opponents who lie all the time, have small hands, sloppy eating habits, or spouses who are insufficiently attractive, will be a thing of the past.
We can always hope.