Charles Krauthammer offers
his take on President Trump's foreign policy in a column published in the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
At the heart of Donald
Trump's foreign policy team lies a glaring contradiction.
On the one hand, it is
composed of men of experience, judgment, and traditionalism. Meaning, they are
all very much within the parameters of mainstream American internationalism as
practiced since 1945. Practically every member of the team - the heads of State,
Homeland Security, the CIA, and most especially Defense Secretary James Mattis
and national security adviser H.R. McMaster - could fit in a cabinet put
together by, say, Hillary Clinton.
The commander in chief, on
the other hand, is quite the opposite - inexperienced, untraditional,
unbounded. His pronouncements on everything from the "one China"
policy to the two-state (Arab-Israeli) solution, from NATO obsolescence to the
ravages of free trade, continue to confound and, as we say today, disrupt.
The obvious question is: Can
this arrangement possibly work? The answer thus far, surprisingly, is: perhaps.
The sample size is tiny but
take, for example, the German excursion. Trump dispatched his grown-ups - Vice
President Pence, Defense Secretary Mattis, Secretary of Homeland Security John
Kelly and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson - to various international confabs
in Germany to reassure allies with the usual pieties about America's commitment
to European security. They did drop a few hints to Trump's loud complaints
about allied parasitism, in particular shirking their share of the defense
burden.
Within days, Germany
announced a 20,000-man expansion of its military. Smaller European countries
are likely to take note of the new setup. It's classic good-cop, bad-cop: The
secretaries represent foreign policy continuity but their boss preaches America
First. Message: Shape up.
You can read the rest of the
column via the below link:
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