Speaking to a crowd of supporters at Washington, DC’s Mayflower Hotel on April 27, the day after sweeping the April 26 primaries, GOP front runner, Donald Trump, announced his foreign policy. Devoid of his usual bombast and vulgarity, his ‘Put America First’ speech was probably the most restrained of the campaign. What it lacked, though, was any sense that he has a clue of what makes for effective foreign policy. It was filled with the usual Trumpian sound bites and verbal pats on his own back, but lacking in details and full of contradictions, and I’ll just point out a few.
Let’s make friends—but, make them pay
Trump accused the Obama administration of disappointing our friends, while demanding that our allies pay US expenses for providing security. He conveniently omitted the fact that the forward deployment of US forces in NATO countries, and other locales is aimed at providing US security. Oh, and he still wants to build that wall on our southern border.
Expand the military – keep it home
He railed against US deployments abroad, while at the same time promising to expand the US military, including numbers of boots on the ground and equipment. What he plans to do with this much larger military is something we’ll just have to guess at.
Let’s apply economic pressure
I’m still trying to figure out how threatening trade wars with some of our largest trading partners is supposed to win friends.
Defeat the Islamic State
A worthy goal, but since he wants to restrict deployment of US forces abroad, even with this larger military he plans to build, as a former career military man, I’m still puzzling over this one. When you combine it with his insane plan to ban Muslims from traveling to the US, something that’s sure to help the Islamic State’s recruitment efforts—how that helps make us more secure is beyond me.
If this is Trump being presidential, one can only wonder how he’ll be the first time he has to deal with a foreign policy bureaucracy or an international meeting. The devil’s always in the details, but since there were no details in this speech, I’ve a devil of a time wondering who wrote it, and how he plans to bake the pie in the sky he described.