National security strategy

Contradictions in Trump’s National Security Strategy 

For all his revolutionary talk on the campaign trail, Donald Trump, as presidents have before him, has been co-opted by the U.S. foreign policy establishment to run pretty much the same national security strategy as his predecessors. That is because new presidents, most of them former governors, have been elected on domestic issues and have little foreign policy experience when they take office (the only recent exception was George H. W. Bush), therefore relying on people that the establishment recommends from their political party. In the case of Trump—who had some good commonsense instincts in the campaign that promised a more a more restrained foreign policy—it is a shame that the interventionist generals he has around him have largely won the day over that laudable intuition.

Much to the alarm of establishment figures, Trump initially proved reluctant to accept the NATO alliance’s Article V pledge for the U.S. to defend rich European nations long after the Cold War was over. Even more horrifying to the elite, he agitated for East Asian allies to do more for their own defense, including possibly acquiring nuclear weapons. Trump has been reduced by the generals to merely taking pride that U.S. allies have agreed to pay a little more of the defense bill.