Trump's Foreign Policy Speech Delivered

In Trump's foreign policy speech he said, "America no longer has a clear understanding of our foreign-policy goals. Since the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, we’ve lacked a coherent foreign policy.

"One day we’re bombing Libya and getting rid of a dictator to foster democracy for civilians. The next day we’re watching the same civilians suffer while their country absolutely falls apart.

"We’re a humanitarian nation, but the legacy of the Obama-Clinton interventions will be weakness, confusion, and disarray, a mess.

"We’ve made the Middle East more unstable and chaotic than ever before. We left Christians subject to intense persecution and even genocide.

"We have done nothing to help the Christians, nothing, and we should always be ashamed for that. Our actions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria have helped unleash ISIS, and we’re in a war with radical Islam, but President Obama won’t even name the enemy, and unless you name the enemy, you will never solve the problem."

While Trump had the respect for Republican sensibilities not to name the Bushes, it was clear that he considered George W. Bush, especially, part of the problem.

He cannot have been thinking of anyone but the 43rd president when he said: “Instead of trying to spread universal values that not everyone shares or wants, we should understand that strengthening and promoting Western civilization and its accomplishments will do more to inspire positive reforms around the world than military interventions.”

He was naturally less genteel in dealing with Hillary Clinton: She “blames it all on a video, an excuse that was a total lie, proved to be absolutely a total lie. Our ambassador [to Libya] was murdered and our secretary of state misled the nation. She was not awake to take that call at three o’clock in the morning.”

Trump paid suitable homage to the statesmen who led the Western Alliance to victory in World War II and in the Cold War, though Ronald Reagan was the only one he mentioned by name. “History will not forget what he did . . . Unfortunately, after the Cold War our foreign policy veered badly off course.

"We failed to develop a new vision for a new time . . . Logic was replaced with foolishness and arrogance, which led to one foreign-policy disaster after another.”

He blamed the Clinton administration for underreacting to the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and to the attack on the USS Cole, and enumerated five weaknesses in current American foreign policy. “First, our resources are totally over-extended.  . . . Secondly, our allies are not paying their fair share.  . . . They look at the United States as weak and forgiving and feel no obligation to honor their agreements with us.

"In NATO, only four of 28 other member countries besides America are spending the minimum required 2 percent of GDP on defense.  . . . The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves. We have no choice.”

The third weakness he identified was that the U.S. was not seen by its allies as dependable. “We’ve had a president who dislikes our friends and bows to our enemies . . . He negotiated a disastrous deal with Iran, and then we watched them ignore its terms even before the ink was dry. Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.”

This last line presumably means that if Iran derogates from the treaty and accelerates nuclear military deployment, President Trump will stop it militarily.

If Iran adheres to the treaty’s terms, whoever is president of the United States in 2025 will have to tell the Iranians, if the Trump policy is followed in the meantime, that a version of the treaty will have to be renewed or preventive military means will be taken to ensure that Iran does not become a nuclear military power.

This is at least more sensible than the promises of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to “tear up” the treaty, which is contrary to international law and would excuse Iran from its tepid restraints after all the impounded and immobilized billions of Iranian funds have been released to it.

His fourth imputation of weakness that “our rivals no longer respect us.  . . . They don’t take us seriously anymore.” In illustration of this, he mentioned the fact that Obama went all the way to Copenhagen to lobby for Chicago as the next Olympic Games site, and yet it came fourth; and that when Obama visited Cuba and Saudi Arabia, no one met him at the airport.

“Finally,” he said, “America no longer has a clear understanding of our foreign-policy goals. Since the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, we’ve lacked a coherent foreign policy.”

He promised that “we are getting out of the nation-building business and instead focusing on creating stability in the world.”

Trump declared that it would be his goal to “establish a foreign policy that will endure for several generations,” and said that he would recruit a new team, not composed of “those who have perfect résumés but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war.”

I have cited so extensively from the speech because, apart from those outlets that published the entire text, very little of it was accurately summarized. Those who disliked it described it in pejorative adjectives, and supporters also gave only adjectival approval.

In fact, it was sensible and plausible, a middle course between George W. Bush’s impetuosity and exaltation of inapplicable idealism over practicalities on the ground, and Obama’s feckless irresolution that has often had the character of telling America’s allies and adversaries to change roles and places, as in an after-dinner game of charades.

The yelpings of some of America’s allies, such as German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, can be discounted as the apprehension of freeloaders seeing the approach of the bill collector, rather than the pompous condescensions of European diplomats, who have tended to regard Atlantic relations for generations as a tutorial on worldliness from them to the Americans fortunate to have the privilege of defending them.

The speech wasn’t isolationist in tone and it isn’t clear that a Trump administration would cut loose very much from the traditional range of American overseas and hemispheric interests, except some countries that declined to pull their weight.

Conrad Black is a financier, author and columnist. He was the publisher of the London (UK) Telegraph newspapers and Spectator from 1987 to 2004, and has authored biographies on Maurice Duplessis, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Richard M. Nixon. He is honorary chairman of Conrad Black Capital Corporation and has been a member of the British House of Lords since 2001, and is a Knight of the Holy See. His most recent book is "Rise to Greatness, the History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present." For more of his reports, Go Here Now.

This article is excerpted from the original appearing in the National Review.