In the spat with the ousted John Bolton as National Security Adviser, Trump responded to Bolton by saying “guys like Bolton and others wanted to go into Iraq and that didn’t work out too well.” Leaving aside the fact that Bush and Petraeus had succeeded in stabilizing Iraq by September 2008, and Obama cut-and-ran in 2014, Trump exposes his selective memory and bent for near-isolationism. His approach to foreign affairs is a combination of bluster and bluff (“Rocket Man”, “We’ll respond with the likes of nothing you’ve ever seen before”), patronizing niceties as if he’s talking to a municipal planning board (“They’ve got tremendous potential”, etc.), and finding excuses not to use the US military that he boasts so much about. Trump sounds more like Charles Lindbergh and his 1940 America First Committee than Ronald Reagan. Trump is the one who refuses to see the bear in this Reagan campaign ad from 1984 (see below).
The bear ad came to mind after reading Jim Geraghty’s piece in National Review, “The Missing Word in Trump’s Call: ‘Russia’” (Read the article here). The phone transcript between Trump and Zelensky should be read with the pall of Russian aggression against Ukraine overhanging the conversation. It certainly was on the mind of Zelensky as his country is being dismembered by Russia, if it wasn’t in Trump’s head. The Ukraine is at the mercy of American military aid, since the bureaucratic pacifism of the European Union makes it a eunuch and the poor country is geographically isolated. The president talks about his personal squabbles with malevolent Democrats in the conversation as Zelensky’s Ukraine is invaded. I would think that Zelensky is at a severe disadvantage. Thus, he responds with the equivalent of “Yes, yes, Mr. President, yes …”
The crazy Democrats’ serial drive for impeachment and the president’s narrow focus on the never-ending domestic assaults against him must make the American political scene seem like kabuki theater to the guy at the other end of Trump’s phone line. We, Americans, are missing a more serious picture. Back to the bear ad and Lindbergh’s America First Committee, another pall should overhang Trump’s current management of our foreign relations. It’s the tumbling dominoes of the Rhineland (1936), the Anschluss (1938), Czechoslovakia (1938), and Poland (1939).
A zigzagging foreign policy careening from bluster and bluff to excuse-mongering inaction as we deal with thug countries like North Korea, Iran, and China is a disaster-in-waiting. The measure of success should not be the number of wars avoided but are we any safer and our interests protected.
Besides, the choices aren’t between a boots-on-the-ground invasion and the diplomacy of “All You Need is Love”. Whether Trump likes it or not, the US on the international scene corresponds to the high school Dean of Students. No, we’re not the cop but we are the disciplinarian of last resort. And by discipline, I don’t mean nation-building. To borrow from 19th century, there’s such a thing as “butcher and bolt”. Go in, smash ’em, and get out, as in Operation Praying Mantis from 1988.
Oh, but Trump might still insist that we aren’t the world’s policeman. Okay then, Trump, continue you’re blustery bluffs followed by artful dodging on inaction. A new set of dominoes is being set up. It may take awhile but the ministries in Pyongyang, Tehran, and Beijing, and any erstwhile two-bit thug, are taking notes. A principle from ancient Rome applies: If you want peace, prepare for war. I would like to add a corollary: And be prepared to occasionally use it to make it real. If not, inaction comes at a bigger price later. Unless, of course, you claim the power to repeal human nature and assert that it never had a role and never will. Now that would qualify as sheer fantasy.
Trump, drop the America First Committee shtick as you fight off the loons in the Democratic Party.
RogerG