Trump’s Foreign Policy: The Conservatives’ Report Card

Yes, Machiavelli did say it was better to be feared than loved. But the great Florentine also said, “a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred.”

Much of this is self-inflicted. Trump didn’t need to start his presidency by

  1. infuriating the president of Mexico on the eve of a planned visit to Washington, or by
  2. comparing the American intelligence community to Nazi Germany,
  3. or by throwing a tantrum with the prime minister of Australia.
  4. He didn’t need to demand that Seoul pay for missile defenses that would protect American troops in the event of war with North Korea,
  5. or toy with our NATO allies as he mulled whether to reaffirm our mutual-defense obligations.

Trump could have avoided all of this. He didn’t, either because his personality is defective or because he thinks humiliation is an appropriate tool of presidential power. Character is destiny, conservatives used to think. We are living this destiny.

..  In Hamburg this month, Trump again showed how eager he was to oblige his man-crush in the Kremlin, this time at the expense of Israel.

But the deeper flaw of Trump’s foreign policy isn’t psychological. It’s philosophical

.. “The world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage,” McMaster and Gary Cohn

.. Mark this as the shift from internationalism to transactionalism; from a values-based foreign policy rooted in Alexis de Tocqueville’s notion of “self-interest, rightly understood” to an approach that might be called neo-Maguirism, after “Jerry Maguire.” To wit: “Show me the money!”

It’s not that the administration has done everything wrong, at least by conservative lights: It’s always possible to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

.. But if serious conservatives believe in anything, it’s that we really are, as Lincoln said, “the last best hope of earth,” and that our foreign policy should be equal to that hope.