.. it is Mr. Trump’s anti-establishment stance that most threatens international security. As even Nixon recognized, since its emergence as a global power in the late 19th century, America has relied on a highly trained corps of diplomats, worldly financiers and academics to steer it straight. Get rid of them, as Mr. Trump seems intent on doing, and chaos will follow.
.. And contrast the mistakes of the 1960s to times when Washington allowed foreign policy to be set by public consensus. In the 1930s, Congress closed off free trade to protect American industry and listened to voters who wanted a smaller, less costly military with no entangling alliances. The results? The Smoot-Hawley tariff contributed to the Great Depression, and the failure of the League of Nations allowed the rise of fascism and global war.
Donald Trump’s Very Republican Foreign-Policy Speech
For a long time, sophisticated conservatives were supposed to understand that Republicans only did this with a wink and a nod. Yes, on the campaign trail, a candidate could talk about harsh immigration enforcement, but in office he was supposed to support comprehensive immigration reform. Sure, he could scare people about terrorism, but he would never really listen to the worst anti-Muslim voices on the right, let alone adopt their policies. And while Republicans could flirt with white identity politics to win a state here or there, they weren’t supposed to run as Rush Limbaugh and base an entire campaign around it.
What scares so many Republican élites is that Trump has refused to play by the traditional rule book, which says G.O.P. candidates can stoke flames but they’re not supposed to create bonfires.
.. Like many conservatives—and liberals—Trump looks back at the period from the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall with fondness. Far from planting himself in the isolationist tradition, Trump on Wednesday declared America’s entry into the Second World War and aggressive prosecution of the Cold War as the nation’s greatest triumphs. When he says he wants to make America great again, this is the era to which he’s referring.
.. When it came to his proposals, though, Trump was again as uninteresting and conventional as his more prominent Republican rivals ..
Donald Trump’s Trial Balloons Are Catching Up With Him
“He doesn’t understand diplomacy is not the zero-sum world of commercial real estate, hotels and golf courses,” said R. Nicholas Burns, an undersecretary of state for policy under President George W. Bush, and now a supporter of Hillary Clinton.
“Our allies magnify our power,” Mr. Burns said. “Our trans-Atlantic and Asian alliances are a significant power advantage over China and Russia, who don’t have real allies in the world.”
.. Mr. Gates’s phrase — “return on investment” — goes to the heart of the emerging Trump doctrine: Allies who will not pay their share, and defend themselves, will not be allies.
The difference is that Mr. Obama, Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton are all urging gradual change. Mr. Trump is declaring, perhaps for effect, that he would reconsider the entire structure of postwar alliances.
.. And while it is tempting to issue ultimatums, it was Mr. Gates, a former C.I.A. director, who observed that three of the least-uttered words in Washington are, “And then what?”
Does Obama Have This Right?
I was most struck by the moment when Sheikh Abdullah Humedi Ajeel al-Yawar, head of the giant Shammar tribe, centered in what is now ISIS-occupied Mosul, stood up in his elegant robes, looked at Iraq’s oil minister and asked: “What happened to the $700 billion [in oil money] that came to Iraq, and not a single bridge was built? What happened to this $700 billion? We are asking this from the heart.”
.. But tiny Kurdistan today is hosting 1.8 million refugees from other parts of Iraq and from Syria, and with low oil prices, it’s almost bankrupt.
.. Kurdistan and Tunisia are just what we dreamed of: self-generated democracies that could be a model for others in the region to follow. But they need help. Unfortunately, Obama seems so obsessed with not being George W. Bush in the Middle East that he has stopped thinking about how to be Barack Obama here — how to leave a unique legacy and secure a foothold for democracy … without invading.