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According to the foreign-policy chattering class, Donald Trump is a purveyor of dangerous rhetoric and ideas, his statements are inconsistent, and he would lead the United States and the world into global chaos.
Just maybe, though, there is more intentionality to the presumptive Republican nominee’s foreign policy than the pundits and critics realize.
Put aside for a moment the criticisms—and even Trump’s own disparate statements about foreign policy in scores of interviews—and read (then re-read) Trump’s foreign policy speech of April 27. In it, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee articulates a vision for America’s role in the world that is at once within the mainstream of U.S. foreign policy but also not-so-subtly moves toward a vision of a world in which a strong America and its allies carry their fair share of the burden of global security.
Trump argues that attempting to "make western democracies out of countries that had no experience…in becoming a western democracy" is a "dangerous idea." He adds, "We’re getting out of the nation-building business and instead focusing on creating stability in the world." Instead of attempting "radical change" in the Middle East, Trump calls for defeating terrorists and fostering civil society. That’s a point on which even supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders could agree. In the long aftermath of the Iraq War, Trump’s statements are basically conventional thinking.
Trump shares common ground with so many across the political spectrum when he says that the United States has "no strategy" in its foreign policy that the statement is almost not worth noting. Any number of American politicians could have uttered these words: "Our goal is peace and prosperity, not war and destruction. The best way to achieve those goals is through a disciplined, deliberate and consistent foreign policy."
Trump is not out on a limb when he says that as president he would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And every Republican presidential contender—along with many leaders in the Democratic Party—have issued warnings like this one from Trump’s April 27 speech: "Our actions in Iraq, Libya and Syria have helped unleash ISIS, and we’re in a war against radical Islam."
When he speaks of allies, it is not just those within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. "We’re going to be working very closely with our allies in the Muslim world, all of which are at risk from radical Islamic violence." Did Donald Trump really call Muslims allies?
Why then does Trump seem so out of step? There are two major reasons. First, his foreign policy views are embellished with a kind of pro-Americanism—a blustery nationalism—that makes American elites uncomfortable. It is not politically correct to say that he is putting America first, as he does twice in his speech. That stops many dead in their tracks.
Go beyond this rhetoric, however, and hear Trump’s explanation for America first: "The world is most peaceful and most prosperous when America is strongest. America will continue and continue forever to play the role of peacemaker. We will always help save lives and indeed humanity itself, but to play the role, we must make America strong again." Is there any country other than the United States that most Americans would like to see as the organizer of the international system?
In addition to his politically incorrect rhetoric, Trump seems so much like a foreign policy radical because he is tampering with long-held foreign policy maxims. One such maxim is that China should not be taken on directly. Yet Trump says the United States cannot be strong militarily when it is weak economically, and its economic plight has a lot to do with China’s "assault on American jobs and wealth."
Trump agrees with the conventional view that NATO and Asian allies are the cornerstone of Western defense, but he adds a new caveat: "The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the United States must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves. We have no choice." That galls the foreign policy class.
There is more to Trump’s NATO analysis, however. He repeatedly calls for a revived Western alliance, and declares that as president, he "will…call for a summit with our NATO allies and a separate summit with our Asian allies." The summits will be about "rebalancing of financial commitments, but [also] take a fresh look at how we can adopt new strategies for tackling our common challenges. For instance, we will discuss how we can upgrade NATO’s outdated mission and structure, grown out of the Cold War to confront our shared challenges, including migration and Islamic terrorism."
Trump’s strategy for international crises is utterly unique in contemporary American defense planning: "Be unpredictable starting now." Adversaries do not need to know how many troops you are sending to a conflict, when they will arrive, and when they will exit. The element of surprise will help the United States in hot spots in which it becomes engaged.
It is a kind of man-on-the-street wisdom that Trump is bringing to the foreign policy debate—albeit with all kinds of politically incorrect language. Foreign policy elites have long thought world affairs was their unique domain, but Trump isn’t on board. While he bows to some of their collective wisdom, he also challenges some of their dogmas. More importantly, he is finding an audience on these matters that the experts did not think existed.
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Kiron Skinner is director of the Institute for Politics and Strategy, Carnegie Mellon University’s new academic unit in its Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
