A fairly recent Ross Douthat interview with Elbridge Colby identified the cornerstone of Trump’s foreign policy: every service provided by Uncle Sam to the rest of the world should be priced at market value. What that means in practice, of course, is that we bully our weaker friends, who profit from our protection and access to our markets, and suck up to our adversaries, who don’t. It alienates the voters in other liberal democratic states, to our ultimate cost.
The market approach reminds me of the definition of a cynic–a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. I guess Trump would take pride in that, but he shouldn’t; the refusal of the other NATO nations to help with the Iran war is just a small taste of what is to come.