Bret Stephens had a column in Friday’s NYT in which he gave Trump’s foreign policy a report card from a variety of ideological perspectives. His analysis was pretty accurate, but he somehow missed my opinion, so here it is:
1. North Korea: C (so far): If you ignore the threats and the bombast, Trump has behaved pretty conventionally on North Korea to date. That obviously could change, and disaster looms, but it isn’t here quite yet.
2. China: D. Trump put way too much faith in Xi’s willingness to cooperate on North Korea, made it clear that he was willing to bargain away the security of our allies in exchange for that cooperation, and then reversed course in an extremely clumsy way. He complains about the enormous trade deficit, but offers no plausible solutions. A trade war is around the corner.
3. Middle East: D minus: On the one hand, he has agreed to serve as the tip of the Saudi spear; he growls at Iran, bombs Syrian airfields, and shoots down Syrian planes. On the other hand, he has cut off funds to the Syrian rebels in order to make Putin happy. Is he just trying to keep everyone off balance, or is this simply incoherence? Who can tell?
4. Russia: F. No elaboration necessary.
5. Promoting American values: F. Having no regard for liberal democratic values at home, it was never likely that he would promote them abroad.
6. Promoting American leadership in the world: F. “America First” means gratuitously offending our allies all over the world, dropping out of the TPP and the Paris Agreement, and threatening a trade war. In the eyes of the world, it is now “China First.”
It’s not a pretty sight, and it’s probably going to get worse.