I was reading an article–either on Politico or Axios, I think–a few weeks ago in which the writer was polling Trump people to try to get a succinct description of our new foreign policy. The most popular formula was “Bitch, we’re America!”
That sounds about right. It encapsulates the arrogance, the belligerence, and the preference for unilateral action and raw power over rules that are characteristic of what you could call the Trump Doctrine.
Leaving aside any concerns about morality, it is also deeply disturbing, because it is out of date. At the risk of sounding like Thomas Friedman, the fact is that technology has made national borders inherently more porous than ever before. Terrorism, cybercrime, pandemics, and refugee crises can have their roots essentially anywhere in the world, and our only choices are to attack the problems on the ground or to wait until they do damage at home, and then try to build a physical or virtual wall around the country after the horse has left the barn. Obama correctly decided that the better approach was the first one, with the assistance of rules and allies; Trump, whose brain still operates in the 1950s, clearly believes in the latter, and we will ultimately pay the price for it.