Okay, it is easy to pick on US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s foreign policy. However, just because he recently referred to the attack on the World Trade Center as happening on “7/11” — which is a convenience store — instead of “9/11,” and just because he claimed that “I know Russia well” because he held a “major event in Russia two or three years ago — [the] Miss Universe contest, which was a big, big, incredible event” — does not make him unqualified.
I am sure you can learn a lot schmoozing with Miss Argentina. You can also learn a lot eating at the International House of Pancakes. I never fully understood Arab politics until I ate hummus — or was it Hamas?
And, by the way, just because Trump’s big foreign policy speech was salted with falsehoods — like “ISIS is making millions and millions of dollars a week selling Libyan oil” — it does not make him unqualified.
The New York Times Magazine just profiled one of US President Barack Obama’s deputy national security advisers, Ben Rhodes, reporting how he and his aides boasted of using social media, what the writer called a “largely manufactured” narrative, and a pliant press to, in essence, dupe the country into supporting the Iran nuclear deal. The Donald is not the only one given to knuckleheaded bluster and misrepresentation on foreign policy.
Life is imitating Twitter everywhere now.
Indeed, criticizing Trump for inconsistency when it comes to foreign policy is a bit rich when you consider that both Democrats and Republicans have treated Pakistan as an ally, knowing full well that its secret service has trucked with terrorists and coddled the Taliban — the people killing US soldiers in Afghanistan; they have both treated Saudi Arabia as an ally because we needed its oil, knowing full well that its export of Salafist Islam has fueled extremists; they both supported decapitating Libya and then not staying around to support a new security order, thus opening a gaping hole on the African coast for migrants to flow into Europe; they have both supported NATO expansion into Russia’s face and then wondered aloud why Russian President Vladimir Putin is so truculent.
No, if I were critiquing Trump’s foreign policy views it would not be on inconsistency, hypocrisy or lying. It would be that he shows no sign of having asked the most important question: What are the real foreign policy challenges the next US president will face? I do not think he has a clue, because if he did, he would not want the job. This is one of the worst times to be conducting US foreign policy.
Consider some of the questions that will greet the Oval Office’s next occupant. First, what does the new president do when the necessary is impossible, but the impossible is necessary? Yes, we have proved in Iraq and Afghanistan that we do not know how to do nation-building in other people’s countries. However, just leaving Libya, Syria and parts of Iraq and Yemen ungoverned, and spewing out refugees, has led to a flood of migrants hitting Europe and stressing the cohesion of the EU; that refugee flood could very well lead to Britain’s exit from the EU.
Obama has been patting himself on the back a lot lately for not intervening in Syria. I truly sympathized with how hard that call was — until I heard the president and his aides boasting about how smart their decision was and how stupid all their critics are. The human and geopolitical spillover from Syria is not over. It is destabilizing the EU, Lebanon, Iraq, Kurdistan and Jordan. The choices are hellish. I would not want the responsibility for making them. However, nobody has a monopoly on genius here, and neither Obama’s victory lap around this smoldering ruin nor Trump’s bombastic and simplistic solutions are pretty to watch.
And there are more of these stressors coming: Falling oil prices, climate change and population bombs are going to blow up more weak states, hemorrhaging refugees in all directions.
There is also the question of what you should do about the networked nihilists? Ever since the rise of Osama bin Laden, super-empowered angry men have challenged us. However, at least bin Laden had an identifiable cause and set of demands: cleansing the Arabian Peninsula of Western influence. However, now we are seeing a mutation. Can anyone tell me what the terrorists who killed all those people in Brussels, Paris or San Bernardino wanted? They did not even leave a note; their act was their note. These suicidal extremist-nihilists are not trying to win; they just want to make us lose. That is a tough foe. They cannot destroy us — now — but they would ratchet up the pain if they get the ammo. Curbing them while maintaining an open society, with personal privacy on your cellphone and the Internet, will be a challenge.
And then there are Russia and China. They are back in the game of traditional sphere-of-influence geopolitics. However, both Russia and China face huge economic strains that would tempt their leaders to distract attention at home with nationalist adventures abroad.
The days of clear-cut, satisfying victories overseas, like opening up China or tearing down the Berlin Wall, are over. US foreign policy now is all about containing disorder and messes. It is the exact opposite of running a beauty pageant. There is no winner, and each contestant is uglier than the last.
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