Trump's foreign policy - to the extent he has one

Nathan Robinson gives a good summary of Trump’s America First perspective on war:

Trump’s seemingly “anti-war” candidacy convinced a lot of people, to the point where some left-leaning commentators have even managed to convince themselves that Trump is a kind of “anti-imperialist.” As Elias Khoury has shown for this magazine, this is nonsense. Trump “portrays himself as being bravely opposed to a warmongering political establishment,” but it’s “empty posturing.” In office, Trump supported human rights abusers around the world, expanded the military budget, ripped up arms control agreements and the Iran nuclear deal, illegally assassinated an Iranian general, abetted Saudi war crimes, threatened to sanction Iraq if it refused to keep U.S. troops there, escalated drone killings of civilians, and even considered invading Venezuela. Donald Trump is not anti-war or anti-imperialist.

But Donald Trump does understand the politics of war. He knows that the American people have a post-Iraq version of what was once called the “Vietnam syndrome,” i.e., a weariness of war and a reluctance to get involved in another one. (In fact, it’s not a pathology but a sign of moral maturity.) Trump knows that Iraq and Afghanistan were, to use one of his favorite phrases, “big disasters.” And he’s canny about capitalizing on public disapproval of those disasters. Yet at the same time, he bashes the military-industrial complex while building it up or claims to worry about nuclear war while threatening to start one. (1) [my emphasis]

Trump’s America First perspective - to the extent he can be said to have an actual foreign policy perspective beyond rhetoric, prejudice, and personal greed - is a direct descendent of the post-World War II “Old Right” in the US. They took a nominally isolationist position that opposed US treaty commitment like NATO. But in practice, that perspective was highly nationalistic and militaristic.

They weren’t pacifists with conservative cultural attitudes. They opposed international agreements to reduce nuclear arms proliferation as much as they opposed treaties of military alliance. In the Vietnam War, this perspective translated into demands for flattening North Vietnam, not a search for a diplomatic solution. Douglas MacArthur, who wound up being such a disastrous military leader in the Korean War, was one of their idols. Gen. Jack D. Ripper in the film Dr. Strangelove was an image of that emotional attitude.

Notes:

(1) Robinson, Nathan (2024): What Trump Understands About War. Current Affairs 04/02/2024. <https://www.currentaffairs.org/2024/04/what-trump-understands-about-war> (Accessed: 2024-13-04).