Sources close to the campaign told me Trump has also spoken with controversial historian Daniel Pipes and Israel’s current envoy to the UN Danny Danon, among others.
Sources close to the campaign tell me that Trump’s foreign policy proclamations are not ad hoc; in fact most are planned months in advance. For example, on Dec. 7 when Trump announced his idea to ban Muslims, it appeared to be a response to the terror attack in San Bernardino only days earlier. Sources close to the campaign say it had planned to announce the policy well before that attack happened.
Clovis said there was a huge amount of preparation that preceded Trump’s call for a pause in Muslim immigration.
“Do you think for a minute we would send the leading presidential candidate out, if we did not have the law, the history, and the Constitution on our side? Think it through,” he said. “We know exactly what we want to do and when.”
Trump’s advisers also claim that Trump’s wide-ranging foreign policy proposals, which include renegotiating the U.S.-Japan alliance treaty and outsourcing the Syria problem to the Russians, all fit into an easily understandable set of three “organizing principles” that form Trump’s governing doctrine on foreign policy.
“One, we want to take a very clear worldview in our foreign policy, dealing with the national interest, and let that be our organizing principles. Two is that we want to make sure that we engage in free markets, but we want those markets to be fairer as well. And three, if we do not have strong economic recovery, we can’t do the other two,” said Clovis. “If that’s not a Trump doctrine, I don’t know what is.”
The practical application of that doctrine plays out in several ways. Trump’s narrow definition of “national interest” does not include things like democracy promotion, humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect people from atrocities or the advocacy of human rights abroad. Trump believes that economic engagement will lead to political opening in the long run. He doesn’t think the U.S. government should spend blood or treasure on trying to change other countries’ systems.
“This is a long game; it’s not a short game,” Clovis said. He faulted neoconservatives who “think you can go out there and in three weeks after Iraq collapses you can create a constitutional democracy over there.”
The Trump campaign thinks of this approach as pragmatic and realistic. Like classical realists, Trump wants to deal with states and governments, not non-state actors or international organizations. That, according to his advisers, is why he sometimes seems to praise strongmen who lead their states as executives with absolute power. Trump sees Putin and other dictators as businessmen doing what any CEO would do, fighting for their organization.
“Mr. Trump looks at them and he says, ‘OK, I know exactly what kind of man you are and I know when I sit down at the table with you I can get your measure,’” said Clovis. “That’s really the calculus that’s in place.”
Clovis said the problem in the Republican national security establishment is that the experts see everything in “micro-tactical” terms and want to solve problems immediately rather than taking a longer historical view. He said Trump’s narrower vision of America’s national interest is designed for the everyman.
“People get it,” Clovis said. “And you know what, he’s absolutely right.”
Sam Nunberg, who advised Trump on foreign policy early in the campaign before having a falling out with Lewandowski, told me that Trump’s foreign policy was “Reagan-esque realpolitik,” a stance designed to be able to make policies based on circumstances without being burdened by ideology.
“Reagan would go after Qaddafi, but he would do business with Saddam,” he said. “It’s a case-by-case basis of what’s in American interests.”
