The Journal of American Greatness:
Trump’s foreign policy speech is being criticized by all the usual sources for all the usual reasons. If you’ve been following the foreign policy establishment and their cheerleader commentariat for any length of time, it must seem like déjà vu. They always say the same things, almost always in the same words, any time and outsider dares to speak on the sacred mysteries. “Incoherent” is of course the go-to, and it was trotted out many times today, by left and right alike.
But the speech, while not problem-free, was far from “incoherent.” It just said things that the foreign policy clerisy doesn’t like. That clerisy has never been very good at articulating its own policies in ways that the American people can understand—much less, in ways that persuade the American people that those policies are actually good for them. It prefers the smoke-and-mirrors approach: obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate. Specifically, insist that the simple is really complicated and the complex actually quite simple. Hence the distinction between victory and defeat in war is too complicated for mere simpleton citizens to understand, while of course it’s well within America’s power to democratize the Muslim world and only a racist Islamophobe would say otherwise.
When this rhetorical squid ink fails—and, surprisingly, it rarely does, which is one reason we’ve been stuck with the same mandarins for so long—they default to the pose and tone that “We, your superiors in wisdom and sophistication, simply know better about these things and you must defer to us.” Now, that is actually an ancient and largely true argument about the conduct of foreign affairs, which in nearly all successful nations has been placed in the hands of an elite. Thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Machiavelli and Montesquieu to the American Founders saw no way around this and no reason to find it unjust or worrisome.
But it becomes a problem when the elite doesn’t know what it’s doing. Which has been America’s problem since then end of Cold War (if not before). And which Trump pointed out in pungent language. No wonder that, after today, they hate him all the more.
Of course, they will say (and already are saying) that their opposition is all about the substance. We doubt that explanation is exhaustive. One fundamental objection to Trump is that he threatens the American foreign policy guild—the most closed, arrogant, insular, smug and incompetent guild operating in the world today. Worse, unlike the guilds of old, which in order to join you had to know something—say, how to make beer—to join this one, you don’t have to know anything. You just have to go to the right schools, learn to mouth the right words, and pay your dues by carrying some senior guildmaster’s golf bag for a decade or so, making sure to praise his every slice and hook (and help cover up a mulligan now and then). If you do that, no amount or degree of failure will ever be held against you.
But even to the extent that the clerisy does object to Trump on substance, that only further illustrates the problem. Our elites are so out of touch that they freak out over many of the fundamentally sensible things that Trump said.
So let’s look at what he said. The structure of the speech was simple: two main sections—the first outlining five recent or current mistakes, the second explaining three ways that Trump will remedy them—bracketed by an introduction and a conclusion.
The mistakes:
Overextending our resources
Not insisting that our allies pay their fair share
Alienating our friends
Losing the respect of rivals
Lack of clear foreign policy goals.
Trump’s proposed remedies:
Long term plan to halt the spread and reach of radical Islam
Rebuild our military and economy
Develop a foreign policy based on American interests.
How radical!
The most obvious problem with the above is the apparent contradiction between mistakes 2 & 3. How can he say in one breath that he is going to squeeze our allies, and in the next lament that Obama has alienated them? Many critics seized on that point. We actually find something problematic here. But first, let’s get something straight. It’s quite possible to be taken for a ride by allies and gratuitously alienate them at the same time, or to insist that allies meet their obligations just as we meet ours. There is no inherent contradiction here. “The whole world will be safer if our allies do their part to support our common defense and security,” Trump said. Of course it will. That’s almost tautological.
