Republican frontrunner for the 2016 presidential nomination, Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been the subject of wild speculation, but very little substance, with Trump implying this was by design while touting his unpredictability as a major advantage over his rivals.
But catchphrases only go so far, and today Trump began the task of laying out some of the nuts and bolts of his broader policy, with high-profile newspaper interviews, unveiling part of his foreign policy team, and speaking before AIPAC.
After rival Sen. Ted Cruz (R – TX) unveiled his own foreign policy team, stacked heavily with neocon insiders, Trump’s own team appeared much less well known, with Mitt Romney’s former adviser Walid Phares, still pushing the same narrative of the world versus Islam that he has been for decades, now looming large in the Trump camp.
Beyond Phares, the names are even less recognizable, but Carter Page does stand out as an exception to the hawkish nature of much of the team. Page, founder of Global Energy Capital, blasted US involvement in Ukraine as misguided and provocative, fueling tensions with Russia. His expertise is in the Caspian region, and presumably he will add to Trump’s own aversion to picking fights with Russia.
Gen. Joe Kellogg is one familiar name from the past though, briefly serving as the head of the US occupation in Iraq in late 2003 and early 2004, before leaving to pursue a high-profile job at US military contractor CACI.
Still, in his talk with the Washington Post, Trump managed to contest a lot of the preconceived notions about his campaign, dismissing the suggestion that he would follow the recommendation of generals to send 20,000-30,000 ground troops to Iraq for the ISIS war, and suggesting that he would rather do the ISIS war “without troops.”
Trump also did something very rare indeed for hawks from either party when talking about foreign policy, asking questions about how the wars could be afforded, and citing the massive US national debt. He called for other nations to foot much of the bill for US interventions, and suggested the US should be far less involved in NATO than it presently is, encouraging Germany to pick up the slack.
Trump carried this opposition to large overseas involvements to Asia as well, suggesting that Japan and South Korea should be made to pay 100% of the costs of America’s deployments in their respective countries, presenting South Korea as “very rich” and America as a “poor nation” that can’t afford to keep paying for other nations’ defenses.
He also griped about Iran, using his oft-repeated false claim of the US having “given $150 billion” to Iran and complaining that Iran bought Airbus brand airplanes for its civilian airliner upgrades instead of buying proper America-made Boeing planes.
He also appeared to try to redefine his calls to “take all the oil” as something he wishes had been done in the last Iraq War, as opposed to an objective on the ground in the ISIS conflict, while claiming Iran is “taking over Iraq” and would ultimately have all of Iraq’s oil.
Unlike his gripes about Boeing not getting juicy Iranian contracts, however, American oil companies actually did get some lucrative oil deals in Iraq, particularly Exxon-Mobil and Chevron.
Indeed, the whole logistics of “take all the oil” makes it an absurd statement at any price, and with oil prices dropping precipitously since then, it becomes an exercise in futility. It is unsurprising, then, that Trump’s discussion of the matter came wholly in the past tense.
Trump closed off his Washington Post talks on a question on the use of tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS, saying he didn’t want “to start the process of nuclear,” but then going off on a tangent in complaining about $18 million in negative ads against his campaign, and when pressed by a reporter for details, insisted “I’ll tell you one thing, this is a very good looking group of people here,” perhaps the most derailing non-answer possible.
Trump followed this up with a news conference doubling down on the call for the US to charge allies for their military services, declaring “there are many countries that can pay, and they can pay big-league.”
The elephant in the room for this conference has to be Trump’s suggestion, when asked, that Israel would be among the nations paying the United States for military support, comments which break with decades of partisan tradition of throwing money at Israel as a matter of course, and which came just hours ahead of his AIPAC speech.
This might’ve portended a more controversy-ridden AIPAC appearance, but his 25-minute speech before the Israel Lobby was ultimately much more straightforward, following the time-tested script of politicians just saying whatever the Likud Party wants to hear.
Declaring at the start of his speech that he “didn’t come here to pander about Israel,” Trump did little else during the protracted speech, praising Israel, condemning the UN, Iran, and Palestinians in general, and pledging 100%, unconditional use of the US veto at the UN Security Council to block all resolutions Israel objects to.
Trump predictably went back to the false claims of the US giving Iran $150 billion again, making myriad false claims about Iran having an active nuclear weapons program, and going so far as to claim that the P5+1 nuclear deal explicitly allows Iran a military nuclear program.
Naturally, this isn’t the case, but Trump claimed to be the single most informed person on the nuclear deal, “far greater than anyone else” in the world, and got repeated applause for his condemnation of the pact.
He also appeared to depart from his comments earlier in the day about America being too poor for all these wars, insisting Iran is “big and powerful, but not powerful like us,” and that America could readily confront Iran militarily, to the delight of the always pro-Iran War crowd.
Attacking Iran at AIPAC is always a safe choice, but Trump also spent considerable time railing against the Palestinians, not necessarily Palestinian Authority factions, but the Palestinians as an undifferentiated whole, declaring them to have a “culture of hatred” and presenting Hamas as “the Palestinian ISIS of Hamas.”
While not totally backing off his past suggestion that the US would support Israel-Palestinian peace talks, he did backtrack feverishly on the suggestion of being neutral in the talks, demanding the Palestinians accept an array of preconditions, including publicly acknowledging Israel as “forever a Jewish state,” and recognizing that there is “no daylight” between America and Israel and the talks.
He went political in parts of the speech, declaring Obama the “worst thing to ever happen to Israel, believe me,” and then insisting Hillary Clinton was part of that. Closing his speech, Trump continued his “not pandering” by repeatedly declaring “I love Israel, I love Israel” to the applause of the assembled throng.
All this marks an incredibly busy day for Trump on the foreign policy front, closing the book on his previous claims that he only knows what he’s read on the Internet, and that he is his own foreign policy advisory team, and revealing that he’s getting the same bad advice from many of the same warmongers everyone else is.
Raising the possibility of having other nations pay for America’s intervention abroad is a new spin on things, but likely no more realistic than his suggestion that Mexico will be forced to pay to be walled off from America.
Still, acknowledging America having any theoretical finite spending limit is enough to make him a bit of a radical, and will likely continue the furor of calls to stop him at all cost from neo-conservative figures looking for a more palatable mainstream nominee.
I have a very strong feeling that in the General Election Trump will say he is going to balance his budget by cutting military spending. He won’t phrase it that way. He will just say he plans on saving money. Saving money sounds better than cutting budgets. He can also state that he can get good deals on equipment because he hasn’t been bought and paid for.
Let killery be the big spending chicken hawk and see how blue color dems like that. She makes Trump sound like a liberal (he is by the way).
I’m not saying he will actually get any of this done or won’t cut a deal, just that I think this is the pitch he is going to toss during the general.
If he actually did close bases, when they don’t pay (and they won’t) that would be fantastic! The only reason these nations want the bases right now is to make money. We dump a ton of money into their economies.
Furthermore, we don’t have to have our troops on anyone’s border. We can strike anywhere, anytime without them. Heck you wouldn’t be fighting a real war with the troops stationed there anyway, they would just be in the way, as potential casualties.
We only want the bases because if we leave someone else will pay to take over “protecting” them. Well Good, let them pay. They can waste their money instead of mine.
I cannot imagine Trump taking on the military – the guy is a blowhard bully – full of BS
That would be an interesting pivot for Trump, given that so far he’s claimed that the US military has been weakened and needs to be rebuilt and so forth, pretty much like the other GOP candidates. He makes gestures toward reducing interventionism, but not toward reducing military spending.
That’s the problem with Trump — it’s hard to trust anything he says because it seems to be whatever comes into his head with little regard for whether or not it makes any sense.
Yes, that is correct. He is inconsistent and tends to vary his positions depending on who his audience is. While this is worrisome and frustrating, it does seem to reflect a flexible and non doctrinaire view of issues.
Other than his dogmatic anti immigrant stance (very bad) this at least has the prospect of not being a doctrinaire neocon stooge and avowed imperialist like other GOP candidates and the Democrats.
Not high praise, but at least holds out the prospect that he might do good things rather than bad. He has been consistent on the bankrupting consequences of imperial foreign policy warfare, etc. As a business tycoon he may take to heart the economics of policies far more than usual politicians. He knows about the consequences of too much debt.
Neocon ideology cannot be championed by anyone who recognizes that increasing indebtedness to mainly foreign creditors is a bad thing. Scrooge McDuck anti imperialism may be better than nothing.
what policies? the guy changes his mind every day and often within minutes
All one can say for the AIPAC speech;Oy.Will they respond to his wet smooch by toning down the propaganda vs him?We’ll see.
Not a good deal for the Trumpster, to give away free what the other candidates get millions for from the oligarchs. His independence from the donor class was his main selling point. Now, he is just the unpaid groveler.
Much of the positive statements on Trump coming from this site are overrating him. The AIPAC speech and his statements on Iran and Palestinians are deplorable. He is not trustworthy. Ironically, the other candidates are trustworthy, but not in a good way!
It was about the best Trump could do to sound “unifying” to the war hawks, while still keeping to the husk of his own foreign policy. Whatever that policy is, in general it still seems to scare the dickens out of the pro-war establishment (“why, he’s not robotically in step with us in every way, the horror, the horror!”). That elite can’t control Trump financially, like they would with systematically compliant puppets like Rubio, and so will have to win Trump over on the merits—which worries them, because their case for ongoing conflict and endless meddling lacks merits. Finally, saying one loves Israel does not mean you love the Likud lock on its government. A country, and its national policy, are different things.
Mr. Trump will not be able to stand up to the generals.
Too good to be true. And it is. After pledging to be neutral with the Israeli/Palestinian situation he bows down to AIPAC, pledges to support the move of the Israeli capital to Jerusalem, So much for an America first foreign policy, Furthermore Trump accuses the Palestinians of being the aggressors. For Trump too, it’s Israel first. Now we again have a battle of neo-con vs neo-con. I guess I’ll stay home for the primaries and in November.
Here is what I want to hear from “Doppelganger” Trump:
“The following six items will be enacted by me the day after I am sworn into office as President of the United States.
1. By executive order, a presidential tribunal (“PRESTRIB”) will be created to investigate all persons, private and public corporations of various legal structure including non-profit, non-religious organizations as well as political lobbyist groups and foreign embassy personnel operating within the continental United States and its territories. One investigatory power of this court will be to verify the aforementioned entities who have openly and publicly declared political support for any foreign country for the primary purpose of influencing the American people and ensure they are registered with the U.S. Department of Justice as agents of those countries as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act. If these persons or institutions are found not to be in compliance, they will be immediately charged and prosecuted to the fullest extent of federal law (see: http://www.fara.gov/enforcement.html ).
2. Over the past few months, I have come into possession of facts of an evidentiary nature concerning the events leading up to the attack on our nation on September 11, 2001. I have come to the conclusion that what was disclosed to the public by certain agencies and persons of high office in the federal government of the United States at that time including the supreme echelons of the Department of Defense personnel and supported by the national corporate owned media were with high probability, untruthful as to the science that explained the destruction of private and government properties, the identification of the perpetrators of those capital crimes and the real provocateurs behind those heinous acts of terrorism. Over 3,000 people were murdered on that day which now appears to me as purposefully planned and executed by certain persons and organizations of a domestic and foreign nature to spur the American people to go to war in the countries of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Therefore, I will order the Attorney General of the United States to issue arrest warrants to be served by deputies of the United States Marshall Service ordering them to bring into custody those individuals wherever they may be, who are deemed complicit by the evidence in my position as directly or indirectly involved with the mass murder of citizens of the United States and foreign countries who perished on American soil on that fateful day.
I will also declare martial law within the federal enclave of Washington, DC and all foreign dignitaries will remain within the confines of their respective embassies until each has been vetted by the tribunal identified under item 1 of this announcement. The warrants for arrest will be ongoing, not limited and may encompass sitting members of the United States Congress, judges of the federal judiciary court, lobbyists, corporate executives in the finance and media industries and foreign persons residing abroad.
I will alert the governors of each of the States within the Union to plan and hold snap elections for each of their congressional districts in the event the Congress of the United States does not have a sufficient number of representatives (senate and house) to conduct the legislative affairs of the American people due to incarceration of said personnel which prevents them from exercising their elected duties.
No stone will be left unturned, no person will be exempt, nothing will dissuade from the course of action set into motion by my hand. American justice will prevail.
3. I will order the Secretary of the Department of the Army to assign a general of the army to oversee and deploy the armies of the United States post haste to the northern and southern borders of the country in sufficient numbers to patrol said borders with the express purpose of preventing any entry into the continent by foreign persons without authorization and in violation of U.S. federal immigration law.
I will also order the Secretary of the Department of the Navy to assign an admiral of the fleet to oversee and deploy U.S. naval vessels post haste in sufficient numbers to patrol the eastern and western coastal waters of the United States and repel any attempt to breach the territorial waters of the nation by surface or undersea craft without authorization and in violation of U.S. federal immigration law.
The United States military will be held accountable for defending our country proper and should any act of terrorism occur on the nation’s soil, such act will result in the immediate termination of the commanders in charge of protecting the continental perimeter of America.
4. By the end of my first term of office as president, the Department of Defense will have conclusively demonstrated the F-35 Lightning II Program (a.k.a. F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program) meets all expectations to my satisfaction as to its designed multi-functional role as an air superiority fighter bomber aircraft serving the air wings of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps branches of the U.S. military. To date the life of the program has an initial cost outlay of taxpayer money exceeding 1 trillion dollars for the number of aircraft to be built and put into service over the more than 10 years it has existed. However according to recent GAO and CBO reports, the progress of meeting all required performance measures will be delayed by several years and projected cost overruns will be in the multiple billions of dollars.
Therefore as Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, I will order the F-35 program to be ended and monies in the pipeline of payment to the principal contractors will be “clawed back” if the program is not completed by the date stated in paragraph 1 of item 4.
5. I will order the Department of Defense renamed to the Department of War and the presidential cabinet position of Secretary of Defense will be renamed the Secretary of War. This change will be effective January 1, 2018.
6. I will order an execution gallows to be built next to the Washington monument. A sign is to be erected at the base of the gallows to read, “Reserved for traitors to the American people.” The use of the gallows will be determined at a later time.
All of the items listed above will be accomplished without the need for approval from the Congress as these actions are completely within the powers and authority of the executive branch of the federal government.”
he’s definitely not perfect, far from it, but i hope americans vote him in just to spite the establishment politiians and media.
will be watching out for this today…the very fact the media all jumped on it as gospel made me suspicious. this navy vet seems to have done some digging…and makes some important points i haven’t seen on any of the alt websites –
I’m Not Buying the Utah Poll by Y2 Analytics Showing Cruz Up +24
http://www.varight.com/news/im-not-buying-the-utah-poll-by-y2-analytics-showing-cruz-up-24/