President Trump Shatters the Foreign Policy Consensus with Diplomatic Breakthroughs
President Trump’s foreign policy approach will lay the blueprint for American foreign policy in a way in generations to come not seen since the Monroe Doctrine.
For generations, Americans have been told that it is ridiculous to engage with leaders of countries who are “bad guys.” If a leader is arbitrarily deemed a “bad guy,” they are completely off-limits and no conversations with that “bad guy” are permissible. The “bad guy” label does not seem to apply through any sort of rational basis, but these rules of engagement have been followed by presidents of both major parties, causing America to lose an immense amount of credibility and esteem throughout the world.
The hypocrisy emanating from this foreign policy consensus is undeniable. For example, Saddam Hussein was once a great ally of the U.S. during the 1980s when he was embroiled in a war against Iran. America provided him with aid and weapons. He even traveled to Detroit, a city with a large Iraqi diaspora, and was given the key to the city. But when it came time for Saddam to be the bad guy, America invaded his country to supposedly protect Kuwait based on lies. After the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the public was led to believe Saddam was behind them to get us into a much bigger war that President Trump called the worst mistake in U.S. history.
In another example, former President Bashar al-Assad was targeted for regime change in Syria with operations being launched by the CIA to overthrow him going back to at least the mid-2010s. U.S. arms flowed into the region, empowering terrorist groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and ISIS to rise. Eventually, Assad was forced to flee and he was replaced with the supposedly reformed leader of the HTS Al Qaeda affiliate, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Assad, a secular leader castigated because of his closeness with Russia and Iran, protected Christians and other ethnic minorities. Under the Jolani regime, they are being routinely ethnically cleansed and slaughtered.
For decades, North Korea was said to be a dictatorship unlike any seen throughout mankind. Kim Jong Un was said to be a mad dictator with tales of the cruelty of the nation’s ruling family going back generations being the subject of lore. No other president would have dreamed of engaging him or actually meeting with him. They would have listened to the CIA brass who would have assured diplomatic engagement must be off limits. President Trump engaged with Kim anyway, and the world did not implode. Nobody can point to any national security failures that occurred because of Trump's meeting with Kim. Even though the Deep State has done all they could to throw a wrench between Trump and Kim’s subsequent diplomatic efforts, there is still far more hope for peace because of the bold moves that Trump courageously embarked upon.
It was acceptable to meet with Vladimir Putin when Presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama were residing in the White House, but now it is an unforgivable sin when President Trump tries to do so. It has become the conventional wisdom that Putin must be provoked, isolated, disrespected and sanctioned at every turn. Ukraine must win the war against Russia, regardless of the situation on the ground and the facts of the conflict, even if that means throwing billions more to elongate the war so more Ukrainians can face certain doom on the battlefield. By engaging Putin and conducting actual diplomacy, President has maneuvered both sides into coming closer to a peace agreement than ever before, and members of the War Party – even from the supposedly conservative Fox News – are boiling mad as a result.
The undeniable truth is that the foreign policy consensus has failed the world. It exists to keep rivalries in place that give the military-industrial complex an excuse to meddle in our countries and sell weapons to different factions kept at odds with each other. If peace breaks out, defense contractors like Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed Martin lose billions in profits. There are 7-figure jobs waiting for Pentagon brass who ensure that peace does not happen when they “retire” from public service. This is why they all willingly lied to the public about Afghanistan for years because to rock the boat would mean they might lose out on that next big payday. They were willing to let the troops die in vain to protect their power and prestige. That is how Washington D.C. operates.
President Trump is upending this damaging consensus not by exercising isolationism, but rather through using all of the tools at his disposal to foster peace deals throughout the globe. He has achieved consequential successes in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Trump deploys the skills he acquired through decades in boardrooms where he mastered the nuance of negotiation to help the American people and the world at large. Trump’s success puts some long-overdue egg on the faces of the foreign policy experts and the bleeding heart liberal interventionists whose ideologies have failed miserably. President Trump’s foreign policy approach will lay the blueprint for American foreign policy in a way in generations to come not seen since the Monroe Doctrine.