Trump’s Foreign Policy Is Awful, But There’s a Better Alternative than the Establishment’s Version

United States President Barack Obama speaks during the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) ORG XMIT: UNSW114

Since the advent of the Trump administration, large numbers of Americans have been aghast at its narrow nationalist approach to world affairs. But many of them are also uneasy about the alternative championed by the foreign policy Establishment.

The Trump “America First” approach has largely dispensed with American-led alliances of the past and, instead, emphasized U.S. “deals” with powerful, often authoritarian regimes, threats of unleashing military power against smaller, weaker countries, and the abandonment of treaties and pretenses about defending human rights. To undergird this policy, Trump has secured major increases in U.S. military spending, scrapped the Obama administration’s efforts at nuclear arms control and disarmament, and blocked refugees from entering the United States.

The Establishment’s own foreign policy, conducted over the previous decades, was characterized by U.S.-dominated military alliances, soaring Pentagon budgets, and numerous wars.