[Longread, no paywall:]
One theme at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee is national security, or rather — what else? — how only Donald Trump and his newly anointed running mate JD Vance will “make America strong again.” Under Joe Biden, the story goes, the US has become “a global laughingstock.”
Not only is the incumbent president self-evidently weak where Trump is strength personified, according to this narrative. Biden also, as one speaker flatly asserted, took a world that was “at peace” under Trump and “lit it on fire.” For it was Biden, the speaker suggested, who “provoked — yes, provoked — the Russians to invade Ukraine” and later “rejected every opportunity for peace.” Biden also caused the conflagrations in the Middle East and the rest of the world, it goes without saying.
It’s hard to know where to start. Part of the MAGA shtick — in Milwaukee or anywhere, on foreign policy or anything — is to present an alternative reality, with alternative facts if necessary. And yet Trump and his team, if he wins a second term, will soon encounter the real world, with all its conflicts and complexities waiting in the inbox on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
Those include the hot wars between Russia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Hamas. They extend to quasi-wars such as those between Israel and Iran and its proxies, or between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea. Then there are the doozies: the still cold but potentially infernal (or even thermonuclear) war between North and South Korea, or between China and Taiwan. And let’s not forget the barbaric civil wars in Sudan, Myanmar and other places.
Trump and Vance, who increasingly sounds like the Id to Trump’s Ego, have so far displayed nothing that could be described as a philosophy of international relations. In its place, they have instincts: nationalist and leaning isolationist, but above all transactional and thus unpredictable (to MAGA types, that’s a good thing). This is obviously worlds apart from Biden’s approach, which — though not always coherent either — is internationalist and based on engagement with allies.
But instincts can’t replace clear thinking about war and peace, and about world order. How, then, should the Trump team conceptualize America’s national security?
[Keep reading to think through US national interests in all the conflicts mentioned above....]
Bloomberg Opinion #Trump #NationalSecurity
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