Trump’s First Job in Foreign Policy Is To Understand U.S. Interests Narrowly: New at Reason

President Trump’s foreign policy would benefit from defining U.S. interests abroad in a clear and narrow fashion.

Bonnie Kristian writes:

Stripped of its Trumpian bombast and interpreted sympathetically, our new president’s grand foreign policy promise is that he will prioritize vital U.S. national interests in his calculations of war and peace. As Trump might say it, he will negotiate the best deals, make America great, put America first—or, in a more traditional foreign affairs vocabulary, he will not risk U.S. blood and treasure for anything but national defense, narrowly defined.

At least, that’s what it ought to mean. And if there is any chance of hope becoming fact, President Trump’s first task now is to develop a firm conception of exactly what vital U.S. interests do—and, perhaps even more important, do not—entail. If the last 15 years of nonstop, bipartisan war-making have demonstrated anything beyond contestation, it is that a messy understanding of national interests is a surefire path to reckless and often counterproductive military interventions that do not contribute to our defense or achieve their stated goals.

View this article.