Trump is to the cause of peace what Lindsey Lohan is the cause of sobriety. Yet some anti-war peaceniks on both the left and right are suggesting that Trump may be better than establishment candidates when to comes to stopping America from making war around the world. Why? Because he opposes NATO and America’s other post-Cold War entangling alliances.
But this is a dangerous delusion, I note in my column at The Week. Trump’s bellicosity, hair-trigger temperament, disturbing tendency to see the world as “us versus them,” and, above all, his militant protectionism is the very essence of war. His anti-NATO statments don’t stem from a philosophy of peace but an ideology of violence. I note:
[H]is prescription to “Make America Great Again” — which is to seal it off from the world by erecting walls, tearing up trade agreements, and forcing American companies to stay put. Trump may think that he’s invented a brilliant new economic approach. In fact, it is so old — and such a perennial temptation for socialist dictators — that there is an actual term for it in economic literature: import substitution. Even in quasi-democracies like India, it has led straight to the poorhouse.
And as Frederic Bastiat is reputed to have said: When goods can’t cross borders, soldiers do. In other words, Trump’s foreign policy isolationism won’t lead to peace because his trade policy isolationism will create the pre-conditions for war.
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