A New Foreign Policy: (1) "Seal the Border." (2) "Once Out, Forever Out."
Pat Buchanan has written a brief foreign policy agenda. It is easily understandable and revolutionary in its implications. It would reverse everything the Council on Foreign Relations has promised since its founding in 1921. It would take us back to John Adams' era.
The opportunity is at hand for Trump to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy to the world we now inhabit, and to the vital interests of the United States.What should Trump say?
"As our Cold War presidents from Truman to Reagan avoided World War III, I intend to avert Cold War II. We do not regard Russia or the Russian people as enemies of the United States, and we will work with President Putin to ease the tensions that have arisen between us.
"For our part, NATO expansion is over, and U.S. forces will not be deployed in any former republic of the Soviet Union.
"While Article 5 of NATO imposes an obligation to regard an attack upon any one of 28 nations as an attack on us all, in our Constitution, Congress, not some treaty dating back to before most Americans were even born, decides whether we go to war.
"The compulsive interventionism of recent decades is history. How nations govern themselves is their own business. While, as JFK said, we prefer democracies and republics to autocrats and dictators, we will base our attitude toward other nations upon their attitude toward us.
"No other nation's internal affairs are a vital interest of ours.
"Europeans have to be awakened to reality. We are not going to be forever committed to fighting their wars. They are going to have to defend themselves, and that transition begins now.
"In Syria and Iraq, our enemies are al-Qaida and ISIS. We have no intention of bringing down the Assad regime, as that would open the door to Islamic terrorists. We have learned from Iraq and Libya."
Then Trump should move expeditiously to lay out and fix the broad outlines of his foreign policy, which entails rebuilding our military while beginning the cancellation of war guarantees that have no connection to U.S. vital interests. We cannot continue to bankrupt ourselves to fight other countries' wars or pay other countries' bills.
The ideal time for such a declaration, a Trump Doctrine, is when the president-elect presents his secretaries of state and defense.
NATO was signed in 1949. Americans are never told that this was the first mutual defense treaty in U.S. history ever since the official abrogation in 1800 of the 1778 treaty with France. It was a radical break with the past, part of the Cold War. There is no justification for it or SEATO today. But it lives on, draining our treasury and increasing the likelihood of a conflict with Russia.
If we are to believe the story in London's Mirror, that reconciliation with Russia has begun: a Trump-Putin agreement that the U.S. government will stop challenging the Assad government. It will allow Russia to bomb ISIS without complaints from us. It sounds like the ultimate settlement in the Middle East: "Let's you and him fight." We have needed this policy all over the world ever since 1901.
This sounds like a plank in Buchanan's foreign policy.
Now, if Trump will just extend this policy around the globe . . .
No more big stick. Lots more speaking softly.
"Bring the troops home by Christmas 2017!" If he will pull American troops out of wherever they don't belong, the next President will not be able to put them back. Congress won't back this. "Once out, forever out."
When the CFR goes ballistic, as it surely would, he can go before the American people and say: "I am going to use these troops to close the border with Mexico. That is where they are needed most."
It would inaugurate a new era: the restoration of 1800. "You mind your business. We'll mind ours."
Is America ready for this? If Trump does it in the name of closing the border with Mexico, yes. He can pull off this foreign policy revolution with this justification: "I will close the border with Mexico."
The President is Commander-in-Chief. He is in charge of policing our borders. This is not an assertion of illegitimate sovereignty. He is repelling invasion.
He could completely scrap 216 years of bad foreign policy with one political justification: closing the border with Mexico.
Once out of foreign lands, forever out.