President Trump's Conservative Foreign Policy
Trump’s foreign policy is actually very conservative and deserves more support from conservatives of all stripes. Despite the ridicule it has received, “America first” is a good starting principle for American foreign policy.
At the Center for the National Interest in April 2016, Trump said, echoing Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher before him, that “the nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.”
It is the only building block of a truly free — that is, decentralized — international system that accommodates genuine multicultural diversity. In America, Europe, and elsewhere, it is also the incubator of freedom.
As Walter Russell Mead writes in the Wall Street Journal, “nationalism — the sense that Americans are bound together into a single people with a common destiny — is a noble and necessary force without which American democracy would fail.”
Conservatives have always favored a different world order than liberals do, one based on nationalism.
Liberals seek to expand international institutions and restrain global capitalism, just as they champion big government and regulated markets at home.
Conservatives, by contrast, emphasize national sovereignty, limited government, and competitive markets abroad, just as they do at home. They count on personal responsibility and civil-society institutions (family, neighborhood, churches) to foster opportunity and restraint. They deplore government mandates and unconditional welfare and foreign aid.
The goal is a “republican” world, one in which free nations live side by side, responsible for their own defenses and economies, and cut deals with other nations, including authoritarian ones, to the extent their interests overlap.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450742/donald-trump-conservative-internationalism-foreign-policy-protects-american-interests?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202017-08-24&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
It is also true, as Trump advisers H. R. McMaster and Gary Cohn tell us, that “the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, non-governmental actors, and businesses engage and compete for advantage.” “Where our interests align,” they continue, “we are open to working together.” Where interests differ, “we will . . . take their measure, deter conflict through strength, and defend our interests.” For many conservatives who are nationalists and realists, that’s enough.
They assume that all nations put their own interests first and defend themselves with sufficient vigor to contain conflicts before they spread across the globe.
Nonetheless, a nationalist or realist has to take into account the ideological make-up of the international arena. As I discuss in my book At Home Abroad, nations have two types of interests: geopolitical interests, such as geography and size, that affect the nation’s territorial security; and ideological interests, or the values and institutions that the nation seeks to secure.
The two are distinct, one not determined by the other. No nation is just a territory. For example, how many Americans would defend a United States that was authoritarian like Russia? How many Chinese would defend a China that was liberal like America? Nations are not only lands to defend; they are also heartlands, lands where their citizens’ values, institutions, and memories lie.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450742/donald-trump-conservative-internationalism-foreign-policy-protects-american-interests?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202017-08-24&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives