Common Sense: The Trump Doctrine
American foreign policy is dotted with declaration of doctrines. We have the Monroe Doctrine, Roosevelt Doctrine, Truman Doctrine, Reagan Doctrine and so forth. I dare to speculate how history will portray the Obama Doctrine.
Obama came to office highly critical of President George W. Bush’s foreign policy. He assured us he could do better. He clearly did not. Whereas George Bush made foreign policy decisions that had a consistency and logic – even if you disagreed with him – the Obama administration has been all over the place. And few if any would consider the world a safer place for Americans then it was eight years ago.
For the first time since the 1978 election, foreign policy became a central theme in the presidential election. And Donald Trump’s win was best descriptively captured by his campaign slogan “Let’s Make America Great Again” — a great power, the leader of the free world, a nation that once flexed its might not by intervention but simply by the threat of its immense power appearing off one’s shores.