Donald Trump's bar-stool foreign policy

The best reason for conservatives to withhold their support from Donald Trump is that he cannot be trusted to lead America's foreign policy or command its military. For many this is so self-evident given Trump's character and the lack of normal political constraints under which he operates, that there's no need to elaborate. But some need convincing.

AP Photo/David Goldman

Many of Trump's supporters are happy that he seems to have taken on the foreign policy orthodoxies of his party. They want an America that doesn't waste trillions of dollars in fruitless efforts like turning Iraq into a democracy, or helping Libyan rebels only to see that country become an operating base for ISIS. They know that Hillary Clinton's instinct is to use American air power in the name of human rights even if it leads to pro-Islamist outcomes, whether in Kosovo or Libya. In fact, I want and believe the same things.

But there aren't strong reasons to believe Trump is any better than Clinton when it comes to making peace. In fact, he may be much worse.

Like Hillary, Trump supported the overthrow of

Gaddafi who had mellowed and was keeping the 

Libyan nuts in check.

Trump supported all the dumb wars and interventions that he now claims to have been against. He supported President George W. Bush on invading Iraq. Though he says he was against it, Trump supported the intervention in Libya in the most anti-realist terms possible when he said, "We've got to go in and save these lives." He is just all over the place, saying that we shouldn't be involved in Syria, and then a few minutes later saying that the U.S. should create safe zones in Syria.

The simple explanation for these changes is that Donald Trump hasn't ever thought hard about foreign policy; he simply has an instinct for where public opinion is at any moment on any given war and runs ahead of it. That's fine for someone holding forth at the bar stool. It's disastrous in a man who sits in the Oval Office.

Read the rest of this op-ed HERE.

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