Last Wednesday on April 27, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump finally delivered a speech on foreign policy. This speech offered more or less a philosophy for his approach on foreign policy decisions.
Senator Bob Corker, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, applauded the speech with: "Today, Donald Trump delivered a very good foreign policy speech in which he laid out his vision for American engagement in the world... it is my hope that candidates in both parties will begin focusing not only on the problems we face but on solutions." Many of his critiques point out Trump's inexperience shows in this speech.
After watching it twice I would have to agree with Trump's opponents. His inexperience in government, politics and the international governing system was quite apparent. It might be unrealistic to expect him to have actual solutions to back up his rhetoric and philosophy, especially when he waited this long to give any sort of speech specifically for foreign policy. But nonetheless, his philosophy is his quite arrogant and is riddled with contradictions that hurt the core of his philosophy.
Mr. Trump outlined four major objectives for his foreign policy:
1. He would like to increase military spending to make the military bigger and better than ever. He wants there to be zero question about America's military might in the minds of every country.
2. He wants to make our allies contribute more to agreements and alliances. The example he uses is the fact that many members of NATO not spending the minimum 2 percent of GDP on defense spending. He believes America does too much and others do not.
3. He also would like to restore confidence in America as being the dominant power in the world. Essentially becoming the world's policeman and securing the world.
4. Finally he wants to make our rivals (said Russia and China) respect America and its might again. He believes that the world is walking all over America.
This philosophy is an extremely confident one, which is classic Trump. He even says "When I become President" rather than "If I become President” like most other candidates. This just further shows his confidence. While confidence is important in government, it’s a fine line between being confident and being flat out arrogant. Throughout the speech Trump speaks about how he will make countries do this and make world leaders do that. Mr. Trump seems to believe that he can make any foreign power do what he wants simply because he is the President of the United States; it's simply not that easy. World leaders don't respond to arrogance well.
At the end of his speech Mr. Trump concluded by completely contradicting himself at least four times from what I counted. First, Mr. Trump said he wanted to stop intervening in countries unnecessarily, promoting radical change (to democracy and capitalism) and nation build. He doesn't want to impose American will on countries. This thought though, contradicts points 2 and 4 above. He also says that he wants to promote to the world western ideology and what makes America great. If you don't want to be an interventionist and to stop imposing a form of government on countries that don't want it, then why would you turn around in the same speech and say that you want to promote western ideology?
The second contradiction relates to the first one. Mr. Trump doesn't want to be an interventionist and get America involved in conflicts it doesn't need to be. He also says, though, that he wants America to be the world's policeman through overwhelming military might. How can you be a non-interventionist but the world's policeman at the same time? The two idea contradict each other.
The third contradiction lies with one of the central themes of his foreign policy. Mr. Trump wishes to replace ideology with strategy in his foreign policy. He doesn't want a foreign policy focused on ideology but wants to promote western ideology.
A fourth and final contradiction lies in his military policy. Mr. Trump wants to create an American military that is "bigger and better than ever". He wants to increase the size and power of the military in order to promote his vision of the world. Even outside of this speech Mr. Trump has talked about being comfortable using nuclear weapons and/or giving them to countries like Japan and South Korea to promote better military strength. He contradicts this later in his speech by talking about how weapons are becoming far too destructive and this needs to stop. How can you advocate for less destructive weapons and yet, want to create a more powerful and destructive military?
I will admit, I can respect some of the points that Mr. Trump made. His arguments to end nation building and imposing a style of government onto a nation that it doesn't want is admirable. But the fact that he contradicts these points at other places in his speech makes me question his belief in what he is actually saying. The worst part of this whole speech was the fact that he used a teleprompter, so he made all those contradictions with a completely scripted speech. Supporters of Mr. Trump cannot even use the excuse of him speaking off the cuff this time. His arrogance and plethora of contradictions within his foreign policy philosophy is one of the many examples of his extreme inexperience with government and the international system and this seriously makes me question his ability to be President of the United States of America. I could write many more pages on just this speech alone critiquing it but for the purposes of this piece, I shall leave it at this.
