Faith Whittlesey (former US Ambassador to Switzerland) – Americans ought to welcome Donald Trump’s willingness to assess critically the many time-sanctioned sacred cows and clichés with which U.S. foreign policy abounds, and to determine anew which, if any, no longer serve our national interests and are even perhaps leading us in the wrong direction. This process, I suggest, is akin to “zero-based budgeting” in fiscal matters, i.e., reevaluating every old line item from point zero – and is a good thing.
The hysterical diatribe in the media against Mr. Trump by self-described “national security leaders” reflecting establishment views is overreactive and misses the point. They appear to fear that a President Trump would conduct a searching reappraisal of U.S. foreign policy that should have occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but never did.
Mr. Trump is right to call for a fresh look at America’s relationships in terms of costs and returns, especially with respect to NATO. In 1949, Senator Robert Taft voted for ratification of the NATO treaty on the condition that the U.S. withdraw from it the moment Europe was sufficiently recovered from World War II to afford its own defense. Taft’s rival, Dwight D. Eisenhower, concurred, saying that, if, by 1961, U.S. forces in Europe had not come home, the NATO experiment would have failed. These two giants of mid-century Republican politics were united in their opposition to NATO’s becoming a permanent, costly commitment. Mr. Trump’s call for reassessing our enormously expensive one-way guarantees to South Korea and Japan is likewise long overdue. Both are very wealthy countries, as are Germany, Britain and most other NATO nations.
Mr. Trump believes that improving relations with Russia could be in America’s national interest. Calls by his competitors and media critics to relentlessly provoke and confront Moscow are ill-considered and imprudent. Russia straddles the crossroads of Eurasia and is immensely rich in natural resources. It is the only country that has the nuclear capability to inflict mortal damage on the United States. As demonstrated in Syria, Moscow has forcefully returned to the geostrategic stage and can, as a Christian nation, either become a valued partner in defeating a resurgent Radical Islam or, alternatively, a possibly dangerous foe. Mr. Trump has said he would strive to get along with Mr. Putin despite his admitted imperfections. Continue reading . . .
SF Source Daily Caller Apr 2016
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