Trump's tough talk can't hide the incoherence of his foreign policy

By Ishaan Tharoor December 19 at 1:00 AM

On Monday, President Trump delivered what his administration billed as a landmark address on national security, outlining once more the tenets of his “America First” doctrine. Nothing he said was particularly surprising. The speech, like so many Trump addresses, hinged on a recitation of his triumphs, real and imagined. He appealed to his right-wing, nationalist base, growled about the need to strengthen borders and cast America as a protagonist “engaged in a new era of competition.”

“We are declaring America is in the game and America is going to win,” Trump said, offering up a vintage bromide. He included many of his greatest (and tangentially foreign-policy-related) hits: references to his “principled realism,” how the “forgotten man” in America was no longer forgotten, the dangers of supposedly unchecked immigration, and the wondrous success of the stock market since Trump came to power.

Noah Rothman, a conservative commentator, described the address as “a slightly downbeat stump speech from the 2016 campaign trail.”

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Link to tweet

For all his bravura and tub-thumping patriotism, the dissonance between Trump's words and his administration's now-stated policy was impossible to ignore. Rothman argued that the written document displayed “a relatively conventional Republican approach to foreign affairs,” a phrase that describes neither Trump's remarks — both on Monday and in general — nor the experience of the past year, which has been marked by erratic presidential behavior and mixed messaging.

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