Trump's One Foreign Policy Idea is to Make America More Like Its Enemies (NY Mag)

New York
By Jonathan Chait
January 5, 2020

... His real North Star is in fact an idea he has explicated many times, but — perhaps because it is so horrifying — even his critics seem hesitant to accept as a true motivation. Trump’s plan is to collapse the moral space between America and its enemies.

The president laid out his logic most recently Sunday night, when he reiterated his threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites if that country retaliates in the wake of the targeted killing of Qasem Soleimani. “They’re allowed to kill our people,” Trump told the press pool. “They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”

This is Trump’s deepest belief about foreign policy: The things that separate the United States from terrorists and dictatorships are not a source of strength but weakness. Our enemies are stronger and tougher, willing to do the hard things that must be done in order to win. To defeat them, we must become like them.

Trump’s disdain for human rights and international law explains his longstanding admiration for dictators. This is a man who 30 years ago criticized the Chinese communist party for waiting too long to suppress the demonstrations at Tiananmen Square, and defended Vladimir Putin’s iron hand: “He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country,” Trump said in 2015. From the premise that the authoritarians of the world are strong and correct, and its (small-d) democrats are politically-correct fools, his broader recasting of America’s alliances makes perfect sense. Of course he would draw the United States closer to Russia, the Gulf States, and the emerging autocrats of Europe, and farther away from its traditional Western allies. Why side with the foolish and weak when we can instead cast our lot with the clever and strong?

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/trump-iran-war-crimes-cultural-bomb-foreign-policy.html