A group of the country’s top conservative national security experts says it is unable to support a Republican ticket led by Donald Trump because his foreign policy and national security views will harm American security.
“Mr. Trump’s own statements lead us to conclude that as president, he would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe, and which would diminish our standing in the world,” the letter said. “We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office.”
More than 60 Republican national security experts signed an open letter objecting to Trump’s national security strategies. The group includes many analysts from some of Washington’s top defense think tanks, like Max Boot at the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as former administration officials, like Frances Townsend, who served as homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush.
“His vision of American influence and power in the world is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle,” the letter reads. “He swings from isolationism to military adventurism within the space of one sentence.”
Trump has laid out a vague security plan for the country over the course of his campaign, and says his strategy to defeat the Islamic State is to “knock the hell out of the oil.” He has also suffered multiple military gaffes, including being unable to explain the nuclear triad in a debate and mixing up the Air Force’s F-35 and long range strike-bomber.
Despite this, analysts told the Washington Examiner that his tone of confidence is resonating with troops and vets, and that Trump won that segment of the vote in South Carolina.
The letter says that his promise to use torture, including waterboarding, to get intelligence is “inexcusable.” A former CIA director said troops would have to disobey orders to torture detainees from their commander in chief is Trump is elected, the Washington Post reported.
The experts also wrote the Trump’s plan to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. could have far-reaching consequences overseas, including “alienating” partners in the Middle East who are currently making “significant contributions” to the coalition that is fighting the Islamic State.
The letter says that asking close allies like Japan to pay for U.S. protection is “the sentiment of a racketeer” and that his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin is “unacceptable.”
“He is fundamentally dishonest. Evidence of this includes his attempts to deny positions he has unquestionably taken in the past, including on the 2003 Iraq war and the 2011 Libyan conflict. We accept that views evolve over time, but this is simply misrepresentation,” the letter reads.
“His equation of business acumen with foreign policy experience is false. Not all lethal conflicts can be resolved as a real estate deal might, and there is no recourse to bankruptcy court in international affairs,” it added.
