Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign and the first year of his presidency, Donald Trump’s struggle to win over traditional center-right voters has been well-documented. But while the president’s aggressive, populist economic proposals and nationalistic rhetoric on trade has long given pause to proponents of a free market, his message on foreign affairs is generally met with more approval.
For a war-weary country that elected his predecessor on promises to bring the troops home, America’s current commander-in-chief has consistently expressed a desire for less foreign intervention, occasionally causing him to be branded an isolationist. On Tuesday, in his first address to the United Nations, President Trump walked a line between intervention and isolationism, possibly finding his voice on foreign policy in the process.
In a speech that was not without such broadsides as calling North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man,” the president nonetheless spoke with conviction about his belief in an “America First” agenda, while also permitting that the United Nations, at its best, can be a force for global good. As Judith Miller noted for Fox News, “… Trump’s praise for the U.N.’s humanitarian activities and peacekeeping, its enormous ‘potential,’ and its lofty objectives, was a speech that President George H.W. Bush might have delivered.”
Likewise, the speech also contained 19 utterances or variants of the word “sovereign,” and laid out a very clear condition for U.S. intervention regarding North Korea. “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” Trump said.
In all, the president articulated a balance between isolationism and the neoconservative approach he, and many on both sides of the aisle, have long panned. National Review Editor Rich Lowry said the speech was ” … a sometimes awkward marriage of conventional Republican foreign policy and a very basic version of Trump’s nationalism,” but the president’s perspective can also be read somewhat as a pre-Roosevelt Corollary interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine.
During a trying first year long on controversy and short on legislative achievement, the mounting pressure on the president and his administration to follow through on campaign promises won’t be alleviated by words alone. Given the obstacles he’s had in building coalitions even among members of his own party, however, it must have been a relief that in at least one major policy area, he managed to find palatable pieces for supporters and critics alike.
It’s always seemed ironic that the man who wrote The Art of the Deal blazed his way into the White House on the strength of stern, uncompromising positions. Tuesday’s speech in Turtle Bay was not without its salvos and core principles, but it was also decidedly less rigid. And back in his hometown, the businessman turned president sounded more willing to negotiate, albeit on his own terms, than he has in quite a while.
Tamer Abouras (@iamtamerabouras) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a writer and editor from Williamstown, N.J.
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