A top House Democrat says there’s no real idea in Washington about what President-elect Trump’s foreign policy will be once he comes into office.
Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said Trump didn’t focus much on foreign policy during the campaign. Between the lack of specifics and the varied viewpoints of names being floated for secretary of state, Smith, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, said many questions are waiting to be answered.
“Foreign policy was not really the focus of his campaign,” Smith said. “The focus of his campaign was economic populism. There are a significant number number of people in our country who aren’t getting a fair shake and he stood up as their voice … but foreign policy was kind of an afterthought. So what does he do know? Nobody knows.”
Smith said it’s Trump’s job to set the new direction of foreign policy because there is no Republican foreign policy orthodoxy to fall back on.
“They don’t really have a foreign policy,” he said. “For eight years, their foreign policy has been very simple: Whatever President Obama does is wrong and they’re opposed to it.”
It’s an interesting and challenging time for American foreign policy, Smith said. Between World War II and Sept. 11, 2001, American foreign policy was basically consistent in that the goal was to use an international system of alliances to contain Communism and keep countries stable around the globe. American military power was the guarantor of peace, he said.
The rise of Muslim extremism in the Middle East has caused that system to fall apart, Smith said, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin actively working to undermine Western credibility around the world.
Trump will come into the White House with the ability to shape what direction foreign policy takes after 15 years of upheaval, he said. But, there are a lot of questions about what that means.
“At times he’s sounded like an isolationist … at times he’s criticized the Obama administration for not doing enough to combat Daesh [the Islamic State] and intervening more in Syria,” Smith said.
He added, “I don’t think anyone really knows what Donald Trump’s foreign policy is going to be.”
