Forget the Islamic State. Never mind a nuclear-armed Iran or an increasingly belligerent Russia. And ignore the recent nuclear saber-rattling from North Korea.
None of it, according to foreign policy expert Max Boot, is as much of a threat to America’s national security as Donald Trump.
Boot is an author, consultant, columnist, military historian and currently the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also considered a leading neoconservative and is a man whose views on security issues are respected across the political spectrum.
Boot’s argument — that “Donald Trump represents the No. 1 security threat to the United States today,” — is provocative in part because it’s plausible. Trump is now the odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination for president and would then likely face off against Hillary Clinton, whom nobody seems very excited about and who would be the first presidential nominee also under investigation by the FBI. If Trump wins, he will have significant discretion to implement foreign policy in a way that presidents cannot do on domestic policy.
Which is what makes Boot more than a little anxious. Writing on Commentary’s website, Boot asserts that “Trump is the most radical and most ignorant major-party presidential candidate in our history.” Boot bolsters his point with several examples, including Trump’s overly pessimistic view of America and its standing in the world and his ignorance of the military’s share of the federal budget.
Boot adds that “Trump is not just ignorant, but aggressively so.” When challenged with facts proving that his statements are incorrect, Trump usually doubles down on the ignorance. Anyone who has watched the GOP debates will have noticed how expert Trump has been in evading offering specificity on foreign policy matters. And when he does go into detail, he is often wrong.
As the Washington Examiner editorialized in November:
“Ben Carson and Donald Trump have failed to exhibit a command of the issues and have made a series of gaffes on the campaign trail which expose their lack of knowledge and perhaps even call into question their fitness for office. …Trump prefers to avoid foreign policy details, and for good reason. When talk radio host and Washington Examiner columnist Hugh Hewitt pressed Trump for details about his policy toward Iran, Trump seemed to confuse Iran’s Quds Force with Kurdish forces in Iraq. When Hewitt corrected him, Trump accused him of asking ‘gotcha questions.’ Trump was last seen claiming credit for recent U.S. strikes on Islamic State oil infrastructure as if he were the first to think of the idea, even though such strikes have been going on for months (albeit with restrictive rules of engagement).”
Trump has assured us not to worry because, as he told Hewitt, by the time he’s in the Oval Office, “I will be so good at the military, your head will spin.” That’s hardly re-assuring.
As we editorialized then: “It’s one thing for a candidate to need some coaching on the latest innovations in health care or the finer points of corporate tax policy. It’s something else entirely to require tutorials in Foreign Policy 101. Even in times of peace, a president’s most important role, and the one in which he exercises the most robust power, is as commander-in-chief. Unlike his role in other areas, the president is the undisputed architect of America’s foreign policy.”
Boot writes that Trump’s worst quality is his “lack of predictability.” Trump believes this is a virtue. Boot, and most Americans, I suspect, believe it’s a major liability.
“What will he say tomorrow?” Boot writes. “Who knows? After all, he stresses his unpredictability, which would leave every American ally, including Israel, guessing as to whether he would stand with them in the clutch.”
Boot concludes: “With Trump in command, our enemies would have a field day — Moscow and Beijing must be licking their chops at his desire to abandon U.S. allies in Europe and Asia — and our friends would face mortal threats. If that isn’t the single biggest threat to U.S. security, I don’t know what is.”
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
