Electioneering is over. It is time to begin consideration of how to translate the winning campaign’s discussions and promises into policy alternatives. While foreign relations did not receive this consideration during the campaign and debates, the successful candidate made certain statements and promises. Some will be dismissed as electioneering gambits, others as genuine. The American people know from experience that their political system does not rise or fall on any one individual, because we have a system that is built on institutions, laws, and on tested traditions. Although our President is very influential in charting directions and proposing policies, and has tremendous sources of power at his disposal, he is not a dictator.

In the arena of foreign relations, we expect President Trump to adhere to a conservative line as outlined in this publication back in May. A conservative foreign policy supports a strong military, but does not necessarily support a large, expensive, or wasteful military. A conservative foreign policy does not support perpetual war, as practiced by the administrations of George W. Bush and Barak Obama. It supports necessary wars, after all other non-violent means to resolve international conflicts are exhausted. A conservative policy respects our men and women in uniform by not assigning them tasks for which they were not trained, such as occupation of foreign lands or carrying out policies of social engineering of other societies. A conservative policy does not believe that we should be waging wars on credit; we should budget for wars, discuss publicly how to finance them, and consider rationally both the costs and the returns on our investment in war. Conservatives should not condone waging war on credit. The U.S. national debt is large and getting larger. Current debt is expected to grow to somewhere between 80 and 200 trillion over the next 75 years. Congress has been lax in disclosing “unfunded obligations,” including the cost of wars. It is important to insist on disclosing unfunded costs, including those of the security state and foreign wars. Even without including the costs of war, conservatives will have to deal in the coming generations with solutions to the national debt issues, likely involving severe increases in taxes and severe cuts in expenditures.