Lead from the front

Published August 21, 2020 3:00am ET



President Trump’s foreign policy record boasts significant accomplishments and noteworthy gains. But there is unfinished business and unfulfilled potential that should give us an idea of where the administration would seek to finish the job in a second term. First and foremost: Another four years would allow the president to redefine America’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China fundamentally — tackling the single biggest geopolitical challenge America faces today.

In 2017, the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy, a foreign policy lodestar that marked some notable departures from decades of conventional thinking in Washington. The report placed America in a “competitive world” that required us “to rethink … policies based on the assumption that engagement with rivals and their inclusion in international institutions and global commerce would turn them into benign actors and trustworthy partners.” It was a clear-eyed road map that has been generally followed in the president’s first term and has resulted in a number of foreign policy successes.

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