Fuel to the Fire: How Trump Made America’s Broken Foreign Policy Even Worse (and How We Can Recover)

President Trump’s “America First” rhetoric is giving proponents of a more “restrained” U.S. foreign policy a bad name, argues this concise and clearly articulated account by three scholars at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Comparing Trump’s disparagement of NATO and complaints that America is being “ripped off” by its allies with his lead role in attempting to negotiate North Korea’s nuclear disarmament and the U.S. military’s buildup in Eastern Europe, the authors contend that the Trump administration’s foreign policy not only lacks coherence, but also represents the “inverse of restraint.” Sketching the history of U.S. interventionism from the end of the Cold War to the expansion of NATO into former Warsaw Pact countries and the “war on terror,” the authors maintain that the assumption of America’s primacy in the world order is “unnecessary, costly, and counterproductive,” and no longer reflective of economic or geopolitical realities. They propose a new agenda focused on promoting democratic principles through commerce and diplomacy, rather than military intervention. Though the authors’ faith in the liberalizing power of global trade may strike many readers as naive, this commonsense appraisal makes a convincing case that America’s foreign policy doctrine is in need of reform. (Oct.)