Trump delivered a capable summation of what went wrong with American foreign policy since the first George Bush. He sumerised commonsense criticisms that we have been writing and reading in this forum for years.
To state what has been obvious to conservatives obviously goes down well with conservatives. The foreign observers see the other side of the coin. The problem is it is the concerns of foreign countries which make up realities of foreign policy. Trump made a campaign speech for domestic consumption in an election campaign but our partners and adversaries abroad are not playing our game.
The weakness of the speech is not in lack of red meat for us, it is in the lack of solutions abroad, a lack which is compounded by some incoherence when Trump approaches but never really articulates solutions which will win for us with foreign leaders representing a separate set of interests.
This is the same failing which is so obvious with Trump
s trade policy. It sounds great to us but our trading partners do not share our interests and it takes two to make a deal.
Bluff and bluster sound patriotic and it is easy to succumb to the blandishments of a savior but he aint no savior abroad and those are the people who do play in that arena, not we domestic conservatives.
Clemenceau said, “God gave us ten commandments and we broke them all, now Wilson gives us his fourteen points, we shall see.”
We did see and so will Trump.
Reagan gave the best answer to that. Simple, we win, they lose.
We spend a lot of time frozen by conventional wisdom always explaining why a certain thing can not be done, that we never try. I hope those people will soon be swept into the dustbin of history.