President Trump unveiled his administration’s National Security Strategy in a speech on Monday. Peter Feaver writes in Foreign Policy that putting together the document in an inaugural year is an achievement in itself – especially for a team that has had a rough 12 months. Just as surprising? It’s the kind of document that Trump’s predecessors might have unveiled.
Until recently, it wasn’t clear whether Trump’s national security strategy would “pretend that institutional alliances were a rip-off for America and that adequate international cooperation could be elicited with short-term transactions, or…recognize that our institutional alliances are an important part of America’s advantage in geopolitical affairs,” Feaver writes.
“Gradually, over a half-dozen big foreign policy speeches this past year, these debates got resolved in a more hopeful direction…The four pillars – protecting the American people/homeland, promoting prosperity, peace through strength, and advancing interests/values – could have been used by any president since Reagan. This is not a criticism. On the contrary, doing the opposite would be more susceptible to criticism; one of the major concerns about President Trump is that he has at times seemed so bent on breaking with establishment precedent that he has failed to appreciate just how much of what has made American great has been the produce of these core establishment ideas and institutions.”
Mixed messages. One thing that was different from his predecessor’s strategy? Trump’s decision not to emphasize climate change as a top national security challenge. But Travis J. Tritten writes for the Washington Examiner that that while the “strategy’s exchange of climate concern for dominance in fossil fuels, nuclear and renewable energy is in line with the president’s focus on revving up the American economy…It also highlights what appears to be a growing rift between the White House and a Republican-led Congress and Pentagon that are increasingly open to recognizing climate change as a security risk.”
“[T]he strategy comes less than a week after Trump signed an annual defense policy bill that identifies climate change as a ‘direct threat’ to national security and orders a Pentagon report on the 10 military bases considered the most vulnerable.”
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Until recently, it wasn’t clear whether Trump’s national security strategy would “pretend that institutional alliances were a rip-off for America and that adequate international cooperation could be elicited with short-term transactions, or…recognize that our institutional alliances are an important part of America’s advantage in geopolitical affairs,” Feaver writes.
“Gradually, over a half-dozen big foreign policy speeches this past year, these debates got resolved in a more hopeful direction…The four pillars – protecting the American people/homeland, promoting prosperity, peace through strength, and advancing interests/values – could have been used by any president since Reagan. This is not a criticism. On the contrary, doing the opposite would be more susceptible to criticism; one of the major concerns about President Trump is that he has at times seemed so bent on breaking with establishment precedent that he has failed to appreciate just how much of what has made American great has been the produce of these core establishment ideas and institutions.”
Mixed messages. One thing that was different from his predecessor’s strategy? Trump’s decision not to emphasize climate change as a top national security challenge. But Travis J. Tritten writes for the Washington Examiner that that while the “strategy’s exchange of climate concern for dominance in fossil fuels, nuclear and renewable energy is in line with the president’s focus on revving up the American economy…It also highlights what appears to be a growing rift between the White House and a Republican-led Congress and Pentagon that are increasingly open to recognizing climate change as a security risk.”
“[T]he strategy comes less than a week after Trump signed an annual defense policy bill that identifies climate change as a ‘direct threat’ to national security and orders a Pentagon report on the 10 military bases considered the most vulnerable.”
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