Jeffrey Goldberg notes in The Atlantic the essence of the Trump attitude towards the rest of the world:
The best distillation of the Trump Doctrine I heard, though, came from a senior White House official with direct access to the president and his thinking. I was talking to this person several weeks ago, and I said, by way of introduction, that I thought it might perhaps be too early to discern a definitive Trump Doctrine.
“No,” the official said. “There’s definitely a Trump Doctrine.”
“What is it?” I asked. Here is the answer I received:
“The Trump Doctrine is ‘We’re America, Bitch.’ That’s the Trump Doctrine.”
It’s amateurism at its best, isn’t it? A noisy little bit of street jargon, dressed up with attitude, masquerading as a master policy, promulgated by a profoundly incurious narcissist. As if that’s going to help America advance its national interests. Goldberg also mentions the analysis by Thomas Wright of Trump during the Presidential primaries:
The Brookings Institution scholar (and frequent Atlantic contributor) Thomas Wright argued in a January 2016 essay that Trump’s views are both discernible and explicable. Wright, who published his analysis at a time when most everyone in the foreign-policy establishment considered Trump’s candidacy to be a farce, wrote that Trump loathes the liberal international order and would work against it as president; he wrote that Trump also dislikes America’s military alliances, and would work against them; he argued that Trump believes in his bones that the global economy is unfair to the U.S.; and, finally, he wrote that Trump has an innate sympathy for “authoritarian strongmen.”
Give the man a prize. The next President, assuming they are a more conventional politician, will have a tall order in restoring American prestige and influence world-wide.
