While Trump’s second term has given his supporters hope for a continuation of his first-term policies, critics worry he will isolate the United States on the global stage at a delicate time for international security.
Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Trump administration National Security Council official, told Fox News Digital that Trump’s second term would be about “returning to the fundamentals of peace through strength.” [and] Restoring deterrence.”
“They are prioritizing China as the biggest threat to our national security,” Goldberg said, referring to his campaign platform. “By investing in our military, modernizing our military, and expanding our use of AI and space, we will be able to outmaneuver the Chinese Communist Party, Beijing, and their broader access to the world.”
Trump’s foreign policy record is a key point of comparison between him and his successor, Biden, with many arguing that his isolationist “America First” approach damaged relations with key allies.
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(LR) Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan attend the signing ceremony for the Abraham Accords on the White House South Lawn in Washington, DC, September 15, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“Isolationism is about going it alone, about seeing America’s way of engaging in the world as unilateral and independent and alone, as opposed to building multilateral alliances, it’s a kind of unilateralism,” Joel Rubin, a former senior State Department official during the Obama administration, told Fox News Digital.
“The United States cannot always act alone, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be a preconceived notion,” Rubin argued. “Trump never ignored the world, but his foreign policy was focused on the United States acting independently and alone. I think that’s the difference. The United States is a leader, not an independent actor.”
On December 4, 2019, President Trump met with the defense secretaries of NATO countries who have committed to a minimum military spending of 2% of GDP. (White House photo)
Golberg disagrees with this assessment, arguing that people often “misinterpret populist rhetoric as isolationism … or as some kind of instinct not to use force when necessary to defend the United States.”
“The president was put to the test by Iran, and Qassem Soleimani lost his life for it,” Goldberg said, citing the example. “I think in that moment President Trump demonstrated to all of America’s enemies that he is not an isolationist. He is a conservative, and that means he is willing to deter, following the fundamental conservative principle of peace through strength. That means he has not only the ability but the will to use force if necessary.”
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Rubin lamented that President Trump’s hardline stance on NATO member states’ defense spending is damaging America’s relationships with this important network of allies, and he worried about what that means for the alliance at a time when it needs unity and strength amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
“Turning our backs on our alliances with the US got us into a corner that we’re only just now getting out of. Thankfully, Biden has restored our alliance with NATO,” Rubin said, adding that the Afghanistan withdrawal agreement first brokered by Trump and which Biden decided to support “put us in a really vulnerable position.”
In this June 28, 2019 file photo, President Trump (right) shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
That fear is firmly in the minds of European leaders worried about what would happen next if Russia seizes and conquers Ukraine. Jens Spahn, a lawmaker from Germany’s center-right opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told DW last week during a NATO summit in Washington DC that Trump “should not make the same mistake again.”
“None of them really had a network with his team,” Spahn said, referring to the several meetings the NATO delegation had arranged with Republicans close to the Trump campaign, according to DW.
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Meanwhile, Ricarda Lang, co-chair of Germany’s Green Party, argued that Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, has said he “doesn’t really care what happens in Ukraine” in 2022, making it almost certain that Trump will “hand Ukraine over to Putin.”
Rubin acknowledged that President Trump has made some positive contributions to world affairs through such means as the Abraham Accords, and called them “positive contributions to the Middle East” along with his response to the North Korea issue.
In this Feb. 27, 2019 file photo, President Trump (left) meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
“I thought what he did with North Korea – negotiating with Kim Jong Un and trying to get progress on the nuclear program – was very important,” Rubin said, but added that “unfortunately, nothing really came of it.”
“I think not getting serious about a de-escalation program with North Korea was a loss for him at a time when he was publicizing something in a way that he hadn’t before and felt there was great potential,” Rubin added.
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President Donald Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Goldberg defended several Trump-era policies as major victories for American foreign policy, highlighting the global stability that prevailed during much of the Trump administration before the pandemic.
“Russia was deterred from any aggression into Eastern Europe, certainly not Ukraine,” Goldberg said. “Iran was out of money and nearly bankrupt. And after one of the world’s leading terrorists, Qasem Soleimani, was killed, Iran halted its expansion and escalation of nuclear enrichment.”
“Israel is not facing a seven-front war, and as the United States seeks to increase investment in its military, increase spending on its defense industrial base, and ultimately accelerate the things necessary to compete with China and win a future war with China, it’s clear that other powers, particularly China, have had to think about what happens next,” Goldberg added.
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But Trump experienced typical growing pains for new presidents when he took office and acknowledged he was slow to launch some of his more effective policies, such as his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
“I think his instinct has always been to do something unexpected, something that hasn’t been tried before,” Goldberg argued. “If everyone’s done it the same way and it doesn’t get the right results, maybe there’s a different approach. And I think we’ll see more of that in a second term.”
