Donald Trump took office as president of the United States one year ago this week. It is a good time to evaluate what his leadership has meant for US foreign policy. Has Trump moved US foreign policy toward noninterventionism as some people had hoped he would due to some of Trump’s comments in the presidential campaign? Or has Trump as president continued or even expanded the interventionist foreign policy he inherited?
In a Wednesday New York Post editorial, John Glaser of the Cato Institute presents a compilation of Trump administration foreign policy actions across the globe to counter the claim that President Trump is “orchestrating fundamental changes to US grand strategy, dismantling the US-led international order and relinquishing America’s overseas commitments.” Glaser concludes:
Trump hasn’t forfeited America’s global leadership. On the world stage, his is a new flavor of the same dish. America is still playing the futile role of global cop, still reigns as the only superpower with a globe-straddling military presence and is still picking fights in distant regions remote to US national-security interests. The fact that it is Donald Trump at the helm of all this is fooling observers into thinking more has changed than actually has.
Read Glaser’s complete editorial here.
Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.