https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274857/lets-not-make-deal-taliban-bruce-thornton
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 began a needed reassessment of our ossified foreign policy doctrines. Trump has rejected in part the shibboleths of “multilateralism,” “transnational institutions,” “democracy promotion,” and “diplomatic engagement” as the most important elements of foreign relations. He’s returned the focus to America’s national interests and security, and to America’s military strength as the guarantor of both. Allies now are valued insofar as they complement our interests, and honor reciprocal obligations. Matching action to words, he’s withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords and the multinational agreement with Iran on limiting its program to develop nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them, and scolded NATO allies over their meager spending on defense.
These moves have all been a welcome corrective to the Obama-era globalist prejudices and received ideas that reduced the U.S. to just one of many international players, one “mindful of its own imperfections,” as Obama put it, and morally obligated to cede sovereignty to supranational institutions and multinational treaties. The subsequent howling of the decrepit internationalist establishment about Trump’s “disrespecting” allies and violating the “rules-based, liberal international order” is the sound of feckless, moribund institutional oxen being gored.
Yet it is testimony to the staying power of such globalist institutions that even Trump seemingly ascribes to some of their dogma. Foremost is the idea that diplomatic negotiation, what Trump would call “the art of the deal,” can resolve differences and settle conflicts without a credible threat of overwhelming force to punish violations of the agreement. Hence the ongoing negotiations with the Taliban, the jihadist movement that nurtured al Qaeda in the years before 9/11, and continues to shelter and support other jihadist outfits like ISIS bent on attacking our interests and security.
