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Some Alternate Takeaways From Trump’s Trip To Asia
President’s Doctrine Heavy On Getting People To Buy Stuff, Light On Fostering Freedom
Trump succeeded in making a big show of an event that’s often one of the most boring in the world. The G-20 Summit. Trump can still create a stir by refusing to acknowledge climate change, and by delivering his most withering criticism in the direction of America’s closes allies. But that’s hardly shocking by now. His hearty embrace of murderous despots (Russian President Putin, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and on the way home, Kim Jong-un) never stops being shocking.
(Though Putin’s blood-curdling commentary describing Western-style liberal Democracies as “no longer tenable”, was undermined by Trump’s response, in which Trump seemed to understand “Western” as “California”, and the Russian leader’s message got lost in a rant trashing San Francisco and L.A.)
Still, through all that froth and frenzy, we believe the President’s core beliefs about how foreign governments and people should behave vis-a-vis the U.S., grew clearer. And we have some very different takeaways than much of what we’ve been reading this weekend.
And we shouldn’t say “Trump’s doctrine”, because it’s really two:
- The American President’s main…
