US foreign policy under Donald Trump has been a disaster, marked by pointless militarism, nuclear saber rattling, support for some of the world's most brutal regimes, and now a presidential demand for a Soviet-style military parade. Yet the US left has remained all but silent on foreign-policy questions, embracing a tacit isolationism that consigns it to irrelevance.
PRINCETON – Consider the disaster of American foreign policy under President Donald Trump. While the president spent his first year in office trading insults with the dictator of North Korea, that country has moved steadily forward with its nuclear program, and the United States has moved steadily closer to a war that no one wants.
In Syria last April, US forces attacked government installations with a one-time bombing raid that, with no political or diplomatic follow-through, achieved nothing. Similarly, after arming Kurdish militias to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) on its behalf, the US has stood by and watched Turkey attack those same men and women.
As a result of the Trump administration’s abandonment of Obama-era restraints on the use of airpower, a US-led coalition “victory” in Mosul, Iraq, caused thousands of civilian casualties and left a pile of rubble. As in Vietnam, America had to destroy the city in order to save it.
PRINCETON – Consider the disaster of American foreign policy under President Donald Trump. While the president spent his first year in office trading insults with the dictator of North Korea, that country has moved steadily forward with its nuclear program, and the United States has moved steadily closer to a war that no one wants.
In Syria last April, US forces attacked government installations with a one-time bombing raid that, with no political or diplomatic follow-through, achieved nothing. Similarly, after arming Kurdish militias to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) on its behalf, the US has stood by and watched Turkey attack those same men and women.
As a result of the Trump administration’s abandonment of Obama-era restraints on the use of airpower, a US-led coalition “victory” in Mosul, Iraq, caused thousands of civilian casualties and left a pile of rubble. As in Vietnam, America had to destroy the city in order to save it.