How Donald Trump thinks about foreign policy

Who are you consulting with consistently so that you're ready on day one I'm speaking with myself number one because I have a very good brain and I've said a lot of things stabilizing dangerous, dangerous to United States dangerous to the world order if you will Here to explain at Donald trump's foreign policy Oh boy, don't do that to me it's very easy think about trump as basically just saying incoherent things we talk about the world in part because he often does I would bomb the shit out of e

m the issue though is that when you look underneath all of that he had he has a world it's actually fairly clear for donald trump his worldview is transactional if you pay a lot of money the US will help you if you don't pay a lot money US won't and really is that simple we are being ripped off by everybody in there with defending other countries we are spending a fortune doing it they have to bargain of the century you need to take those ideas seriously and to engage with them and say let's ass

ume it's president trump let's look at the fact that of all the things a president can and cannot do foreign affairs foreign policy is the area where he has the freest hand he doesn't need Congress when I heard that we were first going into Iraq some very smart people told me well we're actually going for the oil I said alright I get that I get that there's nothing else I get it we should take it and pay ourselves back what what are we doing Trump's idea of taking the oil speaks to two things re

ally about the way that he views the world the first one is that he sees basically everything through the lens of what does America get out of it they pay us peanuts we're defending them the second part is that trump thinks of good for the United States as controlling stuff I say keep the oil keep the oil I mean we could theoretically do it but Iraqis wouldn't just give the oil to Americans almost certainly would fight a war thousands of people would die it would be an immensely complicated and

dangerous occupation dwarfing even the 2003 Iraq invasion the two years I've been telling you take the oil hit the oil bomb the oil he thinks of things in this narrow mercantilist what's good for me is when I own stuff and sell it to you good deals versus bad deal are we gonna take the oil how are we going to do that just we would leave a certain group behind and you would take various sections where they have the oil that foreign policy is about managing your relationship with other countries i

t's not just about dominating them more to the point we don't believe in imperialism as a mode of governance in the old days when we won a war to the victor belong to the spoils the twenty eight countries of NATO many of them aren't paying their fair share one that bothers me because we should be... were defending them that they should at least be paying us what they're supposed to be paying the issue of the NATO countries promised to pay certain out their GDP towards defense other than the U. S

. almost no countries doing so trump says they're not paying their fair share he's right and it is too expensive because we can't afford this anymore and people are being brought in for a free ride where it's dangerous is how we take that to an extreme and extreme isn't therefore NATO should pay more therefore if Russia invades or we'll rethink when we come to the defense of NATO countries if they don't make us whole they may have to defend themselves in the NATO charter itself is one article in

particular called article five I don't think he knows what article 5 is which says that if you attack any NATO member the other twenty seven NATO countries have to come to its defense What Donald Trump is saying is that that core mission of NATO not only doesn't necessarily matter as much but it's something that can be tossed aside NATO exists solely to deter Russia I believe an easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia from a position of strength only is possible absolutely possibl

e for Vladimir Putin this is his top strategic goal in many ways they have spent twenty years trying to weaken NATO and what Donald Trump is saying is I'll give that to you he's not going into Ukraine okay just so you understand he's not going to Ukraine you can mark it down you can put it down you can take it anyways are Well he's already there isn't he? What you have Donald Trump saying about Vladimir Putin it is astounding if he says great things about me I'm gonna say great things about him

with Vladimir Putin is to Donald Trump is a model of a good leader a model of an effective leader and a model the popular leader he's running his country and at least he's a leader you know unlike what we have in this country it's a very scary model and any aspect of it that Vladimir Putin does right now that Donald Trump would like to do would mean an America that we would not recognize. well he does have an eighty two percent approval rating he's also a guy who annexed Crimea invaded Ukraine s

upports Assad in Syria supports Iran North Korea's has nukes Japan has a problem with that I mean they have a big problem with it maybe they would in fact be better off if they defend themselves from North Korea with nukes? we would be better off including with nukes yes including with nukes and South Korea with nukes South Korea is right next door instead of having South Korea Japan and other allies develop their own nuclear weapons programs they rely on our nuclear forces if they're attacked t

hey don't have to worry about having their own nuclear weapons because they know for a fact that we will come to their aid we extend our nuclear umbrella over them what trump is saying is that we should withdraw that for decades one of the bedrock of American foreign policy has been stopping nuclear proliferation and specifically providing security to some of our allies in exchange for at least in part that they not seek nuclear weapons that's been true under all the administrations Republican a

nd Democrat Donald Trump is promoting a new policy with Trump you have him wanting to withdraw nuclear umbrella which means that our allies Japan and South Korea are more likely to want to try to develop their nuclear weapons because they feel threatened and they don't have that guarantee anymore our alliance with Japan and the Republic of Korea has prevented the possibilities of a nuclear escalation and conflict it would completely destabilize the kind of security structure that we've had in Ea

st Asia for the last several decades the person who made the statements doesn't know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula or the world generally that also means that we no longer really have influence there so we can use the fact that we are your security guarantee we are your backers and we have your back we can use that to say okay but we need you to do X. Y. and Z. with this long hellish election finally coming to a close it's been easy throughout I think this

is a reason Donald Trump has done as well as he has done to just laughed at his funnier comment seems a bit of a buffoon and a clown and just not engage with what he says any serious level and that's a disservice that's dangerous especially in foreign policy because that's where president trump would have to freest hand to do what candidate trump says he would do