What People Got Wrong About Trump's Foreign Policy | Victor Davis Hanson

how do we make sense of American desire to disengage at least in and where president Trump and the Republicans fit into that if you take the four years of Donald Trump and you take the three years of Joe Biden and you ask yourself just a number of basic questions did NATO rearm more efficiently under Trump or under Biden did Putin go in under Trump or Biden did China talk about taking Taiwan more under Biden or Trump did China feel free to surveil the United States with Bloons under Trump or Biden did Hamas Attack under Biden or Trump and go down the list did we end Afghanistan nobly under Trump or IGN nobly under Biden and then ask yourself so was the world more deterred it doesn't really matter whether America fights Wars or not in fact often when you fight some Wars it it as you know well it destroys deter because you lose them as we happened in Afghanistan being in Afghanistan and the way we got out destroyed deterrents so the question is if you look at what Donald Trump did was he an isolationist did he say Okay Japan South Korea Taiwan Mr Kim Jong-un is Australia he's your problem he's not our problem no he didn't did he say to the Middle East Isis came out I don't know maybe we caused it I don't care but I'm not getting involved no he said I'll bomb this sh and he did and he took off every almost everything off the target restriction lists that had existed under Obama Obama Obama said they were JVS no problem he got them then for 10 years we've told we've been told that quasam solaman was the Catalyst for Iranian Terror but he was Untouchable he was Untouchable for two reasons the Europeans said he was sacran and he never knew where he was Trump killed him and he just killed him and I could go and they said the Wagner you cannot attack the Wagner group because the Wagner group is an extension it's sort of uh Putin's petorian guard they told Trump these people are provoking Us in Syria and he said kill we killed 200 Russians no one talks about that and wiped them out in Syria so he was Jacksonian and I don't know how you how one would characterize that but his attitude was not necessarily preemptive he just said these are the problems that face the Western World and when they get to a point that they're pressing us on deterrence I'm going to remind them that what they're doing is stupid and it worked and it's not me saying this again I get back to that saying of Jack Jake s when he said there's nothing going on in the Middle East it's boring it's calm it was you know but and then they inherited it and you know if you take the houthis off the terrorist list and you give Iran Iran about a80 billion doll blank check of new oil revenues and you beg them to get in the Rand deal and you try to pressure Hezbollah to give up uh Israel to give up oil rights and gas rights uh to Hezbollah and Lebanon and then you get out of Afghanistan the way you did and then you tell Putin that if he's going to hack keep off the hospitals then you you've destroyed deterrence and I don't know how that fits into the traditional activist isolationist but Trump is not an isolationist he's a punitive Jacksonian and he feels that from one every now and then somebody has to be taken on for the benefit of the United States and the Western World and he gets angry when people criticize him yes he gets angry when the alliance he's very angry at the alliance of NATO because he feels that there's 450 million people in Europe they have a larger NATO and EU together have a larger GDP than we do if you put them both together and yet they will not spend 2% of their GDP on arms and they expect the United States to contribute 70% of their defense needs and if you question that then you're an isolationist so what that does to him is then he gets into his Trump Annex you know I told him I hope you you know Russia does that but if you just cut out the rhetoric and you look what he actually did uh Putin did not threaten Europe during his tenure and they did spend a lot more in defense and that came in very handy uh very handy when you Ukraine uh came up because some of the Europeans were able to help Ukraine with supplies that they wouldn't have other had otherwise had they not started to ramp up so I I don't think he's an isolationist he's a Jacksonian nationalist but I think he's a nationalist that even supercedes his American interest

Channel: John Anderson

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Id: g3X1QIKd348

Length: 5min 24sec (324 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024