Newsweek – President Donald Trump recently released his national security strategy, an administration’s outline for policy usually issued once per presidential term. Newsweek contributors Paul du Quenoy and Dan Perry make sense, via their respective perspectives, of the 33-page document:
Dan Perry: The only good thing I can say about the new national security strategy is that it is non-binding and unenforceable. On the downside it is basically a manifesto that rips what little mask was left off what the Trump administration seeks to do in the world: It displays open disdain for our European allies, shrugs at the principles of liberal democracy and betrays fidelity to the tech bros’ crusade against desperately needed regulation of their platforms, on the misleading grounds of “free speech.” It imagines a Hobbesian world in which America simply throws its weight around under a sort of Monroe Doctrine redux, shedding the obligations of multilateralism and abandoning any pretense of leading the free world. It’s nothing short of tragic, an own goal that is devastating to America’s brand, doing its damage with ignorance of history and breathtaking arrogance sprinkled on for good measure.
Paul du Quenoy: Carefully considering the realities of the current world, the Trump administration’s new national security strategy is a masterstroke of realist diplomacy adapted for 21st century America and its needs. Trump has intelligently identified and eliminated tired and ineffective liberal internationalist tropes from our diplomacy, abjured destructive wars of foreign intervention, fore-fronted the security of the United States and its borders in our hemisphere and beyond, committed American soft power to restoring Europe’s beleaguered nation-states, opened paths to constructive engagement with decidedly lesser but potent nuclear-armed adversaries and employed effective to disarm and downscale unproductive and anti-American international institutions. While his critics bewail the new strategy—curiously for being in their view both backwardly isolationist and aggressively interventionist—they are hard put to make any rational argument against what it is and is meant to be: an America First guide to foreign policy rooted in the oldest principles of the Republic.
Dan Perry: Obviously, I disagree. Europe’s nations are not falling apart, and the claim that they are rests on two deeply flawed premises. First, it is transparently racist: when the document warns of Europe becoming “non-European,” its authors mean “not white.” Second, it is simply untrue. The European Union is roughly 6 percent Muslim, and even counting all immigrant backgrounds you barely reach 15 percent. Obviously some cities like Brussels are different. But by any comparison, America is far more diverse. As for these supposed “tropes,” the liberal world order has delivered unprecedented peace and prosperity to the West and to much of the world. Basically the question is whether you want to burn down the world order, and Trump, without even understanding that Americans pay the tariffs, does. He is turning the shining city on a hill into just another vulgar kleptostate. Shameful.
Paul du Quenoy: Policy toward Europe is only one element of the new national security strategy but the fact remains that the continent is weaker, poorer, worse led and culturally far less cohesive than it has been in any living memory. Collectively, its countries have been a bedrock partner of an American-led world order and also our major trading partner. Its security and prosperity matter mightily to American interests and restoring effective leadership and successful societies there is far more in our interest than retreating before the corrupt bureaucracy in Brussels that has little or no accountability and is content to preside over stagnation and decay. I would argue that postwar stability was not brought to us by the failed United Nations and its self-interested adjacent institutions but by strong assertions of the American power Trump is now restoring.
Dan Perry: So, here’s the thing about your claim of “American interests.” America was in recent times not meant to be only about narrow national interest; leadership of the free world requires a values-based commitment to democracy and alliances. And none of this agenda serves America’s interests anyway. The U.S. has squandered soft power, alienated allies and destabilized global trade through an utterly senseless tariff war. It has weakened the very partnerships that once amplified its strength. The document is not strategy strategic but anti-strategic. And although the world can be bewildering, and social media companies are trying to make us crazy, I think most Americans know it and never voted for this.
Paul du Quenoy: President Trump’s new national security strategy redefines our nation’s foreign policy for a new age of American global hegemony in which U.S. interests are paramount. No longer will our borders be open. No longer will our trade relationships remain stacked against us. International institutions will no longer restrain our power or dictate our policy. Our domestic security and position abroad will be assured by military might, effective diplomacy that puts America and Americans first. Like all other great powers, our strategy and actions will be determined solely by our interests. Thus guided, the rest of the 21st century will be an American century.
Paul du Quenoy is president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.
Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of The Associated Press, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books.
The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.