Now that President Trump has taken the oath of office, he will get down to the business of governing. A big piece of that will be how he leads the formulation of our national security and foreign policy. Not much substantive will be done until he gets his team in place, but already we are starting to see some trying to figure out how this new policy or strategy will be developed. It will be a very interesting time as this comes together. Since Trump was so general and top-level during the campaign, it can be difficult to arrive at specific conclusions. But we need to get to specifics so that the American people can start to understand the strategy. One big problem with Obama was that he never really had a defined national security strategy that was credible. And any strategies that were put in place were either inconsequential to our national interests or quickly abandoned if there were problems.
One of the best people around who thinks about this stuff in a logical and cogent manner is George Friedman. He has a piece in Real Clear World today called "Donald Trump has a Coherent, Radical Foreign Policy Doctrine". You can read it here. Now I'm not saying that he has it all right but he makes a good start at trying to read between the lines and figure out how Trump's strategy will evolve. I haven't seen a lot of writing on this subject that has been this specific so this is worth a careful read. If he is right, things will change. They will change big time. I'm not ready to predict that it will be beneficial or detrimental, but the change will be dramatic. And I'm sure it will be resisted by some. But as another famous President said, "elections have consequences".
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