On this blog, I write about important national issues, mostly economic and fiscal.  But today the topic is foreign policy, especially for our current President, Donald Trump.  An excellent analysis of different types of foreign policy has been given by Walter Russell Mead in the WSJ.

According to Mead, there are four main approaches to American foreign policy:

• Regard a strong alliance between government and big business “as the key to effective action abroad.”  (Hamiltonian)
• Believe that the U.S. has both “a moral obligation and an important national interest” in spreading democratic values throughout the world.  (Wilsonian)
• Believe the most important priority of the U.S. government in both foreign and domestic policy is the security and well-being of the American people.  (Jacksonian)
• Would “avoid all foreign entanglements.”  (Jeffersonian)

Here are some recent examples:

• Ronald Reagan was an effective blend of the Hamiltonian and Wilsonian. “Power grows from the barrel of a gun and a gun grows from a good economy.”
• Barack Obama was “a decadent Wilsonian, to whom being on the good side of something was more important than achieving some power goal.”
• George W. Bush started as a Jacksonian by trying to stop terrorists from having weapons of mass destruction. But then he became a Wilsonian by trying to bring democracy to Iraq.

Turning now to Donald Trump: 

• The air strikes on Iran are “a very Jacksonian action” because Iran’s development of nuclear weapons is a threat to the U.S.

  

• There is a group of Jeffersonian isolationists within the MAGA movement. Trump nodded to them by imposing a ceasefire on Israel/Iran after the American bombs were dropped.
• Trump broadcasts bellicosity but does not want to start a war. Jacksonians don’t want to make the world more like America.  They just don’t want other countries threatening our legitimate interests.

Will the U.S. defend Taiwan from attack by China, if necessary?  Chinese control of Taiwan is a major threat to the U.S. according to Mr. Mead.  It would push back U.S. sea power hundreds if not thousands of miles.  This would force Japan and South Korea to reach an agreement with China because China could block their trade.  It would also force other Western allies, such as Australia, Indonesia, and India, to redefine their relations with China to China’s advantage.

Conclusion.  “America First” is a Jacksonian approach to foreign and domestic policy.  Denying nuclear weapons to Iran is clearly in America’s own best interest.  A big question: will Trump, if necessary, help Taiwan defend itself?  This is also in America’s own best interest.

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