Trump’s Foreign Policy Just Isn’t That Bad

This column spends a lot of time looking into the latest disagreements of the Foreign Policy Establishment: Council on Foreign Relations and the Wilson Center and the Brookings Institution and the alphabet soup of AEI, CSIS, SAIS, IISS, FPRI, ECSS, ECFR, PIEE, ISIS (the “good one”); RAND; CEIP; GMF; EUIS and countless others. Here’s a rare treat: Nearly all these think-tanks and educational institutions and grant-providers and assortments of cranky old foreign-service employees have finally united on a common opinion: Donald Trump is the greatest blow to U.S. foreign relations, allied unity and just plain manners in the history of the Republic.

So, who disagrees? Robert Blackwill, for one. Blackwill, former ambassador to India and deputy national security adviser for strategic planning, current senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and distinguished scholar at the Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, author of “War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft,” and all around Scowcroftian straight shooter, has written a new study for the Council on Foreign relations titled: “Trump’s Foreign Policies Are Better Than They Seem.” That headline isn’t exactly a rabid endorsement, but it’s still enough to set the fore-mentioned Establishment on its ear. Blackwill and I discussed it this week; here is a lightly edited version of our interview: