While his detractors chase the shiny things from his daily Twitter feed, US President Donald Trump has revolutionized American foreign policy..More than a century of the interventionist-warfare state than began under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson appears to be on the retreat – at least for now – under a president that few believe has any guiding principles..Much to my surprise, US President Donald Trump quietened down the drums of war from beating out of control. After the first conventional, peace-time attack on a US military base since Pearl Harbour, Trump had cases belli for war with – or at least major strikes against – Iran. As much as Trump claims Iran “blinked,” it was in fact his decision to take a pass at a retaliation that he must have know would spiral into a regional war..Trump’s decision to pass up a (somewhat) justifiable cause to go to war marks perhaps the clearest sign yet that he is unlike any president since Herbert Hoover in pursuing a non-interventionist, or non-imperial foreign policy..Every American president from both both parties since the Second (and almost First) World War have fallen into two camps: dove-interventionists, and hawk-interventionists. For the most part, the former have been Democrats, and the latter Republicans. While Democrats pay more lip service to peace, they have shown little hesitation in projecting American power at the behest of a military-intelligence-industrial complex that traditional Republicans have heeded (just with more jingoistic bravado)..Trump falls into a camp more closely resembling presidents before the First World War. What he calls “America First.” Rather than a dove-interventionist or a hawk-interventionist, he is a hawk-non-interventionist. He believes in a robust military to defend American interests, but has little time for playing the role of World Policeman so adored by George Bush Sr.. FILDEBRANDT: America would (already) be at war if Clinton was presidentFateh-110 Missiles (source: WikiCommons) .This radical shift in foreign policy was unlikely to come from the traditionally more warlike Republicans, but it did not begin with Trump. It began (mostly) with Ron Paul’s 2008 and 2012 Republican presidential campaigns. Paul ran not as an “America Firster,” but as an isolationist, as the backers of F.D.R. would call him. Paul campaigned not just on levelling the size of America’s domestic government, but in dismantling the military-intelligence-industrial complex outright. This was perhaps too radical even most anti-war supporters, and was probably a major reason that his campaign did not succeed..But his radical foreign policy did change the conversation in the longer-term, especially for Republicans. By 2015, it was no longer seen as unpatriotic for conservatives to oppose the warfare state and America’s endless foreign entanglements. Trump picked up this mantle and ran with it..While less influential in the long-term than Paul, the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot in 1992 re-planted the seeds of an anti-interventionist in the Republican Party, and more closely resemble the America First policy of Trump today..Fighting the foreign policy establishment in both parties, Trump remolded Paul’s radical non-interventionism into a more palatable America First, militant-non-interventionism. This policy has cost him a long list of traditional Republican advisors and cabinet members; most notably, super-hawk John Bolton..In contrast, few major party candidates for president have ever been as beholden to the American establishment as Hilary Clinton. She showed few hangups about supporting the Second Iraq War in 2003, and changed her position only as public opinion made it untenable for a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008..Her record as Secretary of State saw foreign US interventions in Syria and Libya to remove (or attempt to remove) rouge regimes, without being willing to fill the power vacuums they created..Iran’s actions over the last two weeks have given the United States (and now possibly Canada and Ukraine) at least some justification for war. It is highly probable that if Hilary Clinton was president today, that the US and its allies would already be bombing Tehran..Donald Trump may have blinked first with Iran, but he seems satisfied that the missile attacks on its bases in Iraq were not damaging enough to warrant further retaliation; a retaliation that would most likely lead to a large, regional war.. FILDEBRANDT: America would (already) be at war if Clinton was presidentPhoto credit: Muhammad Lila Twitter .Strong evidence pointing to the destruction of a civilian 737 from an Iranian missile attack hours after the Iran ballistic missile strikes was about as surprising as learning that the security cameras outside of Jeffery Epstein’s cell were temporarily out of order..While tragic, it would have been at least understandable if an Iranian anti-air defence unit mistook a plane flying into its borders from Iraq or Afghanistan, and pulled the trigger too eagerly. Iran was probably on the highest alert at that hour for an American retaliatory strike..But this plane took off from Iran’s main airport in Tehran, and was destroyed minutes after taking off. It is hard to believe that this mass murder of civilians was anything but intentional..The embassy-drone strike-missile attack, tit-for-tat between the US and Iran, could have been relegated by the Western and Sunni Arab allies as the usual American power play. The murder of 176 civilians makes this an attack on the international community, and gives Trump another cause for escalation, if not war.. Trudeau on WE scandal: Case closed .But – as yet at least – he has not taken Iran up on its death wish. While he rises to the bait of insults on Twitter or Saturday Night Live, he has not risen to the bait of war. If Iran continues to bait the United States (and now its allies), Trump may yet have a breaking point, and reasonably so. But that point appears to be much less trigger happy than that of his recent predecessors, or Hilary Clinton’s..Trump’s detractors may finally start to figure out what many of us have understood about him for a long time: his bluster is an intentional and entertaining distraction from his revolution of American policy.
