How Donald Trump Is Already Doing A World Of Damage Abroad

[babylonsister]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/no-election-necessary-trump-already-doing-damage-abroad

How Donald Trump Is Already Doing A World Of Damage Abroad


By Lauren Fox
Published August 3, 2016, 6:00 AM EDT


Donald Trump's vision of a realigned U.S. foreign policy is already threatening to destabilize the current international system and force the world to reappraise America's role in it even before Trump sets foot in the Oval Office, some top U.S. foreign policy experts are arguing.

Trump's often disjointed and ill-informed remarks on international affairs are themselves troubling, but the deeper concern among experts is his disregard for security arrangements built on predictability and longstanding American commitments.

Phillip Lohaus, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says that in his personal experience, as he has traveled abroad over the last year, "every conversation begins and ends with Trump."

"A lot of these people don't understand why a candidate would seek to change an international system that was designed by America and benefits America," Lohaus said. "They don't understand why we would undermine that when it is in our interest to keep things together."

Whether it's his backing away from America's NATO commitments, his softer posture toward Russia or his more bellicose approach toward nearly everyone else, Trump is unraveling the bipartisan foreign policy consensus that has held sway for decades -- and that is not going unnoticed abroad.

“He's done serious damage to our position abroad because clearly people wonder whether he reflects an underlying sense of isolationism on the part of the United States that even if he doesn’t win the White House is far more serious than anybody thought," said Dov Zakheim, a foreign policy adviser who has worked with Republicans on foreign policy from the Ronald Reagan administration to the Mitt Romney campaign.

Trump's worldview– including his insistence over the weekend that Russia would not invade Ukraine (even though it already occupied Crimea) and his declarations that he would "bomb the shit" out of ISIS without much consideration for civilian casualties–has alarmed traditionally hawkish, Republican-aligned foreign policy advisers and operatives and left leaders on both sides nervous that the world is beginning to reexamine the U.S.'s position on the world stage.

Outside of the broad reshaping of America's role, experts note that Trump is causing countries to begin discussing contingency plans just in case he's elected.


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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/no-election-necessary-trump-already-doing-damage-abroad

[babylonsister]

1. A day has gone by. It's probably worse now. nt