Feehery: Trump, foreign policy and the military industrial complex

When Donald Trump inveighed against the Iraq War in South Carolina during the 2016 election, he not only won the hearts and minds of the Republican base, but he also shocked and frightened supporters of the military-industrial complex. Later, he simultaneously won himself the election while making powerful enemies who sought to undermine his presidency from the very beginning.  

Trump’s foreign policy had four basic elements. First, build a wall on our southern border and have Mexico pay for it. Second, stand up to China and reverse the immense trade imbalance which had hollowed out America’s industrial heartland. Third, reverse the Obama administration’s Iran deal and find a way to get Saudi Arabia and Israel on the same team. And finally, stop the Cold War with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and reexamine our relationship with NATO.

It was the last pillar of the Trump’s foreign policy that really got him in trouble with the intelligence community and with elements the foreign policy establishment. 

Rapprochement with Russia was never popular with Cold Warriors, who saw in Putin a criminal who was trying to piece together the old Soviet Union, through invasion, intimidation and influence. Many saw Trump’s overture to the former KGB operative as an example not of a coherent foreign policy maneuver, but rather as an indication that he had been compromised and was doing Putin’s bidding.  

That’s where Russian Collusion narrative started. Lest we forget, that narrative was initially born from a Republican rival for the White House, not from the Hillary Clinton campaign. 

Trump’s stance enraged the experts. How dare any rational political leader think that perhaps establishing warmer relations with the most powerfully armed nuclear rival in the world makes any sense? Trump must somehow be compromised, they shouted.  

The foreign policy establishment didn’t respect Trump’s foreign policy instincts, mostly because he wasn’t well-versed in details and he had large gaps in his knowledge of the history of geopolitics. He also didn’t have the proper respect for our nation’s military, especially for the generals who had successfully navigated the bureaucracy and sat atop the Pentagon leadership structure. 

The intelligence community loathed Trump and sought to undermine him from the start of his presidency. Not only did he not appreciate how important they were to America’s national security, he also tended to think that their forever wars were a waste of blood and treasure. 

Trump might not have known much about history or geography, but what he did know were the concerns of the average Republican voter, who had soured on the Iraq War, questioned globalism and wondered why we had to bail out allies who refused to pay for their own defense when they could rely upon the generosity of the American taxpayer.

Trump seemed to be an isolationist, which terrified the Washington establishment. He asked tough questions, like why don’t our NATO allies pay their fair share (a fair question, given that most at that time refused to do so)? When he started poking around in Ukraine, asking why Hunter Biden had made so much money from a Ukrainian energy company and why Joe Biden had seemingly done so much to help his son out with his new client, it earned him an impeachment vote in Congress. Apparently, some questions were too sensitive to be pondered, even by an American president. 

The establishment that worked so hard to render Trump ineffective as president largely threw in with Biden in 2020, because as a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he theoretically had a working knowledge of the new world order. He was also on the right side of the Russia-Ukraine dispute, which especially served the interests of Ukrainian-American members of the foreign policy establishment — and, ironically, of Trump’s staff. 

Now Trump is running again and promising to end the war that Putin started and Joe Biden didn’t and won’t stop. The foreign policy establishment and the intelligence community are still terrified and still loathe the former president, but it is not clear whether the bulk of the voters share that disdain. They seem to want a government that spends more taking care of American citizens and less taking care of the rest of the world.  

Feehery, a partner at EFB Advocacy, blogs at thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).