Moving on, next, to peace Donald Trump has unsettled American policy elites, Republican eminences, and world leaders. He has done so by publicly toying with some borderline heretical (or as the New York Times more elegantly puts it, orthodoxy defying) proposals like the possibility of renegotiating our commitment to NATO and of withdrawing our nuclear defense commitment to Japan and Korea (suggesting they develop their own nuclear deterrenta là France’s force de frappe).
Last week Trump gave his first major foreign policy address. The status quo elites missed the punchline.
The last time a presidential candidate created such consternation was when Ronald Reagan proposed shifting from the doctrine of containment of the Soviets to “We win, they lose,” proposing a judicious, not bellicose, confrontation. Is Trump off the rails? Or on to something?
Ralph Benko, internationally published weekly columnist, co-author of The 21st Century Gold Standard, lead co-editor of the Gerald Malsbary translation from Latin to English of Copernicus’s Essay on Money, is American Principles Project’s Senior Advisor, Economics.
