The Dark Heart of Trump's Foreign Policy
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What is the Trump Doctrine and how has it changed US foreign policy?
So you can find our YouTube page by searching Ezra Klein Show on YouTube, or we will have a link to it in the show description. From New York Times Opinion, this is The Ezra Klein Show. What is the Donald Trump doctrine? What is Donald Trump's foreign policy? I think the place to begin to try to untangle what we've actually seen here is to listen to the way Donald Trump and Vice President Vance speak about our allies.
I've had very good talks with Putin and I've had not such good talks with Ukraine. They don't have any cards, but they play it tough.
The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.
I mean, look, let's be honest. The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That's the purpose of it. And they've done a good job of it, but now I'm president.
Something is new here. The Trump doctrine that we've seen in the first month of this presidency is going to reshape the world much more fundamentally than Trump did in the four years of his first term. That's in part due to who is around him now. The end of being surrounded by the foreign policy establishment, and now it's J.D. Vance and Elon Musk. I wanted to have a bigger picture conversation about what this Trump doctrine is and the way it's going to reshape the world. So I'm joined today by Fareed Zakaria, the host of GPS on CNN, a Washington Post columnist, and the author of the bestselling book, Age of Revolutions. As always, my email, ezraklineshow at nytimes.com. Fareed Zakaria, welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure, Ezra.
So to the extent you feel you can define it, what's the Trump Doctrine?
You know, the part of the problem with Trump is he's so mercurial. He's so idiosyncratic that just when you think you figured out the Trump doctrine, he goes and says something that kind of sounds like the opposite of the Trump doctrine. But I do think that there is one coherent worldview that Trump seems to espouse and has espoused for a long time. The first ad he took out when he was a real estate developer, I think it was in 1985, was an ad about how Japan was ripping us off economically and Europe was ripping us off by free riding on security. And what that represents, I think, fundamentally is a kind of rejection of the open international system that the United States and Europe has built over the last eight decades.
You know, if you think about it for a minute, it really is a remarkable achievement. You go back to international relations before 1945, and it's just constant war, mercantilism, protectionism, The two Yale scholars who tabulated in the 100 years before World War II, there's about 150 territorial conquests, you know, aggression, taking of territory, legitimization of that. Since 1945, there have been practically none. You have an open international economy. You have free trade. You have rules. You have travel and patents. I mean, there's a huge area of kind of international cooperation that people don't think about, but that happens all the time, every day, you know, when you fly, when goods go from one place to another.
And what Trump, I think, has taken from that whole world is the US has been the sucker. The US has been the country that's had to underwrite it. The US is the country that's opened itself up to the world and everyone takes advantage of the US. So I don't know that he wants to tear it down, but he wants to seriously renegotiate or perhaps even redo that system.
Let me try to reflect what his people tell me, picking up on something you said. There is this, as people call it, rules-based international order. And the thing that Joe Biden says and Jake Sullivan says and Fareed Zakaria says is that America benefits from that order and benefits from being part of that order.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the Trump Doctrine and how has it changed US foreign policy?
0:18–47:11
2
Why does Trump favor certain international leaders over others?
47:11
3
How does Trump's view on territorial expansion differ from modern norms?
35:26–42:36
4
What impact does Trump's foreign policy have on NATO and Europe?
42:36–1:14:19
5
Could Trump's approach to Europe be beneficial in the long run?
1:14:19
6
How does ideology play a role in Trump's foreign alliances?
52:12–1:20:21