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Trump: Allies are not paying their fair share
07:07 - Source: CNN

Editor’s Note: Danielle Pletka is senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. The views expressed are her own. This is an updated version of an article originally published on July 18.

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Republican Party convention starts Monday in Cleveland

Danielle Pletka: Trump is consistent only in his inconsistency on national security issues

CNN  — 

Donald Trump not only knows nothing about national security, he doesn’t care to know. And for anyone in any doubt, let your eyes wander over to a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times. Timed to provide more depth about the candidate on the morning of his acceptance speech at the GOP convention, Trump’s various pronouncements have caused a firestorm at home and abroad.

Over almost an hour, the GOP candidate repudiated NATO treaty obligations, suggesting he would not come to the aid of an ally under attack before weighing whether those countries “have fulfilled their obligation to us.” And in yet another in his campaign’s series of nods to Russian proto-dictator Vladimir Putin, Trump explained that Putin has “been complimentary of me. I think Putin and I will get along very well.” Ditto for Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now in the process of arresting tens of thousands of Turks in a Stalinesque purge following last week’s coup attempt. Troops in South Korea? Trump thinks they’re wasting space. NAFTA? He’d “pull out…in a split second.”

Danielle Pletka

The truth is that for those in the national security firmament who support him, Trump’s appeal is not in a set of proactive solutions, it is in not being Hillary. Similarly, his newly minted running mate, Gov. Mike Pence, while known as a hawk with a generous dose of compassionate conservatism (think PEPFAR, the HIV prevention and treatment program he supported as a congressman), has never made foreign policy his signature issue. (Worse yet, poor Pence will face the challenge of worrying his putative boss will contradict every serious pronouncement on foreign policy unless it parrots his own sloganeering style.)

And there’s more trouble: Trump is consistent only in his inconsistency on national security issues. He has excoriated Clinton for her vote to approve the Iraq War, but has indicated he is untroubled by Pence’s identical vote (not to speak of his own previous support for that war). He has called for pulling out of NATO, but demanded NATO do more, including join his “unpredictable” fight against terrorism. He has also called for a ban on Muslim immigration, but wants Muslim nations to do more to fight ISIS. And then there’s his counter ISIS strategy: “unbelievable” intelligence; “very few troops”; we are going to “wipe out ISIS”, which, by the way, “Hillary Clinton invented.” Huh?

President Barack Obama has bequeathed to his successor a nation at war with itself, involved in three ill-managed, strategy-less wars abroad, unprecedentedly terrible relations with key allies, and problems so diverse and so thorny they will likely plague the next few presidents.

In politics, this is what should be called an opportunity for the other party. But instead, prominent Republican national security leaders – people like Marco Rubio, John McCain, Bob Corker – are largely steering clear of the candidate and the convention. And others, like Tom Cotton, who is attending, are engaging in somersaults to align some – and only some – of their views with the likely nominee. (And this didn’t stop Cotton telling the Washington Post on the eve of his appearance at the convention that “I surrogate for no man.”)

It has been said many times that the measure of a leader is not in his embrace of the specifics, but his vision for the nation’s role in the world. For Republicans, that means that wonks like Richard Nixon and anti-nerds like George W. Bush have shared a sense of their country’s place in history. Donald Trump, for his part, seems only to have a strong sense of his own place at the center of the universe. He insists, like the isolationists of yore, that he will put America first; but the policy implications of that impulse – xenophobia, bigotry, hostility to trade and markets – have only a terrible historical analog. Surely Trump cannot seek to bring back the Depression and the 1930s?

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For many of us who would indeed like to make America great again, it has become clear that the route to achieving that greatness will not be through Cleveland, or the 2016 GOP. The Republican Party has an auspicious history, and much to be proud of: The end of slavery, the end of the Cold War, a pride in America that has been well-deserved.

But this year, the GOP convention has been as disappointing as the campaign thus far: A reminder that in an increasingly perilous world, GOP voters are set on a reality TV host whose appeal lies in his nativism, brash and unapologetic ignorance and the irrefutable fact that he is not Hillary Clinton.