Tag: isolationism

Trump tells other countries to protect own Gulf shipping

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President Donald Trump on Monday told other countries to protect their own Gulf oil shipments, declaring that the United States has only limited strategic interest in the “dangerous” region.

In a pair of tweets, Trump said US aims regarding Iran boil down to “No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror.”

As for Iran’s threats to shut sea lanes used to transport a large portion of the world’s oil exports through the Persian Gulf, Washington is not concerned, Trump said.

Stating that the United States is now the world’s biggest energy producer, thereby weaning itself off decades of dependence on Middle Eastern oil, Trump said “we don’t even need to be there.”

And the US military should not be depended upon to keep the narrow sea routes along Iran’s coast free.

“Why are we protecting the shipping lanes for other countries (many years) for zero compensation,” he asked. “All of these countries should be protecting their own ships on what has always been a dangerous journey.”

As for Tehran, Trump said, his only demand is that the country not pursue nuclear weapons and halts what the United States claims is backing for terrorist groups.

“The U.S. request for Iran is very simple,” he wrote.

Iran insists that it does not have a nuclear weapons program and it signed onto an international pact in 2015 meant to ensure that its nuclear industry sticks to civilian uses. Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in 2017, seeking its collapse.

Trump’s latest signalling of a pullback from what has long been a region featuring an intense US presence comes amid growing military tension between the United States and Iran.

On Friday, Trump called off a bombing strike on Iranian facilities that had been planned as retaliation for the downing by Iran of a US spy drone.

Earlier, mysterious attacks were carried out on oil tankers transiting the same area. They were blamed on Iran by Washington, although the Iranians say they were not involved.

Trump’s tweets add to his record of seeking a wider drawdown of the US diplomatic and military footprint around the world.

[Raw Story]

Trump’s ‘America First’ Has Ugly Echoes From U.S. History

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivered his most comprehensive foreign policy speech to date in Washington, outlining a general vision for international relations that would reconfigure American responsibilities abroad to put “America first.”

Trump said during a speech organized by the National Interest magazine:

“My foreign policy will always put the interests of the American people and American security above all else. That will be the foundation of every single decision that I will make. ‘America First’ will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.”

The speech included no dramatic new policy proposals that might generate headlines, such as his past calls to bar Muslims from entering the United States or to build a wall on the frontier with Mexico.

The real estate mogul said that a Trump administration would install a foreign policy vision that “replaces randomness with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace.” He said that as president he would call for summits with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, and with Asian allies in the Pacific. Chief among his goals would be to update existing organizations to “confront shared problems, like terrorism and migration.”

Where he was specific, like rejecting the terms of last year’s nuclear deal with Iran, calling for more investment in missile defense in Europe and accusing the Obama administration of tepid support for Israel, he was firmly within the Republican mainstream.

(h/t Washington Post, Reuters, CNN)

Reality

Although Trump called for the United States to “shake the rust off of America’s foreign policy,” he delivered few specific proposals, instead focusing on outlining a broad framework the rests on demanding respect for the United States abroad.

It is extremely unfortunate that in his speech outlining his foreign policy goals, Donald Trump chose to brand his foreign policy with the noxious slogan “America First,” the name of the isolationist, defeatist, anti-Semitic national organization that urged the United States to appease Adolf Hitler.

At best the Trump campaign simply did not perform adequate research, which highlights how they are not prepared for presidential politics. At worst they are again appealing to white supremacists with another dog-whistle message.

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