Trump Skewers Neoconservative Interventionist Foreign Policy
The leader of the free world just announced that America’s long-standing interventionist foreign policy hasn’t done the world any favors.
President Donald Trump’s Middle Eastern tour through Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates has generated a lot of headlines, mainly for the hundreds of billions of dollars in business it’s generating. But something else significant happened this week. Tuesday, during his address in in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the president lambasted the neoconservative-prescribed foreign policy that has put American taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars and destabilized entire regions of the world.
Wrecking Rather Than Building
Trump said on Tuesday:
The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neocons, or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions … failing to develop Kabul and Baghdad. … In the end, the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.
Trump also suggested it’s been bad policy to try to take out every tin-pot despot and tyrant who poses no threat to the U.S., saying:
In recent years, far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use U.S. policy to dispense justice for their sins. … I believe it is God’s job to sit in judgment. My job [is] to defend America and to promote the fundamental interests of stability, prosperity, and peace.
Moreover, the American president suggested it is time to end America’s long-standing obsession with turning Middle Eastern countries into Western-style “democracies” and let them flourish as they are — whether they be theocracies, monarchies, or dictatorships disguised as monarchies.
A Vibrant Middle East
Trump views an economically vibrant Middle East as one the U.S. can do business with, instead of one in which America’s military
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
