Don’t Get All Excited About Donald Trump’s Humble Foreign Policy, Just Yet

By Nicholas Stix

Down in St. Louis County, Missouri, my identical twin brother (who calls himself “Countenance,” among other noms de guerre), who was separated from the rest of us at birth, and who grew up to be a brilliant political analyst, says that Trump, if elected, will be modest in foreign policy matters. (There were at least five of us, not all boys.)

As Plato could tell you, the most brilliant analyst is often wrong. On top of that, Countenance cites my VDARE colleague, Steve Sailer, as an authority. I am on record as having called Steve America’s most brilliant journalist-intellectual, but by his own admission, he is a lousy political analyst.

In any event, I recall, back in 2000 a Republican presidential candidate who proposed a “humble” approach to foreign policy, who instead became the worst practitioner of foreign policy adventurism since Lyndon Johnson.

In 2000’s defense, one might say, ‘Yeah, but then 9/11 happened.’

But something always happens.

I tell an editor I’ll have a manuscript done for him tomorrow, but something happens, and tomorrow becomes next week, or next year. In 2006, I pitched an article to an editor that I’d deliver “in a month.” He’s still waiting on it, and I still fully intend to deliver it. When I promised the article, we each had a full head of hair, and cute little kids. Now, we have little hair left, and grown-up kids.

The best-laid plans of mice and men, and all that.

In 2008, we had a Democratic candidate who seemed largely indifferent to foreign affairs, who turned out to be worse than the 2000 GOP candidate I just cited. Mr. 2008 devoted much of his regime—which shows no sign of ending in 2017—to insulting, destabilizing, and even killing our allies, while strengthening our enemies, and sowing chaos on a worldwide scale.

The Oval Office confers incredible power—or the appearance thereof—on its occupant. Much of that power seems to be the power to do evil, i.e., kill people, and foreign affairs is where one can do the most evil. Foreign affairs is also the field in which it has been easiest to get around Congress. (Plus, as Pat Buchanan would say, where domestic affairs are concerned, a Chief Executive’s hands are tied by countless, intractable entitlements.) Whatever one may say while campaigning, one cannot imagine what it feels like to suddenly control the most meddlesome foreign policy apparat in the history of deracinated, emasculated, personkind.

At Countenance.