JVLV: TRUMP’S “AMERICA FIRST” IS A RETURN TO REAGANISM, By Jiri Valenta with Leni Friedman Valenta

             “Unafraid, Bi-partisan, Uphold U.S. and Freedom.”

“The U.S. political establishment will unite to defeat Donald Trump and do whatever it takes to prevent him taking the White House!”  As a prominent Russian analyst friend explained to these writers, senior diplomats at our embassy in Moscow as well as senior members of the foreign policy establishment in Washington until quite recently believed that, “Only a miracle can result in Trump’s election.”

Our friend  also reflected on an anti-Trump article by Nicholas Burns, a GOP foreign service veteran,  now advising Hillary Clinton. We are  responding to the comments of both Burns and  Elliot Cohen, another GOP defector to Hillary.

“America First” means Foreign Policy Begins at Home!

Trump’s “America First” concept has yet to be recognized for what it is --a return to 1980’s Reaganism. Like Reagan, Trump seeks to avoid prolonged military conflicts and establish peace through strength by rebuilding our Obama-ravaged military. Like Reagan, he also seeks to unleash economic revival at home through cutting corporate taxes and relaxing the government regulations hindering our economic growth.

Much criticized by Burns and Cohen is Trump’s “America First” policy.  They overlook that this concept clearly has a different meaning than the isolationist and anti-Semitic ones it had before 1941 Pearl Harbor.  Structured along the lines developed by Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass in his book, Foreign Policy Begins at Home, it focuses on the intersection of foreign and domestic policy-making.  The linkages between these are absent in the writings of Burns and Cohen. Thus Burns argues, Trump, “has not backed away from his proposal to build a wall with Mexico and he has denigrated Mexicans in vulgar language; he vows to keep all Muslim refugees out of the United States and he hasn’t backed down.” 

The domestic context of the open border with Mexico is the backbone of Trump’s America First strategy.  Unlimited immigration represents a multi-pronged, national security threat to the homeland -- the massive poisoning of our people by foreign drug lords, white slavery of women, and -- worst of all – possible penetration of our country by terrorists potentially equipped with deadly WMD.

 Moreover, the Donald recognizes we simply cannot continue to further extend social programs to unlimited illegal immigrants. Just witnessing ongoing Puerto Rico’s default, should be grim reminder to us of our nineteen trillion-dollar debt and growing.  Neither can we, unlike all of Europe, continue to allow  anchor babies  to deplete our declining resources for social security. Sanctuary cities, in their failure to deport   violent illegal immigrants, are meanwhile invoking a huge wave of crime.

Seeking redress of these problems   is not “xenophobia” but common sense! The wall is timely and   necessary and charity rightly begins at home. Neither did Trump denigrate Mexicans. He differentiated   the drug lords and rapists coming over our borders from the “good people” trying to come in.

The employer of many Latinos, and the first to open his golf courses to Blacks and Jews in Florida, Trump is no bigot.  His daughter, Ivanca, is married to an Orthodox Jew.  Nor do we deny that immigrants have made America great.  But we are presently at war with islamo fascism, although the secret has been well kept by Obama and Hillary, who cannot even bring himself to name the enemy.   FDR didn’t allow immigration from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy in WWII.  Is it xenophobic to temporarily halt Muslim immigration from Syria, Iraq and Libya until we know how to properly vet those applying?

America’s 21^st Century Foreign Policy Follies

Like Burns,  Cohen rails that Trump has “ripped up the U.S. foreign policy consensus, bringing ruin to all.” Whose consensus?   Trump, Bernie Sanders’ and their supporters are not foreign policy wonks, but their instincts are correct.  They know something is very wrong even if they cannot articulate that the policies of both Bush ’43 and Barack Obama have led to foreign policy blunders, protracted, costly wars and serious economic consequences for America.  What about the people’s foreign policy consensus!

9/11:   Trump was right. “W” did not keep us safe.  The first folly was the failure of Bush ’43 and his NSA Condi Rice to try to prevent 9/11.  As we wrote in The National Interest, Condi ignored repeated warnings of a coming 9/11 from CIA Director George Tenet, Clarke and other key CIA officials, but also Russian President Vladimir. and Democrat Gary Hart, whose campaign Rice earlier supported.

Cofer Black, former head of the CIA’s counter-terrorism unit, recalls, a July 10 “hair raising “meeting with Condi.  “I told her in dramatic and unequivocal terms…that this country had to go on a war footing – now!” he wrote. “We left that meeting thinking we had provided the alert to our leadership. “ 

The Iraq War; 2002 Decision:   Islamic terrorism at that time was not on Bush team’s agenda. The debate, from the first cabinet meeting in early 2001, was not "should we attack Iraq?" but rather "how do we go about attacking Iraq?" So wrote former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil.

After 9/11, “W”, still obsessed with Saddam Hussein, who had tried to kill his father, did not focus on finishing the winning anti-terrorist struggle in Afghanistan.  Instead he shifted to the wrong war --Iraq.  Former British Ambassador Christopher Meyer recalls that on the very day of the attack, Rice told him, “There’s no doubt this was an Al-Qaeda operation [but] we are just looking to see if there could possibly be any connection with Saddam Hussein.” Didn’t she know that Saddam was an enemy of  al Qaeda?   

Haass, the former head of the State Department Planning Council, recalled Condi telling with him in the summer of 2002  “The [war] decision was made,” i.e. no further vetting necessary. A rush to war followed based on bogus intelligence, group thinking, and a failure to appreciate Iraq’s huge religious and ethnic fissures between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.  

Saddam was hanged, but instead of withdrawing as Reagan would have done, the Bush team engaged in nation building with Shiite sectarian leader Nouri al Maliki. “I really felt good about Maliki,” wrote Condi.  The lessons of Reagan were forgotten. When Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi committed a terrorist act against U.S. assets in Europe, Reagans orders were to go for his jugular -- his compound.  Gaddafi’s daughter was killed.  The point was made.  No large invasion or nation building! But that did not happen under “W.”

Cohen, working for Rice at that time, examined Afghanistan and concluded, “It was nearing catastrophic failure.” Why? It escapes him that there was no al Qaeda in Iraq -- We helped to create it!  Fighting two wars at the same time was untenable. The sole focus should have been Afghanistan!

After considerable loss of American lives and treasure, and with al Maliki proving a disaster, General David Petraeus launched his brilliant surge. Victory was in sight. Then Obama snatched defeat from victory’s jaws by exiting Iraq completely and prematurely.   Much of Iraq thereafter became an ISIL caliphate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levanth.  Today Baghdad is an endless bombing inferno with hundreds dying in its streets.     

2011 Obama-Hillary Intervention in Libya:  Which brings us to Libya, our third folly, this one on Obama’s watch. Instead of following Reagan’s path, Obama led from behind and with a large, NATO intervention. The results therefrom were similar to Iraq’s. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton secretly  acquired arms from Qatar and the Saudis and distributed them to Libyan rebels. She seemed unaware that dictator Gaddafi, like Saddam, was an enemy of al Qaeda and did not need to be overthrown.  After Saddam’s death, Gaddafi had not only given up his nuclear weapons program, he was working with us to prevent the rise of the Islamists.  

 “We came, we saw and we killed him,” Hillary boasted.  But nobody crowed as civil war erupted and Libya, like Iraq, became a failed state.   Al Qaeda affiliates metastasized throughout the country.   A huge Muslim migration to Europe followed – similar to the one established the following year by the Islamic state  from  Syria to Western Europe.

Undaunted, Clinton, began cooking up the overthrow of Syria’s dictator, Bashar al Assad.  Much involved with this effort was the Benghazi consulate, actually a CIA station.  Following Hillary’s instructions, Ambassador Chris Stevens engaged in the transfer of Libyan arms via Turkey to pro-U.S.  rebels in Syria. Was this why Al Qaeda affiliates attacked the consulate and why four Americans, including Stevens, died?  Did Hillary’s insecure server reveal the consulate’s real function?   Or should we conclude, “What difference does it make?”

As we now know, moreover, the Russians have in their possession 20,000 of Hillary’s hacked e-mails. They must have learned the real nature of our mission in Libya, and they surely, as former Defense Secretary Robert Gate explained, felt deceived by us.  They had not opposed our U.N. resolution to provide what had been sold to them by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice as “a humanitarian mission to prevent the slaughter of civilians.”  

In 2015, With the lessons of Libya and Iraq in mind, Putin thereafter forcefully intervened in Syria.  Nor was it just to protect Russian assets in in Syria.  He was determined to save dictator Assad as a bulwark against the Islamists.  

Burns “The [2015] Iran nuclear deal… is a success”: Rice’s point man for Iran for three years (2005-2008) Burns was also defending his own record when he praised the Iran deal as a success.  Enter now Zbigniew Brzezinski.  Recall he was President Jimmy Carter’s former NSA and Obama’s 2008 adviser. As reported by Mark Langfan at Arutz Sheva,   Zbig was downgraded [as chief adviser] after Republican and pro-Israel Democratic charges that Zbig’s anti-Israel attitude would damage Obama at the polls.” Yet Zbig’s legacy lived on. 

 A year later, in the Daily Beast, he spilled the beans.  The green light that Reagan and Bush ’43 tacitly provided for Israel to destroy nuclear facilities in 1981 Iraq and 2007 Syria, turned red under his counsel.  “If they [the Israelis] fly over [Iraq], you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not.  No one wishes this, but it could be a [USS] Liberty in reverse.” As Langfan put it “…President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.” 

Parallel to this, as we learned from Obama’s point man,  Ben Rhodes,  public diplomacy was forged to create a positive image of Iran. The tale told was that the U.S.  began to negotiate with the mullahs only when the moderates came to power. Wrong! From the very beginning in 2009, the hardliners still reigned.  

Subsequently, in 2015, Hillary’s replacement, John Kerry, concluded a weak treaty with Tehran devoid of either strong verification mechanisms or geopolitical considerations. With many of the sanctions on Iran now lifted, the money is being used to support anti-Israel and pro-Iranian, Shiite regional forces. 

Some “success!” The Iran nuclear deal, may yet be remembered as the most dangerous folly forged by American policy-makers in the 21^st century.  Meanwhile, Burns doesn’t even feel the need to give Trump credit for being the only GOP presidential candidate who claimed he would not shred the nuclear deal if he becomes president, but try to renegotiate it before initiating tougher policies. 

Trump or Hillary?  “On foreign affairs,” Cohen concluded, “Hillary Clinton is far better [than Trump].  She believes in the old consensus … Trump’s temperament … his advocacy of unpredictability would make him a presidential disaster … especially in the conduct of foreign policy.”  True, Trump does project unpredictability and why not say it, he is viewed as dangerous by our foes.  But that’s not a bad thing; so was Reagan and before him, Richard Nixon. 

Conversely, Hillary, who, unlike Trump, backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and who secretly facilitated the disastrous Libyan intervention, does not represent the wisdom that we seek.   

 A great communicator like Reagan, Trump is bringing millions of Democrats into the GOP fold.  If Sanders loses to Hillary, many of his supporters will turn to Trump.  They understand that Trump represents an optimistic, Reaganesque   belief in America’s revival after the morbid decline under Obama.   

The America of 1981 and 2016 are quite different countries. Many of Trump’s challenges and circumstances are different from those Reagan faced.  Yet, like Ronald Reagan earlier, Trump appears to have very good foreign policy instincts.  Meanwhile, nothing is mentioned by Burns, Cohen and other job seekers with Hillary, about the Server-gate albatross hanging around her neck.

The Russians surely know it’s there.  Transpiring now is a debate between their Foreign Affairs ministry and the FSB about what should be done with the thousands of hacked Hillary-mails they possess.  If their security service prevails, it will be an another indication that Putin, who incredibly endorsed Trump in the primaries, intuits that he and Trump can possibly work together as did Reagan with Gorbachev and Nixon with Brezhnev.

Most of all, Burns and Cohen cannot exclude they might be advising Hillary in jail.  Nor do they consider that if she is, elected, she will turn the White House into yet another Milhouse, Watergate-type inferno.   

Trump is not a perfect candidate, but he learns quickly, brings a new, business-oriented approach, and is surely our best choice for president. The left will try to tar him as a right wing extremist, which he is not, and the right as having “New York values,” some of which, as a populist, he may retain. But he just may bring the country back to the political center where   historically, it has thrived.

The President of the Institute of Post-Communist Studies and Terrorism, Dr. Jiri Valenta is a long-standing member of the Council on Foreign Relations, N.Y.  The author and co-editor of numerous books, he is currently working with his wife and co-writer, Leni, on America’s 21^st century follies.  Their website is jvlv.net.