Donald Trump Calls for Dramatic Break With Current U.S. Foreign Policy

T. Belman. Noticeably absent from the speech was any reference to the UN or to the Israel/Arab conflict. Nor did he comment on what he planned for Syria.

Commentary: Trump’s Flawed Foreign Policy

National Review: Trump’s ‘Foreign Policy’: Incoherent and Shallow

GOP front-runner calls for expanding the size of the military, while pulling back from global hotspots

By DAMIAN PALETTA and PETER NICHOLAS, WSJ

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, emboldened by fresh primary wins this week and pivoting toward a likely general-election fight, called Wednesday for the U.S. to pull back from its global engagements, marking a decisive break from recent Republican orthodoxy.

Mr. Trump’s first major foreign-policy address outlined a series of blunt principles, some of them arguably contradictory, and was notable for its willingness to excoriate the vision of former President George W. Bush, as well as President Barack Obama.

The speech came a day after Mr. Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton took all-but-irreversible control of their parties’ nomination processes with sweeping primary victories in Northeastern states. Their rivals responded differently to their fading hopes on Wednesday.

Mr. Trump’s leading rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, took the unusual step of naming his potential running mate three months before the Republican convention, choosing former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Carly Fiorina.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Mrs. Clinton’s rival, is laying off hundreds of field staff, the campaign said. The move followed a tough stretch in which Mr. Sanders lost five of the last six primary contests to Mrs. Clinton.

The front-runners, in contrast, spent the day mostly focused on each other and the general election. The Clinton campaign sought to capitalize on Mr. Trump’s comment in a victory speech Tuesday night that if Mrs. Clinton were a man, “I don’t think she’d get 5% of the vote.” Clinton aides sent out a fundraising message attacking his “absurd diatribe against Hillary,” adding that Mrs. Clinton needed donations because she had to be “prepared” for Mr. Trump’s “unpredictable” message.

The new landscape prompted renewed scrutiny of the front-runners’ positions, especially when it comes to Mr. Trump, who would be the only major party nominee in recent memory with no government or military experience. A central aspect of his foreign-policy address, at the Mayflower Hotel a few blocks from the White House, was its solemn delivery, after months of raucous rallies and often coarse comments.

Mr. Trump’s overriding theme was that the U.S. must reset its relations with other countries, easing tensions when possible, showing enemies that the U.S. means business, and guarding against becoming involved in too many parts of the world. Despite differences with China and Russia, he said, “We are not bound to be adversaries.”

Striking a nationalistic and populist tone, Mr. Trump was unambiguous in saying he would demand that allies pay the U.S. part of the bill for defending them or else they would have to defend themselves.

Many of Mr. Trump’s comments contrasted with recent Republican foreign policy. GOP leaders, led by such figures as Mr. Bush and Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), have often called for muscular U.S. engagement in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere.

The speech was mostly devoid of new proposals, but was harsh in its criticism of Mr. Obama for what Mr. Trump called an incoherent foreign policy that favored America’s enemies, disappointed its friends and relegated its security to a lower priority.

“My foreign policy will always put the interests of the American people and American security above all else,” Mr. Trump said. “It has to be first. Has to be.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest defended Mr. Obama’s record and said voters would have to decide for themselves who they want as the next commander in chief.

“What is true is that President Obama over the course of his presidency has worked to unite the international community to confront a wide range of threats,” he said.

Mr. Trump repeatedly said a top priority would be expanding the U.S. military, modernizing its nuclear weapons arsenal and greatly increasing the number of U.S. troops, ships and aircraft.

But he stopped short of detailing what a new American military would do, or what the role of a beefed-up armed services would be, or how that plan would coexist with a vision of a greatly reduced U.S. footprint. Mr. Trump noted that the U.S. must be willing to stop defending European allies that he said don’t contribute enough to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, adding, “The U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.”

While Mr. Trump outlined general principles like making America “a great and reliable ally again,” he provided little indication of how that might play out in a complex hot spot such as Syria.

Advocating both aggressiveness and disengagement, Mr. Trump didn’t hesitate to go after Mr. Bush, saying his 2003 decision to invade Iraq destabilized the Middle East and the “biggest beneficiary has been Iran.” And he said Mr. Obama’s actions in the Middle East gave rise to Islamic State, a terror network that he said must be defeated, though he didn’t specify how.

Despite the grander setting, Mr. Trump didn’t retract his more controversial foreign-policy ideas, reiterating, for example, his call for a “pause” in allowing Muslims to enter the U.S.

But he also didn’t repeat several proposals that have been pillars of his national-security plan for months and are greeted with roars of approval at his rallies. These include the construction of a 1,000-mile wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and harsher interrogations of terror suspects.

Mr. Trump tried to tether Mrs. Clinton to Mr. Obama—her boss when she was secretary of state—saying the two let the U.S. lose influence and allies around the world.

“Our goal is peace and prosperity, not war and destruction,” Mr. Trump said. “The best way to achieve those goals is through a disciplined, deliberate and consistent foreign policy. With President Obama and Secretary Clinton, we’ve had the exact opposite—a reckless, rudderless and aimless foreign policy, one that has blazed a path of destruction in its wake.”

The Clinton campaign was sharply critical of the speech, saying the Trump approach would make the world more chaotic and dangerous. “I’ve never seen such a combination of simplistic slogans, contradictions and misstatements in one speech,” said former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in a call arranged by the Clinton campaign.

Ms. Albright also criticized his use of the term “America First,” saying it echoed the “America First Committee” that urged the U.S. to stay out of World War II, despite Nazi Germany’s aggression in Europe. “Maybe he never read history, or he just doesn’t understand it,” she said.

Several Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), an advocate of strong U.S. engagement, also attacked the speech.

Many national-security and foreign-policy advisers from both parties have rejected Mr. Trump’s policies, saying banning the entry of Muslims and building a new alliance with Russia could be dangerous.

There are signs that more Republicans are warming to Mr. Trump’s candidacy, or at least coming to terms with the fact that he is their likely nominee. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), who so far had declined to weigh in on the White House race, said, “Donald Trump delivered a very good foreign-policy speech in which he laid out his vision for American engagement in the world.”

At one point, Mr. Trump said the only way to combat Islamic State was to become “more unpredictable” as a nation.

“We are totally predictable,” he said. “We tell everything. We’re sending troops. We tell them. We’re sending something else. We have a news conference. We have to be unpredictable. And we have to be unpredictable starting now.”