Trump announces national security strategy: We'll fight jihadists, not warm weather

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives December 20, 2017

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There's really nothing all that remarkable or brilliant here. It's being treated as a massive shift in U.S. national security policy - and it is - but all that shows you is how far off the path things had gotten under Obama. No more "leading from behind." No more "strategic patience." No more treating "climate change" as a security threat, because that's absurd. Presumably no more letting jihadists traffic cocaine so they'll sign worthless deals with us, but hey, you've got to be open-mined, right? In other words, U.S. national security policy returns to normal, and this from the president the left is always shrieking is "not normal":

You'll hear a lot of hand-wringing about the "competition between rival powers" business, but that too is merely an acknowledgement of the obvious. This is what geopolitics is. Nation's jostle for positioning so they casn best achieve their own interests - both economically and strategically. Obama seemed to think he could win the world's goodwill by constantly conceding U.S. interests to whatever the bad actors of the world wanted. That's how we ended up with the Iran nuclear deal and with an "open" Cuba that agreed to nothing in the realm of human rights to gain that status.. There is some legitimate concern that Trump's emphasis on competition will translate into protectionist trade policy. That concerns me too. Trade is not really a competition so much as it's a way for consumers and producers across the world to access larger markets. Trump tends to talk about it like it's us. vs. them, and sometimes sounds like the UAW when he talks about trade's effect on jobs. In reality, if U.S. manufacturers lose jobs to overseas producers it's because U.S. consumers liked the foreign products better, and it's on U.S. manufacturers to correct that, not on the consumers to "buy American" or on the government to see to it that they do. But so far Trump seems to merely positioning the U.S. for trade deals with more favorable terms, not abandoning them entirely. That's a classic Trump negotiating strategyy, and if that's all he's doing then everything will be fine. In a broader sense, though, Trump's strategy is returning U.S. national security to what the boss often describes as peace through strength with clarity. The clarity part means that you don't shrink from calling Islamist jihadists what they are. Check. You don't hesitate to say China and Russia are our strategic rivals. Check. You're not ashamed to pursue our own alliances for our own purposes. When George W. Bush did this after 9/11, liberals yelped that he had "squandered the goodwill of the world." Even if that's true, who cares? We don't get what we need because of the world's "goodwill." We get it because we have the strategic power and influence to take it. When Obama went in the opposite direction, he was hailed as a man of the world. Our influence waned and bad actors rose. America is the world's leader and it needs to lead, setting the world's agenda and ensuring it has the strategic positioning to do so. That is what Trump announced yesterday will once again happen. It's about time.