The Trump Doctrine

President Trump with Qatari Emir Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani (carnegie)

President Trump has upended so many norms and protocols that it's difficult to distinguish those actions that have long-term consequences from those that serve as short-term distractions for his opponents. One such distraction was the gift of a Boeing 747 by Qatar to the Air Force, which made it easy to overlook the President's fleshing out of the "Trump doctrine" in his trip to the Middle East. [bold added]

Mr. Trump is offering a form of foreign-policy realism rooted in good commercial relations and a focus on negotiating peace and stability. He doesn’t much care what kind of government countries run as long as they want good relations with the U.S. He’s looking for deals, even with enemies. He thinks mutual interest in prosperity can overcome even strong ideological differences—and he has no interest in promoting American values, including liberty or democracy.

...He says he wants peace above all else, and the test will be whether his deals with adversarial states are short-term expedients or longer-term strategic victories. His deal with Iran, however it goes, will tell us something about his plans for China as well.

Mr. Trump’s aversion to ideology—to promoting U.S. values—led to the biggest mistake of his trip, which was a needless attack on his predecessors. He praised the sparkling new cities of the Arab countries and claimed they are solely the handiwork of those nations.

American foreign policy has always been marked by the tension between realism and idealism. (An example of the latter is JFK's inaugural address:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.)

President Trump attributes recent U.S. foreign-policy failures to "nation-builders" and "interventionalists." His move toward realism is popular and is likely to last through his term.

The Inauguration: A Few Impressions

I haven't ever viewed an inauguration live until today, but the superior audio and video quality from an indoor controlled environment promised to make the event, whatever the content, watchable. It also helped the visuals that the attendees did not need to wear heavy winter gear inside the Capitol rotunda.

The singing by tenor Christopher Macchio and choirs from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the United States Marine Band was in tune, vibrant, and clear, thanks to the indoor acoustics. The most notable number was a short first-verse-only a cappella rendition of "America the Beautiful" by Carrie Underwood, who invited the audience to participate after technical problems disabled the pre-recorded accompaniment.

It took a few seconds for Ms. Underwood to settle in, but she finished strong. Your humble blogger was moved as the camera panned over the attendees, who, regardless of their politics, knew the words to America's unofficial anthem.



As for the Inaugural speech itself, I found it disappointing. I had hoped for a soaring description of the transcendent ideals that animate the new President, with details to be filled in later at the State of the Union address. Instead, we had a mini State of the Union that went into some of the moves he will make immediately.

I understand why he chose to make the speech he did. He's a "common sense" businessman who disdains lofty rhetoric for specific actions. Moreover, he makes himself accountable, something a mere mouthing of a "more equity" platitude doesn't do. Maybe that's what we need now. although I do yearn for a little John F Kennedy:

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage...

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty...

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.

Veteran's Day

Below is my post from 2013, slightly edited:

November begins on a personal note with my birthday. In recent years the celebration has been muted. (I'm at the age when I look back more than I look ahead.)

Dad, near Tokyo in 1945

Today, Veteran's Day, we remember my father and his five brothers, World War II veterans all, who have passed on. Dad's ashes are at the family church, while the others are interred at Punchbowl.

On November 19th the nation will honor the 161st anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's great speech in the aftermath of an horrific battle. And on November 22nd the nation will remember the life and death of John F. Kennedy 61 years after his assassination.

In a strange way revisiting traumatic events such as WW II, the Civil War, and the JFK assassination gives rise to hope. The obstacles that the nation overcame 61, 80, and 161 years ago dwarf those that it faces today, and there is no good reason why we shouldn't be equally--and ultimately--successful in solving our problems as well. © 2024 Stephen Yuen

Stumbling and Bumbling to Armageddon

Tuchman's history of the miscalculations
that led to World War I heavily influenced
JFK: "We are not going to bungle into war."

The insatiable news cycle currently has placed inflation, interest-rate cuts, Israel-Gaza, border control, Harris vs. Trump, and Haitians eating cats and dogs (!) at the top of the pile.

Ukraine is secondary, but it should be moved to the very top. The U.S. and NATO are making moves that could result in World War III. [bold added]

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Biden on Friday discussed allowing Ukraine to use long-range European-made cruise missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia, according to U.S. and Western officials.

Until now, Western countries supporting Ukraine have balked at allowing Kyiv to use long-range weapons, such as the British-French Storm Shadow, inside Russian territory for fear of escalating the conflict. Officials are concerned in particular that Russian President Vladimir Putin could retaliate by arming the Yemen-based Houthi rebels, who are engaged in a long-running campaign to attack ships in the Red Sea.

Putin has warned the U.S. and its allies that permitting Ukraine to use Western-made long-range missiles against Russia would mean the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s countries were “at war” with Russia.

61 years ago President Kennedy was willing to go to war to prevent Russian missiles from being installed in Cuba. The NATO missiles are already in Ukraine, minutes away from striking the Russian homeland. We seem to be counting on Vladimir Putin to be less prone to war than JFK.

What makes our foreign policy establishment, so rife with miscalculations since the Korean war, so confident that we won't blunder into World War III?

Remembering That Day

On the 60th anniversary of his assassination, I am rerunning this post I wrote 20 years ago:

Mrs. Matthews calmly told us the news, but her normally severe demeanor seemed strained. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. The class grew quiet. In the face of tragedy we tried to act like adults, who we thought would not cry or shout or otherwise carry on.

After an interminable wait, school finally let out, and kids got into their buses or waiting cars. My ride wouldn’t come for another hour so I wandered around the empty halls. I thought about going to the main office to call Mom, but the phone was only to be used in the direst emergency, like the time I got sick in Mrs. Millar’s fourth grade class and my father had to take off work to pick me up. I borrowed a book from the library and went across the street to wait for my uncle. I opened the book but didn’t see the pages.

These days we say we are “shocked” or “stunned” by an occurrence, when, in truth, our imagination, combined with knowledge of actual horrors experienced over the past 40 years, has inoculated us against surprise. But those reactions are appropriate to this seminal event, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that signaled the end of our childhood.

The entire week was quiet. No one felt like playing football, so games were cancelled. The churches were filled, just as they were a year earlier when we prayed that God would spare the world. It was a week of blackness--black suits, dresses, and veils filling our black-and-white TV sets and newspapers.

In 1960 my parents supported Richard Nixon, and, being an imitative child, so did I. But once JFK was elected, he became the President and had our unswerving allegiance. The world was extremely dangerous. As we learned in geography, Russia had the most land, China had the most people, and these colossi were united against us. And more and more were joining their fold: people in Africa, in South America, even in neighboring Mexico, were burning the flag (I remember when some burned the old flag with 48 stars: didn’t they know that Hawaii and Alaska had become States?). The map of the world that hung on the bedroom wall was bathed in red, the color of communism, while the blue part--the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Japan—seemed puny in comparison.

At school we would practice ducking under our desks in case the bombs started falling. People say now that these instructions were a big joke, but I didn’t know anyone who laughed. Life and Look magazines ran page after page on the devastation wrought by atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I studied the huge mushroom cloud produced by the thousand-times more powerful hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll. Today children have nightmares about the Twin Towers falling; we worried about towers vaporizing…..everywhere.

President Kennedy also contended with many problems on the Mainland, as we called the contiguous 48 states. (I don’t want to give the impression that in my tender years I was a news junkie: it was primarily to advance my vocabulary that I read the grown-ups’ newspapers, the morning Advertiser and evening Star-Bulletin.) Good news was rare. Powerful labor unions, such as the Teamsters and steelworkers, went on strike and shut down much of the country. Troops had to be sent to Alabama because Governor Wallace wouldn’t let black kids go to school. The powerful Mafia was a big problem on the East Coast, and Robert Kennedy, the callow Attorney General, seemed inadequate to the task. As the Untouchables TV series vividly showed, you needed men with machine guns to take them on, and the President’s younger brother did not have the authoritative air of Elliott Ness.

The troubles came to a head in October, 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The fear in adults was palpable, and I became convinced, after a few days of excruciating tension, that the world was going to be destroyed. Every night I concentrated with special fervor on the final line of the children’s prayer, “if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take”. When the Russian ships turned around, and Mr. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba, I felt the exultation of the patient who is given a second chance, and President Kennedy was my doctor.

He is remembered for his grace, his wit, and his handsome family. But I remember most of all the contrast between the joyful heights of Thanksgiving, 1962 and the somber depths of Thanksgiving, 1963. He saved us all, and then he was gone.
© 2003 Stephen Yuen

Relative Importance

Two Sixties icons: JFK and Pope Paul VI (WSJ)

In the Hawaii of the '50's and '60's nearly everyone I knew was Christian. (The Jewish and Buddhist kids I could count on the fingers of one hand, and absolutely no one would cop to being an atheist.)

One's Protestant denomination was important, while Catholics were "different."

John F. Kennedy's Catholicism was such a big deal during the 1960 Presidential campaign that there was worry that he "would take orders from the Pope."

“I do not speak for my church on public matters,” John Kennedy told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960, “and the church does not speak for me.”

The culture has changed to such an extent that on general principles I admire anyone who takes his or her religion seriously. It usually means that they've thought about life and the relative importance of material things and politics.

John F. Kennedy, who nearly died for his country in World War II and was assassinated 57 years ago, would have understood.