Opinion

Trump Talks Loudly And Carries A Big Stick

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
Font Size:

We are witnessing the rebirth of a focused American foreign policy this week with President Donald Trump’s first world tour. One is tempted to refer to it as efflorescent revelation that American leaders cannot hope to cower in trepidation from our enemies or offer nuanced double-speak that can be interpreted in a variety of different ways rather articulating clear policy objectives that are understood.

Theodore Roosevelt famously talked about speaking softly while carrying a big stick. Trump has the big stick in the United States military and his commitment to bring that force back to its former luster and capabilities. But he isn’t speaking softly and he better not start anytime soon because that only confuses America’s allies and emboldens our opponents.

Just look at the reception that Trump has received from the Saudis. When Obama made his pilgrimage, he was on his knees in obeisance to the king and talking like a Chicago Democrat who thought everyone in the room was catching his policy drift. Obama would never think of  clearly enunciating the advisability of Saudi Arabia actually engaging in the war of terror; he could never have imagined asking the Arab world to start paying for it own defense; he just wouldn’t have found the courage to suggest that radical Islamic terror was a Frankenstein monster that was spawned in the Arab world and would eventually subsume everyone.

So how has Trump’s clarity contrasted with Obama’s? The Saudis clearly love this man. I guess they haven’t been reading the New York Times or watching CNN when the liberal mainstream media has insisted that Trump is some kind of Muslim-hating ethno-centric crusader who has earned the enmity of the Islamic-dominated Middle East. That’s all liberal B.S. to these folks because, quite frankly, they don’t speak the same language. They don’t comprehend liberal weakness but they sure do appreciate conservative bluntness. You have a point to make? Then make it. Don’t tell us one thing and hope we really understand the subtext.

And it’s not like Trump has backed off on his support for Israel in the process. They Arab world wouldn’t get that either; they’d think it was just duplicitous behaviour and dismiss the president as untrustworthy. Let’s face it: when Trump was speaking to the Saudi “court,” the institution that runs the country, he wasn’t addressing a room full of egalitarian liberals who were anticipating the president to hit all the human rights bases on his way through his presentation. These are authoritarian men who run an authoritarian regime. They are only interested in spending their money fight terrorism when they realize Uncle Sam is not going to be a sucker forever and they comprehend that ISIS could undermine the privileged positions of theses Arab potentates.

So while the navel-gazing continues in Washington this week with the silly nonsense about Russians stealing elections from a Democrat named Hillary Clinton who couldn’t do enough to appease and satiate the Kremlin, Trump is showing the pathetic Dem leadership how to energize foreign policy and revive America’s presence on the world stage. If this inquisition were actually concerned with a crime — a phenomenon that no one has yet to identify in this entire futile process — then one would be tempted to compare Trump’s foreign policy revolution to the external successes of Richard Nixon as he and Henry Kissinger waltzed around the world.

Like, Nixon, Trump understands the real world and knows that it is constituted of many non-democratic countries who will only cooperate with the democratic world if they understand that it is in their interest to do so. Obama thought you could caress them with soft words and flattery. He thought they knew he was only kidding when he dared people to cross his lines in the sand.

They didn’t, but they’re pretty certain that Trump is neither jesting nor playing the Arab world for fools.

Follow David on Twitter.