The Atlantic

What's Dangerous About Donald Trump's Foreign Policy?

His unorthodox approach has frightened some observers. But it’s his more conventional moves that have cost the most lives.
Source: Rick Wilking / Reuters

When critics argue that Donald Trump is an exceptionally reckless commander in chief, they tend to highlight how the American president deviates from the norm.

By issuing “diplomatic pronouncements” on Twitter and pronouncing actual diplomats irrelevant, Hillary Clinton , Trump poses “a clear and present danger to our country and to the world.” Trump, the Republican Senator Bob Corker , acts “like he’s on a reality show” and “doesn’t realize that we could be heading towards World War III with the kinds of comments that he’s making” about foreign policy, which left “to the professionals.” “We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear-weapons strike [against North Korea] that is wildly out of step with U.S. national-security interests,” Corker’s Democratic colleague Chris Murphy during a Senate hearing.

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic7 min readAmerican Government
Could South Carolina Change Everything?
For more than four decades, South Carolina has been the decisive contest in the Republican presidential primaries—the state most likely to anoint the GOP’s eventual nominee. On Saturday, South Carolina seems poised to play that role again. Since the
The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic5 min readAmerican Government
What Nikki Haley Is Trying to Prove
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Nikki Haley faces terrible odds in her home state of

Related Books & Audiobooks