Donald Trump, who appears to be breaking away from the rest of the GOP pack in the race to secure the presidential nomination, delivered an illuminating foreign policy speech at the Center for the National Interest yesterday, hours after securing five solid primary state victories with overall 50+ percent of the vote (a first in the "Super Tuesdays" of this election cycle).
Though it has also been influenced by the "neocon" virus since the 1990s, the Center for the National Interest is comparatively more realist in its foreign policy outlook than the flagship neocon outlets like American Enterprise Institute (AEI), so Trump's choice of venue sends a signal in and of itself. The crux of his message couldn't have been clearer: it's time to quit the democratization business, and reenter the stability business.
Not a hard sell for anyone outside the cocoon of the Washington policy clique: if a $4 trillion expenditure in Iraq to effectively build up and stabilize a "Shiastan" satellite of Iran isn't a fiasco that screams out for a switch, just what is?
Rather, traditional American interest has always depended on an ability to work with leaders and nations with very different value systems than our own liberal democracy. That includes dictators or strongmen who can be pretty nasty to those that oppose their rule.
Trump's foreign policy outline is such a breath of fresh air because it acknowledges a simple reality: we just can't have our cake and eat it, too. Freedom and stability may ultimately be complementary for every society and not just the liberal West, but in the short term they're clearly at odds with one another in traditionalist or strictly hierarchical societies. There's a brutal and unchangeable logic to the autocracy of such countries that no amount of Western democratic proselytizing - even if backed by sheer military domination - can change within any time frame or budget even remotely acceptable to the American public.
If we can do hundreds of billions in trade with China and still deal cozily with Saudi Arabia (notwithstanding the recent tensions), just why can't we cut the best possible arrangements with any other dictatorship? It's not their lack of democracy that threatens us per se: it's their perception that they have more to gain from attacking or threatening our interests - or more accurately, less to lose - than if they just behave themselves.
Unsurprisingly, the two countries outside the US where Trump would fare best in an election are Russia (by a large margin) and China. These rival continent-sized empires speak the same language as the flamboyantly brash real estate mogul: the language of unapologetic, in-your-face authoritarianism. Having previously bragged about how he'd get along well with both Beijing and Moscow, Trump has now made it all but official that the foundation for global security going forward should be big power collaboration - a global "concert of Europe", of sorts.
Foreign policy and international affairs realists everywhere must be hearing some music at last after years of discombobulated cacophony.
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