Charles Krauthammer: Four approaches to foreign policy

After dozens of contests featuring cliff-hangers, buzzer beaters and a ton of flagrant fouls, we’re down to the Final Four: Sanders, Clinton, Cruz and Trump. (If Kasich pulls a miracle, he’ll get his own column.) The world wants to know: What are their foreign policies?

Herewith, four candidates and four schools: pacifist, internationalist, unilateralist and mercantilist.

▪  Bernie Sanders, pacifist.

His pacifism is part swords-into-plowshares utopianism, part get-thee-gone isolationism. Sanders boasts of voting against the Iraq War. But he also voted against the 1991 Gulf War. His reaction to all such dilemmas is the same anti-imperialist/pacifist reflex: Stay away, but if we must get involved, let others lead.

▪  Hillary Clinton, internationalist.

Though the “Clinton/Obama” foreign policy from Ukraine to Iran to the South China Sea has been a demonstrable failure, we need to note that Clinton often gave contrary advice, generally more assertive and aggressive than President Obama’s, that was overruled – most notably, keeping troops in Iraq beyond 2011 and early arming of the Syrian rebels. The Libya adventure was her grand attempt at humanitarian interventionism. She’s been chastened by the disaster that followed.

Her worldview is traditional, post-Vietnam liberal internationalism – America as the indispensable nation, but consciously restraining its exercise of power through multilateralism and near-obsessive legalism.

▪  Ted Cruz, unilateralist.

The most aggressive of the three contenders thus far. Wants post-Cold War U.S. leadership restored. Is prepared to take risks and act alone when necessary. Pledges to tear up the Iran deal, cement the U.S.-Israel alliance and carpet-bomb the Islamic State.

Cruz overdoes it with “carpet” – it implies the Dresden, Germany, bombings of World War II – although it was likely just an attempt at rhetorical emphasis. He’s of the school that will not delay action while waiting on feckless allies or farcical entities like the United Nations.

▪  Donald Trump, mercantilist.

He promises to make America strong, for which, he explains, he must first make America rich. Treating countries like companies, he promises to play turnaround artist for a foreign policy that is currently a hopeless, money-losing operation in which our allies take us for fools and suck us dry.

You could put the Sanders, Clinton and Cruz foreign policies on a recognizable ideological spectrum, left to right. But not Trump’s. It inhabits a different space because it lacks any geopolitical coherence. It’s all about money. He sees no particular purpose for allies or foreign bases. They are simply a financial drain.

Thus, if Japan and South Korea don’t pony up more money for our troops stationed there, we go home. The possible effects on the balance of power in the Pacific Rim or on Chinese hegemonic designs don’t enter into the equation.

The one exception to this focus on foreign policy as a form of national enrichment is the Islamic State. Trump’s goal is simple – “bomb the s--- out of them.” Yet even here he can’t quite stifle his mercantilist impulses, insisting that after crushing the Islamic State, he’ll keep their oil.

On Jan. 20, one of these four contenders will be sworn in as president. And one of these four approaches to the world will become the foreign policy of the United States.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

This story was originally published April 1, 2016 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Charles Krauthammer: Four approaches to foreign policy."