Foreign Entanglements Clause of the Trump Campaign

Under President Trump, American foreign policy is returning, many commentators say, to the isolationism that preceded World War II. This line of interpretation (and often attack) emerged during the election: While Hillary Clinton warned that her opponent would “tear up our alliances,” an array of experts supplied such fears with a historical pedigree. As Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass put it, Trump stood for a “new isolationism,” a revival of the 1930s dream of “turning away from global engagement.”

The problem is, Trump isn’t an isolationist. He is a militarist, something far worse.

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Rather than seeking to withdraw from the world, he vows to exploit it. Far from limiting the area of war, he threatens ruthless violence against globe-spanning adversaries and glorifies martial victory.

  WaPo

I misunderstood T-Rump's campaign jargon to mean he would scale back US military intervention in foreign countries and thought that would at least be one good thing. Perhaps that's because I only heard what the media published after the fact since I couldn't bear to actually listen to him speak.

When election commentators called Trump an isolationist, they affirmed precisely what made him popular enough to reach the White House: that he rejects the stale platitudes of elites. Worse, they placed him in an American tradition opposed to overseas conflict. It was a winning brand for a war-weary public, and Trump capitalized. He condemned the Iraq War at every turn and warned that his rivals would start “World War III.”

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Trump rose to power by presenting a horror show of enemies, from Mexico to Iran to China to radical Islamic terrorism (and sometimes Islam itself). Not even the European Union escapes Trump’s zero-sum squint: He casts it as a German vehicle to “beat the United States on trade,” not an effort to secure peace after two world wars. Peace, indeed, seems fragile and anomalous to Trump. “A lot of bad ‘dudes’ out there!” he summed up in a tweet.

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His single most consistent political conviction is that other countries have exploited the United States. In 1987, contemplating a presidential run, he took out a full-page newspaper ad accusing Japan, Saudi Arabia and other nations of “taking advantage” of American largesse. Last year, when he charged that China was committing “rape” and “theft” against the United States, the main novelty was that he’d updated his nemesis.

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Trump may be posturing, but the posture is militaristic. To announce a lust for oil, to chest-thump about torture, to envisage military parades down Pennsylvania Avenue — these do not achieve strategic objectives so much as exalt brute force. “I’m the most militaristic person there is,” Trump said in the primaries. Perhaps he was telling the truth.

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And Trump may not be posturing. He may pursue a program of intervention the world over.

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Last year Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, professed “no doubt” that “we’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years” — and that’s on top of the “global war against Islamic fascism” that he believes to be in its opening stages.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.