Trump is winding down his foreign policy the way it began: Incoherently

There was never a Trump Doctrine

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

The Trump national security team is staying busy in its last days and doing so with the erratic incoherence that has defined President Trump's foreign policy.

The administration is again hiking tensions with Iran, introducing "as many sanctions as possible" before Inauguration Day. Some U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan — but not all, ensuring the incoming Biden administration will have the opportunity to follow in Trump's footsteps of failing to end these wars while promising exactly that. New sanctions are reportedly in the works for China, too, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been dispatched on a symbolically significant visit to an Israeli West Bank settlement. Pompeo's State Department is also pushing to designate the Houthi rebels fighting in Yemen's civil war as a terrorist group, and it has authorized a major new arms sale to the United Arab Emirates, which will further enable the war crimes being committed by the U.S.-backed coalition intervening in Yemen.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.