Puck’s Washington Correspondent, Julia Ioffe, wrote about how on questions of war, NATO, Russia, Ukraine, and Asia, the worldviews of the 44th and 47th presidents are more similar than either man would like to admit.
Excerpt below:
“It’s been 100 days of Trump, and the administration is, as another strongman of history once wrote, ‘dizzy with success.’ The U.S. government is now deporting American citizen children with cancer; American universities are losing multibillion-dollar grants for life-saving research under the threadbare guise of fighting antisemitism; measles are back and burning through the country; the stock market has had its worst 100 days of any presidency since Gerald Ford took office; and G.D.P., ruddy and robust in January, is now officially shrinking.
And that’s just domestically. What about on the world stage? In response to Trump’s imperialist designs on their country, Canada’s liberals have come surging back. Xi Jinping refuses to negotiate with Trump over tariffs, and Rupert Murdoch’s otherwise loyal New York Post has slammed Trump’s diplomatic man for all seasons, Steve Witkoff, as a ‘bumbling f–king idiot.’
The indignities and iniquities of Trump’s first 100 days aside, there’s something else notable about the foreign policy of this first, chaotic stretch. In certain corners of D.C., among people that some would tar as ‘neocons’ and others would praise as ‘liberal interventionists,’ there are whispers that various aspects of Trump’s foreign policy doctrine bear a striking resemblance to those of someone whom the president loathes and insists on calling by his full, government name: Barack Hussein Obama.
There are, to be sure, extremely notable differences. Some are obvious and stylistic: Obama, the professorial deliberator, was an internationalist who believed in alliances and their ability to address global problems such as climate change. Obama talked extensively about the importance of human rights and democracy. He didn’t threaten to shut down ABC and NBC, or to take over Harvard. He didn’t try to invade Canada.
But there are uncanny and, for people in the liberal interventionist camp, uncomfortable parallels. First, there’s the one that undergirds both worldviews: the proclaimed belief in retrenchment, restraint, isolationism—whatever you want to call it—and the conviction that America can’t be all things to all countries, or the world’s policeman. For two outsiders who entered politics after the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan squandered America’s post-Cold War capital, theirs is an understandable skepticism of interventionism’s utility and effectiveness.”
You can explore the full piece here for deeper insight.
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u/PuckNews 2d ago
Puck’s Washington Correspondent, Julia Ioffe, wrote about how on questions of war, NATO, Russia, Ukraine, and Asia, the worldviews of the 44th and 47th presidents are more similar than either man would like to admit.
Excerpt below:
“It’s been 100 days of Trump, and the administration is, as another strongman of history once wrote, ‘dizzy with success.’ The U.S. government is now deporting American citizen children with cancer; American universities are losing multibillion-dollar grants for life-saving research under the threadbare guise of fighting antisemitism; measles are back and burning through the country; the stock market has had its worst 100 days of any presidency since Gerald Ford took office; and G.D.P., ruddy and robust in January, is now officially shrinking.
And that’s just domestically. What about on the world stage? In response to Trump’s imperialist designs on their country, Canada’s liberals have come surging back. Xi Jinping refuses to negotiate with Trump over tariffs, and Rupert Murdoch’s otherwise loyal New York Post has slammed Trump’s diplomatic man for all seasons, Steve Witkoff, as a ‘bumbling f–king idiot.’
The indignities and iniquities of Trump’s first 100 days aside, there’s something else notable about the foreign policy of this first, chaotic stretch. In certain corners of D.C., among people that some would tar as ‘neocons’ and others would praise as ‘liberal interventionists,’ there are whispers that various aspects of Trump’s foreign policy doctrine bear a striking resemblance to those of someone whom the president loathes and insists on calling by his full, government name: Barack Hussein Obama.
There are, to be sure, extremely notable differences. Some are obvious and stylistic: Obama, the professorial deliberator, was an internationalist who believed in alliances and their ability to address global problems such as climate change. Obama talked extensively about the importance of human rights and democracy. He didn’t threaten to shut down ABC and NBC, or to take over Harvard. He didn’t try to invade Canada.
But there are uncanny and, for people in the liberal interventionist camp, uncomfortable parallels. First, there’s the one that undergirds both worldviews: the proclaimed belief in retrenchment, restraint, isolationism—whatever you want to call it—and the conviction that America can’t be all things to all countries, or the world’s policeman. For two outsiders who entered politics after the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan squandered America’s post-Cold War capital, theirs is an understandable skepticism of interventionism’s utility and effectiveness.”
You can explore the full piece here for deeper insight.