CHINA/FOREIGN POLICY/NATIONAL SECURITY/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP POSITION CHANGES: “President Trump presented a blueprint for the country’s national security on Monday [12-18-17] that warns of a treacherous world in which the United States faces rising threats from an emboldened Russia and China, as well as from what it calls rogue governments, like North Korea and Iran.
To fend off these multiple challenges, the report says with Cold War urgency, the government must put ‘America First,’ fortifying its borders, ripping up unfair trade agreements and rebuilding its military might.
But in his speech announcing the strategy, Mr. Trump struck a much different tone. Instead of explaining the nature of these threats, he delivered a campaignlike address, with familiar calls to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico and a heavy dose of self-congratulation for the bull market, the low jobless rate and tax cuts, which, he promised, were ‘days away.’…
The disconnect between the president’s speech and the analysis in his administration’s document attests to the broader challenge his national security advisers have faced, as they have struggled to develop an intellectual framework that encompasses Mr. Trump’s unpredictable, domestically driven and Twitter-fueled approach to foreign policy. The same confusion has confronted foreign governments trying to understand Mr. Trump’s conflicting signals.”
-Mark Landler and David E. Sanger, “Trump Delivers a Mixed Message on His National Security Approach,” The New York Times online, Dec. 18, 2017