Donald Trump’s stance on foreign policy

Republican nominee Donald Trump’s foreign relations and national security policies have centered around “peace through strength, as his campaign website officially states. Trump intends to begin with strengthening the American military and subsequently tackling global issues including Middle Eastern conflicts, Russian relations and the possible nuclear disaster that lies within North Korea.

Trump plans to upgrade the military by bulking it up across multiple constituents. Trump claims the Navy is “the smallest it’s been since World War I” and calls for “rebuilding” the U.S. Navy towards a goal of 350 ships. This would be a 78 vessel increase from the current Navy’s 272-ship fleet. In addition to simply expanding the size of the U.S. Navy, Trump intends to “modernize our Navy’s cruisers” through procuring additional, modern destroyers. Trump believes this will aid in “countering the ballistic missile threats from Iran and North Korea.”

Regarding other sections of the military, Trump proposes to provide 1,200 additional fighter aircrafts to the Air Force and grow the Marine Corps to 36 battalions. Trump also aims to emphasize cyber warfare and create a state of the art defense and offense.

Trump suggests that the U.S. government will pay for his plans by conducting a full audit of the Pentagon. This would allegedly “eliminate incorrect payments, reduce duplicative bureaucracy, collect unpaid taxes and end unwanted and unauthorized federal programs”.

Trump has acknowledged the threat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, poses. His website states that ISIS is operating in 18 countries and 24 branches across the world.

Trump’s policies regarding defeating ISIS have been composed of general guidelines instead of specific strategic moves. He has assured America that he has a plan to defeat ISIS, but he explains that the reason for withholding it is because he does not intend to “broadcast it to our enemies”.

A fundamental aspect of Trump’s proposed ISIS outlines is “defeating the ideology of radical Islamic terrorism,” a phrase that he has accused his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama of refusing to acknowledge. Trump has also directly accused both Clinton and Obama of helping create ISIS. His website states that “the Obama-Clinton election-driven timetable for withdrawal from Iraq led directly to the rise of ISIS”.

Trump hopes that America can work together with “our Arab friends and allies” and Russia to help defeat ISIS. He asserts that Russia “wants to defeat ISIS as badly as we do,” and that we should “let Russia bash ISIS”.

Trump officially proposed four key points regarding ISIS on his campaign website.

“Pursue aggressive joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy ISIS, [cooperate] internationally to cut off their funding, expand intelligence sharing and [conduct] cyber warfare to disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting.”

Trump stated that using nuclear weapons against ISIS was an “absolute last stance,” but he still won’t rule it out as an option.

Trump has also provided policies that he claims will aid in ensuring that America would be safe from possible terrorists coming in from the Middle East. He claims that “opening gates to Syrian refugees invites in ISIS”. In order to prevent terrorists from infiltrating the United States, Trump plans to enforce immigration laws, establish new screening procedures and “suspend immigration from some of the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism”. In the second presidential debate, he stated that his policies regarding Muslims coming into America would include “extreme vetting”.

“It’s called extreme vetting. We are going to areas like Syria where they’re coming in by the tens of thousands because of Obama. And Clinton wants to allow a 550 percent increase over Obama,” Trump said in the second debate. “People are coming into our country like we have no idea who they are, where they are from, what their feelings about our country is (sic) and she wants 550 percent more. This is going to be the greatest Trojan horse of all time.”

In contrast with Clinton, who has accused Russia of interfering with this United States presidential election, Trump has asserted that diplomacy and respect are crucial toward a healthy relationship with Russia. However, Trump has denied Clinton’s claims that Russia has been aiding him in the election and that he supports the way President Vladimir Putin has ran his nation. He claims that he “doesn’t know Putin” and rejects the notion that as President of the United States, he would be Putin’s “puppet”. Clinton’s claims are based off Trump stating that he believes Putin has been a stronger leader than Obama. Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, has defended Trump’s stance.

“I think it’s inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country,” Pence said in a television interview.

Trump contends that America needs to deal with the “maniac” in North Korea, Chairman Kim Jong-un. He proposes to “use force to stop North Korean nuke development,” and he supports supplying South Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons in order to counter Un’s own nuclear program. However, he also believes that a simpler solution would be having China “make Kim-Jong-un disappear”. Trump claims China “totally controls North Korea” and that they are “taunting” the United States.

As a global presence, Trump has “certainly looked at” pulling the U.S. out of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, or NATO. He suggests that the organization could be “obsolete” because the security alliance is not targeting terrorism. He also believes that many of the other 27 countries in NATO are not paying their fair share in costs. According to Trump, the United States “pays approximately 73% of NATO’s costs.”

“I want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot be the policemen of the world,” Trump said in the first presidential debate. “We cannot protect countries all over the world where they’re not paying us what we need.”