[Hot Air] I am pretty sure that my readers know that I am not a huge fan of Donald Trump, particularly the current version of Trump the candidate or Trump the celebrity.Still, I think Trump’s presidency from 2017-2021 is grossly underrated, particularly regarding his outstanding record in foreign policy achievements. As a Trump skeptic when he was running back int 2015 and 2016 I would never in a million years have expected him to be an outstanding president in foreign policy, but he was. Perhaps the best since Ronald Reagan, and certainly the best since George H.W. Bush.
Trump was absolutely hated by our European allies, and equally hated by our international adversaries. That created the illusion that Trump was a terrible foreign policy president. Generally speaking, when everybody hates you it is easy to assume that you are doing something wrong.
Yet Trump was hated because he was doing almost everything right. His advice to Europe was 100% correct: he insisted that Russia was the bad guy and that it was insane to trust Putin to maintain the flow of natural gas in a crisis. He was literally laughed at by the Germans, who every day regret their reliance on Russia for energy (in)security.
Further, Trump pushed European leaders to invest in their military power. How did their neglecting investing in military power work out for them? Trump, again, was right. And his failure to convince was no worse than under Obama or Bush.
Trump identified China and Iran as particularly important security threats, and