President Donald Trump, who has made harsh comments toward North Korea in the past months, extended the olive branch to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in a recent tweet.
“Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me ‘old,’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat?’ Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend – and maybe someday that will happen,” Trump said in a tweet released Saturday evening.
While Trump used humor to make his point, he makes it clear that friendship is his first priority with the North Koreans. Trump’s message is in line with libertarian icon and former Republican congressman Ron Paul’s message on how to conduct foreign policy.
“A foreign policy of non-intervention designed only to protect our sovereignty with an eagerness to trade with all nations willing to be friends is the traditional American foreign policy and would give us the guaranteed hope of peace, the greatest hope of peace and prosperity,” Paul said during a Congressional speech in 2000.
While Trump’s ‘carrot and the stick’ approach is far from Paul’s foreign policy of peace and prosperity, Trump’s willingness to consider friendship as an option to resolve conflicts throughout the world is a step forward from the policies of his predecessors. Bush rushed into wars with Iraq and Afghanistan while Obama rushed into a war with Libya, and attempted to do the same in Syria. Because of Trump’s reversal of Obama’s Syrian policy, the Assad regime has been strengthened, and ISIS is all but vanquished. These are positive developments for non-interventionists.
“It is said that we non-interventionists are somehow ‘isolationists’ because we don’t want to interfere in the affairs of foreign nations,” Paul said. “But the real isolationists are those who demand that we isolate certain peoples overseas because we disagree with the policies of their leaders. The best way to avoid war, to promote American values, and to spread real freedom and liberty is to engage in trade and contacts with the rest of the world as broadly as possible.”
If Trump can continue what he has done in Syria while creating friendship and avoiding conflict with hostile nations like North Korea and Iran, he could turn out to be the most non-interventionist president America has had in many generations.
This article is the most idiotic thing I’ve read all day.
Does the author seriously believe that peace with NK is Trump’s highest priority?
I would hope not. Any peace with that regime might as well be appeasement. No peace until they finally collapse one day!
Will Stanton that’s the second most idiotic thing I’ve read all day.
Peace == appeasement.
Do you have any idea of the negative ramifications that a collapse of the NK regime would have?
https://www.facebook.com/ronpaul/posts/10156178455816686
Ryan- Paying off North Korea and allowing China to dominate the South China Sea indefinitely is appeasement!
The reason we got to this juncture is because of 24 years of weakness in which three administrations took military options off the table or even the use of aggressive soft power. We paid them off and refused to hold them accountable.
The Chinese are terrified of a military option because they don’t want the refugee crisis on their hands. Thus, those who publicly despair of military and soft-power options and extol the virtues of diplomacy are ensuring there is no diplomacy. The military option, or the perception of it, is the only thing that will force diplomacy. Peace through strength.
Will Stanton you’re an imperialist and a warmonger, I get it.
Trump talks a lot of shit, but he ain’t no dummy.
On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being a Ron Paul position and 10 being the status quo Donald Trump at most scores a 9 with rose colored glasses. Come on now. US soldiers are have been killed in an African country too insignificant to mention. Three US Navy aircraft carrier groups are deployed near North Korea. Those are not the events of a US president that knows what non-intervention means or that is averse to war. No way, no how.
What happened to fire and fury? Now he wants yo be friends? Huh?