Trump's foreign policy approach in year one
President Trump has spent his first year taking foreign policy action with a traditional, Republican approach and his rhetoric has often not matched the action, two foreign policy experts observed.
Ahead of the president's first State of the Union address, CBSN's "Red and Blue" spoke to former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell and Fran Townsend, former Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser to President George W. Bush, about Mr. Trump's approach to foreign policy.
"It's not that different from traditional, Republican, conservative approach in terms of the actions that have been taken," observed Morell, who noted that the president decided to leave troops in Afghanistan indefinitely and has toughened sanctions against North Korea.
"What's been different is the president's rhetoric," he said.
"The rhetoric has been the most jarring piece to this," Townsend agreed. That said, she'd describe the Trump doctrine as pragmatic and allowed that you have to "discount" some of the rhetoric.
In Morell's view, Mr. Trump has made two moves that were out of line with traditional foreign policy: pulling out of the Paris climate agreement and officially recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. He explained that the president was likely "playing to his base" when he took those actions.
Townsend noted that foreign policy normally goes through a "very deliberative process" and Mr. Trump's approach "comes from the very top." She alluded to the example of the president tweeting about no longer providing aid to Pakistan, which she called a "shock to the system" that sent the policy community "scrambling."
Speaking about North Korea, Morell said that he gives the president and his administration "a lot of credit" for building an international coalition to strengthening sanctions on North Korea. At the same time, he said that Mr. Trump's rhetoric "creates a potential for escalation, a potential for miscalculation," which he called dangerous.
Both agreed that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has turned in a disappointing performance as America's chief diplomat. Townsend called the lack of staffing at State a "tragedy," which has meant that the U.S. has "lost a generation of diplomats."
On Russia, Morell said that he doesn't think there's been a change in the administration's posture toward Russia and said that as was the case with the Obama administration, Mr. Trump isn't pushing back hard enough on Russian activities around the world that seek to undermine the U.S.