On Foreign Policy, Trump Should Tell Paul Ryan to Get Lost

Jacob Heilbrunn

Politics, Americas

The House GOP’s new foreign-policy agenda leads nowhere good.

Talleyrand once remarked of the Bourbons, “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” Something similar might be said about the new twenty-three-page House Republican foreign-policy blueprint. It’s called “A Better Way: Our Vision For A Confident America” and is being touted by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryan’s apparent objective is to prod Donald Trump to embrace the report.

If so, Trump would be well advised to run away from it as fast as he can. Instead of a far-sighted document that sets out a fresh course for American foreign policy, it offers a mishmash of neocon foreign-policy bilge that has already led the GOP and the United States badly astray.