Will Trump will surpass Bush & Clinton in setting foreign agendas?

**tipirneni** · 02-24-2020, 01:06 PM

Successful China overtures, border wall and strict policy on India all translating into more votes.

**tipirneni** · 02-24-2020, 01:09 PM

**tipirneni** · 02-24-2020, 01:17 PM

Critics describe President Donald Trump’s foreign policy as a muddled, unpredictable collection of impulses, with the one organizing principle being the coddling of like-minded, ruthless dictators. But there is, in fact, a defining diplomatic strategy: He is cleaning up the messes left by his predecessors.
Trump, regularly derided as the most irresponsible of presidents, is actually taking ownership of the most terrifying problems the country faces and trying to solve them in a direct way that his recent predecessors avoided.

With respect to Iran, China, North Korea and even Russia, Trump is taking tough stances. He is getting cozy with dictators because the man who considers himself an artist of the deal understands that those are the people he must strike bargains with.

**tipirneni** · 02-24-2020, 01:18 PM

With respect to Iran, China, North Korea and even Russia, Trump is taking tough stances. He is getting cozy with dictators because the man who considers himself an artist of the deal understands that those are the people he must strike bargains with.

Trump, however, has decided a nuclear Iran is not acceptable — neither now nor 12 years from now. He withdrew from the deal and re-invoked sanctions in the hope that the Iranians will renegotiate the terms that legally could have put them on a path toward nuclear weapons.

On January 3, 2020, a US airstrike outside Baghdad, Iraq, killed several Iraqi and Iranian military officials. One of them was arguably the second most important person in Iran, Qassem Soleimani. His killing set off several days of huge demonstrations throughout the Middle East and an Iranian retaliatory missile strike on a US military base in Iraq.

Soleimani became an immensely powerful figure by commanding Iran’s elite Quds Force, a group of soldiers and spies tasked with spreading Iranian influence outside of its borders. They achieved this by partnering with and supporting militias throughout the Middle East. At the time of his killing, Soleimani had orchestrated a vast array of militias that stretched from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq.