Trump’s First Foreign Trip Tests ‘America First’ Agenda

President Donald Trump will soon embark on his first trip abroad, a trip that sends a significantly different message from his predecessors’ first foreign trips.

The president will visit Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy — where Trump will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican — and Belgium. The purpose of the trip is “to broadcast a message of unity to America’s friends and to the faithful of the followers of three of the world’s greatest religions,” Trump’s national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster said on Friday.

On the surface, Trump’s trip is immediately noteworthy for the fact that he will be the first president since Jimmy Carter whose first journey abroad wasn’t to either Mexico or Canada: the first stop, respectively, on every president’s international itinerary from Ronald Reagan through Barack Obama.

“Trump’s first trip contrasts starkly and favorably with Obama’s.”

Beyond that, Trump’s first trip abroad is a stark departure in purpose and tone from Obama’s, and even George W. Bush’s before that. Of course, Obama’s first major trip outside of North America saw him embark on the infamous “apology tour.”

In Strasbourg, France, on April 9, 2009, Obama told a crowd that “there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” In Cairo, weeks later, Obama groveled before the Islamic world, apologizing for that fact that the “fear and anger that [9/11] provoked … led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals.” And despite being so close, Obama made a symbolic decision not to visit Israel.

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“Trump’s first trip contrasts starkly and favorably with Obama’s,” said Robert Kaufman, a professor at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and author of “Dangerous Doctrine: How Obama’s Grand Strategy Weakened America.”

“Remember Obama’s trip abroad deliberately slighted America’s allies — snubbing a decent democratic Israel while apologizing to the Islamic World in his infamous Cairo Speech in June 2009 — for sins often exaggerated or imagined,” Kaufman told LifeZette.

And while President Trump’s first trip abroad includes a stop in a Muslim country, his purposes for being there are far different from those of President Obama. “President Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia means to dispel the unfair charge he is hostile to Islam in general,” said Kaufman.

“On the contrary, the president will meet not only with Saudi officials but other moderate leaders throughout the Islamic Middle East to forge a common strategy against Islamic fascism in all its manifestations, particularly Iran and ISIS,” Kaufman continued. “That is a welcome dose of clarity about American interests compared to Obama’s obsession with propitiating adversaries.”

Trump’s decision to visit Israel also contrasts starkly with Obama’s first trip abroad. “By including Israel, which Obama snubbed, President Trump restores the moral as well as strategic clarity President Obama squandered in his obsession to delegitimize a decent, democratic pro-American Israel while appeasing America’s most dangerous enemy in the region,” Kaufman said. “Credit President Trump for clearly favoring our democratic friends such as Israel rather than our enemies as President Obama did routinely, not only in the Middle East.”

“Trump’s visit to the Vatican underscores his message of tolerance — including the symbol of Catholic Christianity on his trip along with … Israel and Saudi Arabia — the heartlands of Judaism and Islam,” while “Trump’s attendance at the NATO summit underscores his commitment to collaborating with democratic allies when it serves, as it usually does, America’s interest,” Kaufman said. “Trump’s trip and agenda mark a huge improvement over the misguided policies and feckless assumptions of his predecessor.”

Some populist-conservatives, however, are concerned that Trump’s first trip abroad might not be such a departure from recent presidents’ and that it may not actually serve American interests in the end.

“One trusts that President Trump’s maiden trip, to the Middle East, does not portend some new and deeper involvement in that hotbed of civil-sectarian war, where no vital U.S. interest is imperiled and no U.S. intervention ends well — for us,” said conservative commentator Pat Buchanan.

“The Saudis want greater U.S. involvement in Riyadh’s war on the Houthi rebels and U.S. help in seizing Hodeida, which could mean a humanitarian disaster for the malnourished millions in Yemen who get their aid through that port,” Buchanan told LifeZette. “The Saudis also wish to realign us behind the Sunnis in the Sunni-Shia clash in the Islamic world, and especially in Syria, and with the Gulf Arabs in their clash with Iran,” said Buchanan.

“At the top of the Israeli agenda is having the United States confront and smash their great enemy, Iran,” Buchanan said. “On Iran, Israelis, Saudis, Gulf Arabs, and Sunni terrorists of al-Qaida and ISIS all concur,” he said.

“But we ought not fight their war. Any new U.S. war in the Middle East would likely do for President Trump and the Republicans what the Iraq War did for President Bush and the Republicans in 2006 and 2008,” Buchanan cautioned. “As Sen. McConnell says, there is no wisdom in the second kick of a mule.”

Instead, “America’s interests lie in eradicating the ISIS base camps in Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, and extricating ourselves from the conflicts of the Middle East rather than deepening our involvement,” said Buchanan. “We should take no sides in sectarian wars. We are now fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia. Enough with all these wars,” he said.

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“Indeed, President Trump’s trip to the Middle East might be deemed a success if he manages to resist any new U.S. commitments his hosts will surely be pressing upon him,” said Buchanan. “And that raises a question: Why is he going there?”

“As for the Vatican visit, after meeting with His Holiness, President Trump might schedule a meeting with Cardinal Burke for another Catholic perspective,” Buchanan added, referring to Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke, the head of the Archdiocese of St. Louis from 2003 to 2008 and now considered to be the leader of the conservative wing of the Catholic Church.