WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Trump’s New World Order.

While the storm Mr. Trump unleashes is chaotic, there is a certain logic to his path. He really does believe that the U.S. is in trouble. From his perspective, stupid Democratic and Republican policies since the end of the Cold War have left the country divided and exposed to dangers overseas. A poorly designed globalization strategy hollowed out the middle class, gutted the defense industrial base, and fueled China’s rise. Clueless elites alienated Americans in pursuit of nonsensical utopian goals. An incompetent American foreign-policy cadre failed to win wars, advance democracy or build peace.

That leaves Mr. Trump with a difficult task. On the one hand, decades of failure, foolishness and shortsighted elite greed have eroded the trust between Americans and the political and administrative mandarins. On the other, the immense efforts required to address the internal challenges and the external threats to the U.S. can be mobilized only on the basis of renewed trust between the national government and the public at large.

Setting the domestic agenda aside, to build that trust and public support for the global struggle, Mr. Trump needs to educate his base without directly challenging some of their core beliefs. Venezuela is a godsend from this point of view. As a leading source of both drugs and illegal migrants, it represents the kind of threat that the Trump base most worries about. And even most isolationists applaud strong American action in the Western Hemisphere.
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Those who still think of Mr. Trump as a restrainer or isolationist should watch his “60 Minutes” interview. This president isn’t retreating from the world. He aims to reshape it.

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