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Commentary
Wall Street Journal

Trump’s Foreign Policy Critics Are Losing

Congress rebukes him. But the public is cool to the post-Cold War consensus.

walter_russell_mead
walter_russell_mead
Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship
U.S. President Donald Trump meets to discuss fighting human trafficking on the southern border on February 1, 2019 in Washington, DC. (JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)
Caption
U.S. President Donald Trump meets to discuss fighting human trafficking on the southern border on February 1, 2019 in Washington, DC. (JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Is President Trump losing control of the foreign-policy agenda? Last week the administration suffered a stinging political defeat as the Senate voted 68-23 to advance a bill that criticizes his plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan. This comes on the heels of Congress’s refusal to accede to Mr. Trump’s demands for further funds to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border and the Senate’s December vote to end U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia’s operations in Yemen. It is now clear the president’s foreign-policy and national-security approach faces increasing and often bipartisan congressional opposition.

Yet the White House shows no sign of backtracking. Far from meeting his critics halfway, Mr. Trump and his foreign-policy team announced progress in Afghanistan negotiations that opponents call a surrender, doubled down on plans to withdraw troops from Syria, announced its impending withdrawal from an arms-control agreement many consider foundational to the post-Cold War security order in Europe, and attacked the judgment of his senior intelligence officials. The administration also advanced an aggressive hemispheric strategy aimed not only at Venezuela, but also at Cuba and Nicaragua—the other two regimes in what national security adviser John Bolton calls the “troika of tyranny.”

Read the full article on the Wall Street Journal website "here":https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-foreign-policy-critics-are-losing-1…