Donald Trump's foreign policy looks more normal than promised

THE salvoes of cruise missiles Bill Clinton launched in August 1998, against a suspected chemical-weapons factory in Sudan and an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, were considered by many American lawmakers to be ineffectual, or worse. Mr Clinton had admitted canoodling with Monica Lewinsky three days earlier'had he taken his cue from a recent Hollywood film, 'Wag the Dog', in which a fictional president invents a war to shift attention from a sex scandal' By contrast, the strikes Donald Trump launched on the Shayrat air base in Syria on April 6th, which were of similarly limited size and ambition'designed to make a point, not war'have been feted, on the left and right, as a well-judged action by a commander-in-chief who may be starting to find his feet. Hillary Clinton, Mr Trump's defeated Democratic rival, said she would have acted similarly. 'Donald Trump became president!' said Fareed Zakaria, a liberal pundit, on CNN.The contrasting responses to these strikes, almost two decades apart, illustrate the extent to which foreign policy is often judged more on its domestic political context than its prospects of success. Mr Clinton's point, that the Islamist rulers...Continue reading
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