Donald Trump Calls for Dramatic Break With Current U.S. Foreign Policy

GOP front-runner calls for expanding the size of the military, while pulling back from global hotspots.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, emboldened by fresh primary wins this week and pivoting toward a likely general-election fight, called Wednesday for the U.S. to pull back from its global engagements, marking a decisive break from recent Republican orthodoxy.

Mr. Trump’s first major foreign-policy address outlined a series of blunt principles, some of them arguably contradictory, and was notable for its willingness to excoriate the vision of former President George W. Bush, as well as President Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump’s overriding theme was that the U.S. must reset its relations with other countries, easing tensions when possible, showing enemies that the U.S. means business, and guarding against becoming involved in too many parts of the world. Despite differences with China and Russia, he said, “We are not bound to be adversaries.”

Striking a nationalistic and populist tone, Mr. Trump was unambiguous in saying he would demand that allies pay the U.S. part of the bill for defending them or else they would have to defend themselves.

Many of Mr. Trump’s comments contrasted with recent Republican foreign policy. GOP leaders, led by such figures as Mr. Bush and Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), have often called for muscular U.S. engagement in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere.

The speech was mostly devoid of new proposals, but was harsh in its criticism of Mr. Obama for what Mr. Trump called an incoherent foreign policy that favored America’s enemies, disappointed its friends and relegated its security to a lower priority.

“My foreign policy will always put the interests of the American people and American security above all else,” Mr. Trump said. “It has to be first. Has to be.”

Mr. Trump repeatedly said a top priority would be expanding the U.S. military, modernizing its nuclear weapons arsenal and greatly increasing the number of U.S. troops, ships and aircraft.

But he stopped short of detailing what a new American military would do, or what the role of a beefed-up armed services would be, or how that plan would coexist with a vision of a greatly reduced U.S. footprint. Mr. Trump noted that the U.S. must be willing to stop defending European allies that he said don’t contribute enough to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, adding, “The U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.”

While Mr. Trump outlined general principles like making America “a great and reliable ally again,” he provided little indication of how that might play out in a complex hot spot such as Syria.

Advocating both aggressiveness and disengagement, Mr. Trump didn’t hesitate to go after Mr. Bush, saying his 2003 decision to invade Iraq destabilized the Middle East and the “biggest beneficiary has been Iran.” And he said Mr. Obama’s actions in the Middle East gave rise to Islamic State, a terror network that he said must be defeated, though he didn’t specify how.

Despite the grander setting, Mr. Trump didn’t retract his more controversial foreign-policy ideas, reiterating, for example, his call for a “pause” in allowing Muslims to enter the U.S.

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