The Return Of Team America?

Donald Trump promised to put the country fi rst. His new foreign policy advisers may suggest otherwise

- Matt Laslo

IN THE SPRING OF 2016, as Donald Trump cruised to the Republican presidential nomination, he convened an elite crowd in a Washington, D.C., ballroom to announce a new proposal that would, as he put it, “shake the rust off America’s foreign policy.” Backed by American flags, he eviscerated decades of GOP orthodoxy—specifically the nation building of George W. Bush in Iraq—and pledged to enact a “coherent foreign policy” that would shun distant conflicts and put “America first.” Trump pledged to find “talented experts with approaches and practical ideas, rather than surrounding myself with those who have perfect résumés but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war. We have to look to new people.”

But now, as President Trump faces a series of conflicts with Syria, Iran and North Korea, he’s surrounding himself with some of the “old people” whose ideas he so fervently dismissed as a candidate. In recent weeks, he has tapped as national security adviser John Bolton, a Bush-era diplomat who has advocated bombing Iran and North Korea; as secretary of state Mike Pompeo, a former Tea Party congressman who had backed the Iraq War; and as CIA director Gina Haspel, a veteran clandestine officer who ran a secret prison where water boarding occurred after the September 11 attacks. (Haspel was awaiting congressional confirmation as of publication.)