WASHINGTON – Before President-elect Donald Trump brings in the bulldozers to “drain the swamp” in Washington, I hope he will consider the career achievements of two people who embody the nation’s tradition of bipartisan foreign policy leadership, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft.
The two former national security advisers came from vastly different worlds to join in constructing the foreign policy tradition Trump seems ready to demolish. Brzezinski, now 88, is a Polish refugee who served Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Scowcroft, 91, is a Mormon ex-military officer from Utah who worked for Republican Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.
Both were Cold War hawks who were honored recently by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter with the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Pentagon’s highest award for civilians. But both were also outspoken critics of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 – not the belated and muffled opposition expressed by Trump, but the kind that cost them friendships and access.
What these two shared was a vision of an outward-leaning America that led a global network of security alliances and trading partnerships. This system, anchored by NATO and alliances with Japan and South Korea, was often described as the “liberal international order.”
With Trump’s election, this global architecture seems to be cracking. Trump is so inexperienced that it’s hard to predict just where his foreign policy views will settle out.