Trump Could Cement A Stellar Foreign Policy Legacy Taking These Steps In His Final Years In Office

0:00A huge part of President Trump's legacy will be how he handles several crucial foreign policy issues. Wrong decisions will wreck his future reputation. The right ones will ensure him a high historical standard.

0:18Hello, I'm Steve Forbes, and this is What's Ahead, where you get the insights you need to better navigate these turbulent times. President Trump's remaining two years in the Oval Office will determine whether he leaves America and the free world more secure than when he became our commander in chief. The key metric of success in 2029 will be whether we are sliding into a situation where it is increasingly every country for itself when it comes to security, rather than the cooperative allied approach we've nurtured since World War II. This post-1945 approach is epitomized by NATO and the alliances we've established elsewhere, most notably with Japan.

1:02The U.S. has reliably been the selfless leader whereby authoritarian and terrorist adversaries are kept at bay. A retrogression to the dog-eat-dog world we had before 1945 will get us the truly endless wars that plague the past, including the two world wars of the last century.

1:23Steve Forbes: This means the president is going to have to deal with the isolationists in his administration, not to mention those in the increasingly anti-Semitic Democrat party. President Trump's determination that Iran not get the bomb is profoundly correct. But as we should have learned after we in Israel blasted away Iran's nuclear assets in 2025, this evil regime will not change its maniacal terrorist character one wit, no matter how smooth talking some of its officials may be in fooling gullible Americans. The regime must go. That means taking up militarily where we left off last April with our unilateral premature ceasefire.

2:09Steve Forbes: If this regime is still standing in 2029, it will be marked as a Trump failure. China is engaging in the most rapid and aggressive peacetime naval buildup since Germany's pre-World War I challenge to British naval supremacy. Xi Jinping has not hidden his goal of China replacing the U.S. with a dominant global power, and make no mistake, such dominance will not be benign. Beijing wants de facto control of crucial international waterways, starting with the critical South China Sea. To that end, China has built a number of man-made island military bases in the area and routinely harasses vessels of other countries, most notably those of the Philippines.

2:58Steve Forbes: It hopes to take control of Taiwan, preferably by economic and military pressure rather than war, hence continuous, increasingly aggressive military maneuvers, while hinting all would be well if Taiwan elects a pro-Beijing president in 2028. Our naval building efforts are still inadequate. Among other steps, we should contract to build ships in South Korea and Japanese shipyards, which are far more advanced than most of our own. Such a move would also reassure allies that we are not taking a powder in that region. Administration isolationists want to wash our hands of Europe and turn its strategic fate over to Vladimir Putin.

3:43Steve Forbes: That's why we get weird, destructive proposals like forcing Europe to become dependent again on Russian natural gas in the hopes that commerce will make Putin a good international citizen. That's what British appeasers thought about Hitler before 1939. Putin's ambitions are ruthlessly imperialistic, giving Ukraine what it needs to bring the Kremlin to its senses, such as F-16s and other weapons, not to mention the access to Starlink for better hitting targets inside Russia itself, is crucial for establishing a lasting democratic peace. As for North Korea's growing ambitions and scope for misbehavior, think cryptocurrencies, we should let Pyongyang know we know where various ruling family figures stash their cash, and that we might consider introducing, in cooperation with South Korea, tactical nuclear weapons.

4:41If we don't get a grip on reality, future historians will be astonished that we you couldn't grasp the true nature of Putin, Xi, and the Iranian regime. The potential consequences are catastrophic. President Trump faces critical choices. I'm Steve Forbes. Thanks for listening. Do send in your comments and suggestions. I look forward to being with you soon again.

5:19Thank you.