"Trump is his administrations own worst enemy on foreign policy" [View all]
By David Ignatius of the Washington Post
President Trumps slash-and-burn actions in his first week have been dramatic, but dangerously lacking in a consensus of support, even within his own administration. The risks were evident in the collapse of a planned meeting with Mexicos president and in Trumps embrace of torture tactics rejected by his secretary of defense and CIA director.
Trumps tweet from the hip style produced its first real foreign rupture Thursday, when Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto canceled a planned visit to Washington. That followed Trumps tweet that he should stay away if he wasnt ready to pay for the often-proclaimed border wall.
The Twitter grenade blew up what had been an attempt to finesse the issue with a delayed Mexican financial contribution for the wall, an approach that Trump himself had only hours before supported in an interview with ABCs David Muir. Now, Trump has an avoidable Mexico crisis to deal with.
The torture issue was another self-inflicted wound. The CIA doesnt want to go back into the secret detention and waterboarding business. Theres a law banning torture, for the simple reason that it shocks the conscience of many Americans. And some foreign intelligence services would refuse to share information with a United States that used such techniques.
Rest of the article at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-his-administrations-own-worst-enemy-on-foreign-policy/2017/01/26/8247b93a-e40c-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?utm_term=.18d79ad08524
Conclusion: Not even a full week in office and Trumpy needs an intervention.