The United States will be turning inward and will leave its allies in Europe and Asia to shoulder more of the cost of defending and securing themselves.
This foreign policy about-face will happen once Donald Trump succeeds in winning the White House, the Republican presidential front-runner himself said in separate talks with CNN and the Washington Post's editorial board on Monday.
Giving a sampling of his foreign policy initiatives once he wins the presidency, Trump promised a major change in America's role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a military alliance that has formed the backbone of Western security policies since the Cold War.
Trump said the U.S. involvement in NATO may need to be significantly diminished. "We certainly can't afford to do this anymore," Trump told Washington Post editors. "NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we're protecting Europe with NATO, but we're spending a lot of money."
Earlier Monday, Trump spoke on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer," where he also discussed his major foreign policy thrusts.
"We are paying disproportionately [in NATO]. It's too much and frankly it's a different world than it was when we originally conceived of the idea," Trump said.
"We have to reconsider. Keep NATO, but maybe we have to pay a lot less toward NATO itself," he said.
Trump admitted that other NATO members might not be happy with his idea, but added, "they have to help us also."
"The United States can't afford to do all of this anymore to the same extent," he said, noting that NATO's creation after World War II "was a different time, it was a different age."
Trump touched on the same theme in his meeting with the Washington Post editorial board.
"I do think it's a different world today, and I don't think we should be nation-building anymore," Trump said. "I think it's proven not to work, and we have a different country than we did then. We have $19 trillion in debt. We're sitting, probably, on a bubble. And it's a bubble that if it breaks, it's going to be very nasty. I just think we have to rebuild our country."
He added: "I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they're blown up. We build another one, we get blown up. We rebuild it three times and yet we can't build a school in Brooklyn. We have no money for education because we can't build in our own country. At what point do you say, 'Hey, we have to take care of ourselves?' So, I know the outer world exists and I'll be very cognizant of that. But at the same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially the inner cities."
Trump's America-first policy will also reflect on Asia and the Pacific even as he questioned the value of massive military investments in the region. He also wondered aloud whether the U.S. is still capable of being an effective peacekeeping force there.
"South Korea is very rich, great industrial country, and yet we're not reimbursed fairly for what we do," Trump said. "We're constantly sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games — we're reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing."
Asked whether the United States benefits from its involvement in the region, Trump replied, "Personally, I don't think so."
"I think we were a very powerful, very wealthy country, and we are a poor country now. We're a debtor nation," he said.
On China, Trump said the U.S. should toughen its trade alliances to better compete.
"China has got unbelievable ambitions," Trump said. "China feels very invincible. We have rebuilt China. They have drained so much money out of our country that they've rebuilt China. Without us, you wouldn't see the airports and the roadways and the bridges. The George Washington Bridge [in New York], that's like a trinket compared to the bridges that they build in China. We don't build anymore. We had our day."
Trump took the occasion to introduce the core of his foreign policy team, which is chaired by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama). He said he has selected Keith Kellogg, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Walid Phares and Joseph E. Schmitz to form the backbone of his team.
