It’s Not President Trump but Thomas Friedman Who Should Be Ashamed

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman warns President Trump that if he continues with the diesel deal with Russia he “will enter the history books in the chapter on leaders who sold out their country’s democratic values to appease a dictator.” Friedman then compares Trump to, who else, Neville Chamberlain, who also, according to Friedman, was a “traitor to his country’s core values.” But, Friedman writes, Trump is worse because Chamberlain was trying to avert a world war whereas Trump is doing the diesel deal supposedly to avoid Republicans losing the midterm elections. The headline for the column says that Trump’s deal “shames us all,” but it’s Thomas Friedman who should be ashamed.

Friedman apparently cares more about Ukrainian “democracy” (in a country under martial law, with elections suspended, where Zelensky rules by decree, referenda are dismissed, opposition parties are banned, and media is nationalized) than with providing some economic relief to American consumers. In his view, making an energy deal with Russia in an effort to lower diesel prices in the United States and thereby lower the costs of goods that are transported by trucks and other diesel vehicles is to be against American “values.” Placing the interests of American consumers ahead of the interests of Ukraine, in Friedman’s world, is to be a “traitor” to America’s core values.

The “protection and promotion of liberal values” abroad has only been part of U.S. foreign policy DNA since the early 20^th century, when the disastrous President Woodrow Wilson decided to wage war abroad to “make the world safe for democracy.” Previous American presidents, as Angelo Codevilla pointed out in his last book, America’s Rise and Fall Among Nations, previous U.S. presidents looked to make the world safe for America’s democracy, not that of any other country. Wilson’s ideological soulmates, however, have blundered into foreign policy disasters by promoting and protecting “democracy” in foreign lands instead of exclusively promoting and protecting U.S. interests. Think Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush.  

Friedman’s obvious disdain for Trump’s America First foreign policy stems from Trump’s parochial devotion to this country’s interests. The Friedmanites would rather expend American treasure and possibly lives (if the Ukraine war escalates) to provide support to Ukraine in the name of “democracy,” than improve relations with Russia to benefit American consumers and to avoid transforming a regional war into a world war.

No, it is not shameful of President Trump to always put America first. It is shameful of Thomas Friedman to put the interests of a foreign country before those of his own country. 

Francis P. Sempa is the author of “Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century” and “America’s Global Role.”