Trump's Foreign Policy Carnage Is an Impeachable Offense

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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/trumps-foreign-policy-carnage-is-an-impeachable-offense.html

Trump’s Foreign Policy Carnage Is an Impeachable Offense
It’s what the Framers would have wanted.

By Frank Bowman
July 13, 201812:08 PM

A version of this piece first appeared on the blog Impeachable Offenses.



By any objective measure, Donald Trump’s conduct of American foreign policy, particularly over the past six months or so, has been a catastrophe. He has persistently—and quite consciously—alienated our most faithful traditional allies, disrupted critical trade arrangements, and undermined vital security relationships both in Europe and across the globe, while at the same time cozying up to vicious dictatorships and promoting authoritarian rulers even in recently democratic states. He is systematically destroying a world order created over 70 years by American statesmen of both parties, an order that has not only maintained peace among the great powers and seen steadily improved standards of living worldwide, but has already made America first among the nations of the earth.

But what, you may ask, can be done about it between now and the 2020 election? The answer, as always when dealing with this catastrophic man, is nothing … at least until Democrats win at least one House of Congress and at least some Republicans are sufficiently shamed by their craven abandonment of every foreign policy principle they ever claimed to stand for to join with Democrats in blocking Trump’s demolition of America’s position in the world.

If such a (concededly unlikely) epiphany were to occur among Trump’s Republican abettors—most likely as a result of a midterm electoral drubbing—then there is a remedy for Trump’s foreign policy carnage: impeachment.

This suggestion will, of course, be dismissed by the Trumpian chorus as a wild liberal fever dream. Certainly, the political obstacles to successful impeachment on any ground are daunting. But as a constitutional matter, indeed as a matter of the original intention of the Framers, there is no serious question that a president is impeachable for activities in the foreign policy sphere that seriously undermine the national interest.

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President Trump’s disparagement or outright abandonment of long-established defense and trade relationships with democratic states in Europe, the Americas, and Asia in favor of self-destructive mercantilism, “America First” isolationism, and a growing affinity for authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Hungary, Turkey, and the Philippines is far more destructive for American interests than Sen. Blount’s failed Florida adventure or any of the policies for which Parliament routinely impeached royal ministers.

A Congress with any sense of America’s true interests, or indeed with any sense of responsibility for the continued peace and prosperity of the world in general, would be entirely within its constitutional authority to impeach Donald Trump.