Critics Wonder: Does Trump Deserve At Least Some Credit?

[Frodo]

Perhaps there is a silver-lining to this administration, after all:

Even skeptics wonder: Does Trump deserve some foreign policy credit?
Some are grudgingly conceding that Trump’s bulldozer mentality has pushed leaders to have difficult conversations — even if the byproduct is chaos.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

No, he does not "deserve credit". This is the broken window fallacy, introduced to politics.

The autocratic/socialist regime in Venezuela has faced internal opposition before. If it is weaker now, that is because of how destructive, incompetent, and unrepresentative it is, not because of Trump.

North Korea and its nuclear program have been a major concern for decades. That Trump has engaged in ham-handed appeasement is not furthering the situation in any positive way.

We have been coducting peace talks in Afghanistan, and flirting with real withdrawal, for well over a decade.

The NATO part is even more disingenuous. NATO member states had already agreed to increase spending before Trump. He has only whined that they're doing so according to the previously agreed targets, and he doesn't like it

Trump has no positive intentions, his "disruptions" are the result of idiocy, narcissism and hostility to Obama (and the United States in general). One does not "give credit" to a mass-murdering gunman for pushing difficult conversations about gun control.

[Progressive Pessimist]

It's more out of low standards. I mean, he didn't end up causing a nuclear war with North Korea, right?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

His lack of follow through after talking out of his ass does make him less of a warmonger than many politicians.

[Antonio the Sixth]

No.

[rosin]

It's more out of low standards. I mean, he didn't end up causing a nuclear war with North Korea, right?

Not yet

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Only for moving the embassy to Jerusalem.  That was a huge FF move, so to speak.

[Badger]

Only for moving the embassy to Jerusalem.  That was a huge FF move, so to speak.

Er, agree to strongly disagree. While mid-eastern peace talks are already dormant, that move only helped to push them further off.

[Fight for Trump]

He does deserve credit for "shaking the tree". Such things are sometimes necessary, and many of the conversations and reflection that he has triggered have been meaningful and overdue.

He does not deserve credit for having any sort of coherent ideology or vision about what the world should look like or how it should work.

[Progressive Pessimist]

He does deserve credit for "shaking the tree". Such things are sometimes necessary, and many of the conversations and reflection that he has triggered have been meaningful and overdue.

He does not deserve credit for having any sort of coherent ideology or vision about what the world should look like or how it should work.

Damn. This might be the most serious post I have ever seen out of you.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

He does deserve credit for "shaking the tree". Such things are sometimes necessary, and many of the conversations and reflection that he has triggered have been meaningful and overdue.

He does not deserve credit for having any sort of coherent ideology or vision about what the world should look like or how it should work.

This, more or less.

[Orser67]

I could see his presidency going down in history similar to Carter's, by which I mean that there were some interesting foreign policy ideas interspersed with all the failures.

[Big Abraham]

Well, he didn't start another war, which is more than can be said for Obama and Bush

[TJ in Oregon]

IMO one of his best decisions was the missile launch at that mostly empty Syrian airfield.

Prior to that decision Assad was spending more of his time fighting US-backed rebels than fighting ISIS, but after the missile strike, he seemed to change his tune and work with us and the Kurds for a few months to more or less take ISIS out of the war.

Sending that missile somehow managed to convey the point that the US means business and is willing to work against him if he is unwilling to cooperate. And he decided it was better to cooperate, which is what we wanted him to do in the first place.

[All Along The Watchtower]

On a few things, yes, if only accidentally.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Well, he didn't start another war, which is more than can be said for Obama and Bush

For now. Remember that John Bolton is still his National Security Adviser.