Donald Trump’s bleak, incoherent foreign-policy strategy

You might think that in Trumpworld a

new National Security Strategy (NSS

) would not count for all that much. Mr John Bolton, a national security adviser in US President Donald Trump’s first term, frequently laments that his boss had no strategy at all. Instead, the President worked by impulse – and without the encumbrance of too many briefings. From one day to the next, he veered in opposing directions.

Despite that, the new NSS matters. Released, weirdly, in the dead of night on Dec 4/5, it will be pored over by soldiers, diplomats and advisers in America and around the world. It is the latest and fullest statement of what “America First” means in foreign policy.