Can Donald Trump's foreign policy "doctrine" and presidential actions accurately be described as noninterventionist? Strangely, Glenn Greenwald thinks so. In "Trump's War on Terror Has Quickly Become as Barbaric and Savage as He Promised," Greenwald writes, "Trump explicitly ran as a 'non-interventionist' — denouncing, for instance, U.S. regime change wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria (even though he at some points expressed support for the first two). Many commentators confused 'non-interventionism' with 'pacifism,' leading many of them — to this very day — to ignorantly claim that Trump's escalated war on terror bombing is in conflict with his advocacy of non-interventionism. It is not."

I'm a big fan of Greenwald's work, but I believe he is among the confused here. Whoever thinks Trump ran as a noninterventionist is plain wrong. All one needs to do to see this is to compare Trump's campaign pronouncements with those of noninterventionist Ron Paul during his two runs for Republican presidential nomination. (Trump warned Republicans not to listen to Paul.)

For example, to this day Trump says he has not "figure[d] out what the hell is going on" with respect to "radical Islamic terrorism." But any good noninterventionist would know, as Paul has repeatedly said, that terrorism against Americans and Europeans is a response to U.S. and NATO intervention in the Middle East. The noninterventionist answer to terrorism is nonintervention, not Trumpism. I see not even a prima facie case that Trump is or has ever claimed to be a noninterventionist. His "America First" appeal was not shorthand for noninterventionism. It was a nationalist slogan.

Greenwald's own words undermine his claim. As evidence for Trump's alleged noninterventionism, he cites Trump's criticism of regime change in the Middle East. But while a commitment to noninterventionism logically requires opposition to regime change, opposition to regime change does not logically require a commitment to noninterventionism. One could have many reasons — pragmatic, financial, whatever — for opposing regime change besides a commitment to noninterventionism, and one could support intervention for reasons other than a desire for regime change. One could intervene, say, on behalf of a regime. How could Greenwald miss this?