Speaker Ryan lays out national security agenda for GOP that differs in many areas from positions held by Trump

(NationalSecurity.news) Did House Speaker Paul Ryan just pick another fight with his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, just days after Senate Republicans urged him to go easier on Donald J. Trump, at least in public?

On Friday, Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, laid out his party’s national security vision for the fall elections, and in many ways it differs from Trump’s policy positions. As reported by The Washington Post, for example, Trump has proposed building a wall along the U.S. southwest border – something that was authorized via legislation in 2006 but was defunded by Democrats after they won control of the House that year – and getting Mexico to pay for it. But Ryan’s blueprint states that “we need more than just fencing” to keep illegal aliens, illegal weapons and drugs and terrorists from crossing into the U.S.

Also, Trump has said that NATO is out-of-date and thus obsolete, but Ryan’s plan urges “modernizing and solidifying NATO,” even as it calls for prodding member nations to spend more on their own defense so the alliance does not “fall into disrepair, or worse, irrelevance” (this is a major Trump complaint as well).

Where Trump has suggested it might be time to help arm allies like Japan and South Korea with nuclear weapons as a counter to an atomic-armed North Korea and increasingly aggressive China, Ryan has suggested efforts to “shore up or defense arrangements” so the U.S. can “bring together” those nations, while staying clear of mentioning nukes.

The document does not mention Trump by name, but it is nevertheless the final product of a foreign policy agenda that Ryan, as Speaker, began developing as part of his “Better Way” agenda project so that Republicans would have a proactive plan to run on in November. As for Trump, Ryan sais he believes the eventual nominee will “help us make [the agenda] a reality” when he endorsed Trump a week ago.

Along with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Ryan and other House committee chairmen who formed the GOP’s national security task force presented the proposal formally at the Council on Foreign Relations last week as a necessary shift away from President Obama’s policies.

“It’s not too much to say that our enemies no longer fear us and too many of our allies no longer trust us,” Ryan said, according to the Post. “I think this is a direct result of the president’s foreign policy.”

That said, GOP leaders added they hope Trump will read the proposals and give them some serious consideration, especially in areas where they disagree with him.

“This is a document that we hope the nominee will read and take attention to,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said, in response to reporter’s question about Trump’s statements on banning Muslims. “There are ways to properly vet and protect threats from coming into the United States without just a swath of a ban against any race or religion coming into the United States.”

The 20-page national security proposal is the second installment of the agenda project, which House Republicans intend to roll out between now and the July 18 GOP convention, the Post reported.

There are some agreements with Trump contained in the proposal, however, including it’s frank statement that the West and the United States is being threatened by radical Islamism.

“We are at war with Islamist terrorists,” the report argues, concluding that thus “we must act like we are fighting a war.” But the war “will not be won with bullets and bombs alone,” the authors argue. “It will be won by the force of our ideas.”

Also, like Trump, the document is universally critical of Obama’s foreign policy priorities and performance.

While Trump has also called for building up the U.S. military – which is being by years of deployments and plagued by equipment wear and tear, as well as budget cuts that both the White House and Congress are responsible for – the authors of the proposal have also said that in order to retain a credible threat against potential enemies, more must be done to bolster military capabilities, “to prevent greater dangers in the future…”

In another proposal that appeared to mirror Trump, the document promotes “accelerating economic growth through foreign aid” — but also stresses that “there is no right to foreign aid,” and that it is best when countries help themselves.

More:

• On NATO Irrelevance, Is Donald Trump Right?
• Lawmakers Pushing For New Authorization To Fight ISIS While Threatening To Cut Off Funding If They Don’t Get One
• Lawmaker Says Classified Details Of Iran’s Capture And Treatment Of U.S. Navy Sailors Will Truly Shock The Nation

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