Story highlights Authors: Trump hasn't restored "strategic competence" to US foreign policy

Disruption of Obama policies and approach to North Korea, Iran show the opposite, they say

Aaron David Miller is a vice president and distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and author of "The End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President." Miller was a Middle East negotiator in Democratic and Republican administrations. Follow him @aarondmiller2. Richard Sokolsky is a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 2005-2015, he was a member of the secretary of state's Office of Policy Planning. The views expressed in this commentary are their own.

Aaron David Miller

Richard Sokolsky

(CNN) Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, H.R. McMaster -- President Donald Trump's national security adviser, and a thinking warrior with a firm grasp of history and reality -- made a stunning claim: Trump has "helped us restore our strategic competence."

Having worked for decades for both Republican and Democratic administrations on American foreign policy, we don't see it that way. In 2017, America is contending with a world whose challenges would be excruciatingly difficult even for the most experienced and well-managed administration.

But nine months in, we see neither strategy nor competence on foreign policy from this President -- on process or substance. And here's why:

Disruption isn't a strategy. But it is the MO

It's not unusual during the transition from one administration to the next for there to be a shift of emphasis and focus -- to course correct and even to abandon one initiative for another. But there's no precedent for Trump's head-spinning and wholesale abandonment of his predecessor's policies.

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