Friedman: How would you characterize Trump’s foreign policy? And why is it so distinct?

Wright: I think there are a lot of areas in which Trump has no fixed view and in which he contradicts himself, but there [is] a core set of visceral beliefs that he’s had for many years and that he’s not deviated from. The first is that he is opposed to America’s alliance arrangements with other countries. The second is that he opposes free trade and favors a more mercantilist international economic system. And the third is that he has this fondness for authoritarianism, particularly in Russia. Those three things—there’s evidence for them going back to the mid-1980s, and he’s persisted with them at often high political cost.

The question is whether or not he would moderate or abandon those views if elected. I have no way of knowing, but my view would be that at his age, at 70 years old, having held these beliefs for the better part of 30 years, that he’s unlikely at the moment of complete vindication in his own mind to change his policy when he hasn’t so far.

Friedman: Can we dive into those three beliefs in more detail? So the first: opposition to America’s alliance arrangements with other countries. What evidence are you relying on to draw that conclusion?

Wright: The first is this famous letter he wrote in a full-page ad in The New York Times, Boston Globe, and Washington Post in 1987, which detailed his views on American foreign policy and defense policy. [It’s] all about his frustration at Japan, Saudi Arabia, and others—that the U.S. had to defend them and that they were taking advantage of the United States and that they should pay for their own security. He’s made that point in interviews over the years and [it’s been] a feature of the campaign.

The question is whether that means he wants others to pay a little more, or whether he opposes the alliances overall. I’m of the view that he opposes them overall for a few reasons. The first is that he has said that the U.S. has no strategic interest in being in Asia militarily. He said NATO’s original mission is obsolete—so he doesn’t seem to see any need for the U.S. [military] to be forwardly present—and he’s said that the U.S. should only do that if others pay. When he talks about payment, we often think he means [other countries spending at least] 2 percent of GDP [on defense], but actually what he seems to mean is that he judges the cost [as] the cost of the U.S. presence in those regions. So it’s the cost of having [U.S. Pacific Command] and the Seventh Fleet [in Japan and South Korea], or having the U.S. Army in Europe. He said at the Center for the National Interest speech that the cost to the United States of these alliances was in the trillions of dollars. You only get to trillions of dollars if you’re counting in hundreds of billions per year.