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<p>WASHINGTON &#8212; President Donald Trump took an early victory lap for his &#8220;America First&#8221; diplomacy Tuesday, claiming a series of big wins on his foreign policy priorities.</p><p>Some of his claims were true &#8212; in a few cases, even careful and precise. Others were premature. Some were exaggerated; others incomplete.</p><p>But taken together, the foreign policy sections of Trump&#8217;s State of the Union address sounded more like a campaign speech than a detailed explanation of American diplomacy.</p><p>Some presidents have used the State of the Union to build a public case for going to war &#8212; George W. Bush before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example. Others tried to convey nuanced messages for their diplomatic priorities; Barack Obama&#8217;s professorial speeches come to mind.</p><p>Not Trump. His themes are familiar to anyone who followed the 2016 campaign: a strong America with a strong military, unafraid to throw its weight around &#8212; but also determined to bring U.S. troops back from &#8220;endless wars.&#8221;</p><p>The president even noted that he had &#8220;campaigned on the same core promises,&#8221; including a foreign policy that &#8220;puts America&#8217;s interests first.&#8221; Every one of his predecessors would say he too put America&#8217;s interests first, but this president suggests &#8212; and perhaps believes &#8212; that the principle is his alone.</p><p>Even some critics of Trump&#8217;s foreign policy acknowledge he&#8217;s scored some accomplishments and launched potentially promising negotiations without stumbling into a major crisis.</p><p>But he hasn&#8217;t persuaded most voters that his impulsive, bull-in-a-china shop style deserves admiration.</p><p>A CNN poll this month found that voters give Trump his highest marks on managing the economy, which has been surging: an approval rating of 48 percent. But on foreign policy, his approval rating was an anemic 40 percent.</p><p>A more detailed survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that most Americans disagree with some of Trump&#8217;s core foreign policy views. That survey found that 68 percent disagreed with Trump&#8217;s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change, and 66 percent disagreed with his decision to walk away from Obama&#8217;s nuclear deal with Iran.</p><p>Foreign policy is unlikely to be the top issue in the 2020 campaign. Still, it&#8217;s what some political strategists call a &#8220;threshold issue&#8221;; voters want a presidential candidate to display at least basic competence in international affairs. And they judge an incumbent president on his achievements and mistakes.</p><p>Tuesday night gave Trump a chance to make the case for his success, and to set out what aides described as his &#8220;vision.&#8221; Anyone who studied the text for substance found plenty of case-making but little nuance.</p><p>Trump congratulated himself for moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. But he never mentioned his larger goal of forging a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, a project he once pronounced &#8220;not as difficult as people have thought.&#8221;</p><p>He boasted that after withdrawing from Obama&#8217;s nuclear deal with Iran, he had ordered &#8220;the toughest sanctions ever imposed on Iran.&#8221; But he didn&#8217;t suggest how or when the sanctions, which have hurt Iran&#8217;s economy, would lead to his ostensible goal, a new round of nuclear negotiations or a collapse of the regime in Tehran.</p><p>If there was a centerpiece, it was Trump&#8217;s declaration of victory in the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and his reaffirmation that he will bring U.S. troops home as soon as possible &#8212; despite the qualms of many of his own aides.</p><p>He said Americans have been &#8220;fighting in the Middle East for almost 19 years&#8221; (actually almost 18) and that the United States has spent more than $7 trillion on those wars (a vastly inflated estimate.)</p><p>His determination to get the troops out quickly raises an unusual political problem: Leaders in both parties disagree with it.</p><p>Last week, the Senate passed a resolution warning against a &#8220;precipitous withdrawal&#8221; from either Syria or Afghanistan, saying it &#8220;could put at risk hard-won gains and U.S. national security.&#8221; The measure passed by a bipartisan vote of 68 to 23. Its author was none other than Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader.</p><p>Likewise, Republicans have pushed back whenever Trump suggests softening sanctions on Russia or questions the U.S. commitment to the NATO military alliance. But he has stuck to those positions.</p><p>The good political news for the president is that foreign policy divides the Democrats and independents too. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with the Democrats, voted against McConnell&#8217;s resolution, saying it sounded like an endorsement of the status quo &#8212; even if it put Sanders, for a moment, on the same side as the president.</p><p>A sober report card for Trump&#8217;s foreign policy, unsurprisingly, would yield a list of incompletes.</p><p>The troops aren&#8217;t home yet. Negotiations with North Korea haven&#8217;t borne lasting fruit; nor have the sanctions on Iran. The Middle East peace talks have gone nowhere. And trade talks have not yet produced their promised benefits for the American worker.</p><p>This is only the two-year mark; Trump has time to do more. But in Tuesday&#8217;s speech, he achieved one practical goal: He laid out the foreign policy themes of his 2020 campaign.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Doyle McManus</p><p>Guest Columnist</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Their view: In foreign policy, Trump takes a premature victory lap