A decade ago, a famous and successful investor told me that “integrity lowers the cost of capital.” We were talking about Donald Trump at the time, and this Wall Street wizard was explaining why then-candidate Trump had so much trouble borrowing money from domestic capital markets. His point was that the people who knew Trump best had been screwed, cheated or misled by him so many times, they didn’t think he was a good credit risk. If you’re honest and straightforward in business, my friend explained, you earn trust and that trust has real value.

I think about that point often. But never more so than in the last few weeks.

In all the debates about foreign policy, where people throw around terms like realism, internationalism, isolationism, nationalism, this-ism and that-ism, one word tends to draw eyerolls from ideologues: “Honour.” Specifically, national honour.

Trump and many of his admirers believe he’s “restoring” America’s reputation on the world stage. Trump himself often says that we’ve “never been more respected.” It’s never exactly clear what he bases this on, aside from what foreign leaders purportedly tell him in private. Public opinion surveys are at best........

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