Ten years ago this month, Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination for president, with a platform that was vastly different on trade and foreign policy from other recent presidents, Republican and Democratic alike.

How fares America — and the world — 10 years later?

In some important ways, things have moved in Trump's direction. In 2016 and since, he complained constantly that Europeans were not contributing their fair share to NATO. That had been the position of previous administrations, but none emphasized it as Trump did.

Early in Trump's first term, only five NATO allies met the stated goal of spending two percent of GDP on defense. A decade later, the goal has risen to five percent, and most NATO allies are moving toward that goal.

And as Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened his neighbors, previously neutral (for nearly 75 years!) Finland and Sweden, with their highly competent militaries, have decided to join NATO and have made the Baltic Sea just beyond Putin's hometown of St. Petersburg a NATO lake.

In the Middle East, Trump has also made a difference. His predecessors' policy was based on the hoary assumption that the key to stability was to pressure Israel to make a peace agreement with the Palestinians. So America's task was to pressure Israel to make concessions.

Trump saw it differently. He pushed the Abraham Accords, diplomatic relations between Israel, Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf oil producers. Progress has been uneven but palpable. Israel's pacification of Gaza has not prevented the Saudis and United Arab Emirates from supporting Trump's efforts, cooperating with Israel, to disarm and destabilize the regime in Iran.

On trade, Trump's on-again, off-again threats, impositions and adjustments of........

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