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On Foreign Policy, Trump 2.0 Is Dangerously Unrestrained
Foreign Affairs
On Foreign Policy, Trump 2.0 Is Dangerously Unrestrained
The president still has time to put America first.
(CARLOS BARRIA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Even as he underwrites and wages multiple wars, proposes a gargantuan $500 billion increase in military outlays, and plans to build his own Arc de Triomphe, President Donald Trump apparently believes himself to be a man of peace. He has become a classic example of historian Lord Acton’s dictum in action: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
As Trump completes the first year of his second term, he is demonstrating that his first term was merely a playful preview. This time he has gotten serious, with new wars and threats of war multiplying, sometimes on an almost daily basis. He believes that there are no meaningful limits—legal, institutional, constitutional, or even moral, other than his own musings—on loosing the dogs of war with the most powerful military on earth. This makes him potentially the most dangerous U.S. president yet.
During his first term Trump backed Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against Yemen, underwriting personal tyranny and mass killing. This term he struck Yemen’s Ansar Allah militant group directly, despite the lack of any meaningful U.S. interests at stake. During his first term he supported Israel against all comers, most importantly backing its brutal occupation of the perpetually helpless Palestinians, whom Israel treats rather as ancient Sparta treated its helots. This term he armed and reinforced Israel in its continuing wars in Gaza and Lebanon, despite catastrophic civilian losses, as well as its illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran. Trump I merely assassinated one Iranian military leader and abandoned diplomacy regarding Iran’s nuclear program; Trump II used diplomacy as a ruse to facilitate Israel’s illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran before joining in the bombing later. Now he is threatening to intervene, somehow, in that nation’s internal strife.
Trump I mulled using force against Venezuela, but backed down in the face of broad regional opposition. Trump II arbitrarily terminated special envoy Richard Grenell’s diplomatic initiative and launched illegal and unprovoked attacks on Venezuela, while also threatening other Latin American governments that he dislikes, including Colombia, Panama, and even Mexico. Peering obliviously into the hideously complex imbroglio of Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, the president issued violent Truth Social threats, followed by launching a handful of missiles in the name of protecting Christians. Testing the limits of the dictum that targets of his opprobrium should take him seriously, not literally, Trump is aggressively threatening to swallow Greenland, despite the current lack of threats and his previous neglect of America’s military role on the island.
Perhaps worse, the onetime scourge of U.S. subsidies for whiny wealthy allies has abandoned all talk of withdrawing U.S. forces from Europe, South Korea, and Japan. Once allies promised to spend more on their militaries, even when it was difficult to distinguish reality amid their abundant smoke and mirrors, Trump lost interest in having them take over responsibility for their own security. Hence Washington remains entangled in the Russia–Ukraine war, a tragedy that grows ever more dangerous for America as European nations continue to escalate their proxy war against Moscow.
Then there is the Middle East. Even more so than his predecessors, Trump has denied nothing to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even demanding that the nominally democratic state pardon the latter over alleged crimes. Worse, Trump appears determined to make America the guarantor of absolute monarchy in the region, declaring a security commitment—with neither treaty nor congressional assent—for Qatar. He has pressed to do the same for the even more corrupt and brutal Saudi Arabia, if only it would recognize Jerusalem.
Trump I was always more Jacksonian unilateralist than Ron-Paulian noninterventionist, but he earned support from restrainers with his dramatic criticism of the Iraq war, a welcome if convenient reversal from his attitude at the time. However, Trump II has reinvented himself as a neoconservative warrior with barely the pretense of morality or principle. The president evidently wants to be in control: Like his perpetually addled and confused predecessor, he declared that he runs the world. Toward that end he has proved even more willing to wage economic as well as kinetic war. Like the mythical Zeus tosses thunderbolts, Trump issues sanctions and tariffs against almost whoever or whatever engages his ever-evanescent attention span.
The downsides of the president’s approach are significant. The first is to risk involvement in complicated and dangerous imbroglios of little relevance to American security and beyond American solution. So far, the president’s predictable inattention to detail and waning interest in whatever had captured his interest yesterday has protected the U.S. from disaster. For instance, the administration gave up against Yemen’s Houthis, abandoning its expensive but fruitless naval mission. The White House no longer is talking about launching a religious crusade in Nigeria. If Iran’s protests wane, he may abandon that issue as well. The U.S. is likely to avoid conflict with Russia if the latter continues to win its war, albeit in a terribly slow and costly manner, while evading a clash involving NATO, which would be a wild and likely a losing gamble.
The second problem is the bankruptcy of the American people. The Pentagon budget is the price of America’s foreign policy. The U.S. needs very little to defend itself and its domination of the Western Hemisphere. Most American personnel and weapons are devoted to defending the gaggle of nominal allies around the world that have leeched off of the U.S. for years, and often decades. Surely it is time for South Korea to defend itself from the North, the Europeans to guard against Russia, and the coalition of Israel and Gulf monarchies to protect themselves from Iran. Even China can be constrained by Japan, which could make aggression too expensive to contemplate. As for Taiwan, are the American people prepared to fight a nuclear war thousands of miles from home that would look uncomfortably like the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse?
If the president nevertheless wants to run the world, he needs a lot more force. Hence his proposal for a $1.5 trillion military budget. The president’s fiscal priorities, to hike military outlays, protect entitlement spending, and cut taxes, have the U.S. on a catastrophic course. In 2025 the U.S. spent $7 trillion, borrowing $2 trillion of the funds and devoting more than $1 trillion to simply pay interest on the resulting debt. With Uncle Sam planning to continue down this path, budget deficits, debt totals, and interest payments will continue to rise until the entire federal financial structure risks collapse.
Finally, the president’s approach is ultimately unproductive, even unrealistic. While cynicism about “rules-based order” is appropriate—the U.S. and its allies carefully wrote the rules and freely violate them to their benefit—there still is some value in both hypocrisy and insincerity. Pretending to be committed to something beyond pure self-interest, acting like there are constraints even on the pursuit of legitimate and valuable interests, is important. Claiming that Washington can do whatever it wants irrespective of principle, morality, or consequence is already unsettling allied states and encouraging less friendly ones.
Even more perversely, the administration is wasting economic resources, military credibility, and political capital to achieve what could be gained diplomatically. For instance, though Trump’s Venezuela machinations have been defended by some conservative realists, even Trump admitted that a peaceful solution was available there. So too with Greenland and Panama, even absent talk of war and military strikes. The president’s trolling of former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yielded a recalcitrant government in Ottawa and an angry population. Trump’s blustering reinforced Australia’s previous leftward shift in last year’s election. His refusal to even acknowledge the humanity of tens of thousands of dead Palestinian civilians, let alone to take their lives into account in U.S. policy, will continue to fuel instability in the Middle East. Most bizarre may have been the president’s willingness to offend rising powers—Brazil and India, for instance—essentially scoring own goals in today’s geopolitical great game.
Trump still has time to put America first in practice as well as rhetoric. To start, he should maintain focus on the U.S. “near abroad” but rediscover diplomacy and economic engagement in advancing American interests. Most importantly, he should more rigorously assess more distant diminishing priorities. The world will always be unstable and messy, but most international crises need not be Washington’s responsibility. Uncle Sam should step back. The president’s job is to run the U.S. government, not the world, as he claimed, and to do so to protect America, its people, territory, liberties, and prosperity. That should be his legacy.
The post On Foreign Policy, Trump 2.0 Is Dangerously Unrestrained appeared first on The American Conservative.
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