Foreign Policy in Shambles
Trump Botches Pretty Much Everything
A commentary by Volker Petersen
As US President, Trump presides over the wealthiest, most powerful, and most influential country. He is doing everything he can to undermine this status. US President Trump set out to make America great again. Yet examples such as Iran, Gaza, and North Korea show that he is achieving the opposite. How much longer can the United States afford this president?
You can think of Donald Trump as a gamer—and as US President, he is playing on the easiest difficulty setting. Everything is laid out for him: he heads the greatest military power, the largest economy, and the most culturally influential nation. If he makes mistakes—even serious ones—hardly anyone dares to criticize him. He is forgiven for almost anything because few foreign governments want to get on his bad side.
Trump himself uses the language of gaming. He constantly talks about other countries "winning" against the USA. Yet Trump is playing a game he does not understand. He presses buttons at random, without grasping the consequences he is triggering. Sometimes it works out well, as in the case of Venezuela. Sometimes allies manage to limit the damage, as with Greenland. Sometimes it leads to a rash attack, as with Iran. And sometimes he alienates his closest allies, such as South Korea.
Yet now, less than two years into his second term, the standing of the United States lies in ruins. For a global power, this might not be so catastrophic, provided its influence remained intact. But Trump is doing everything in his power to destroy America’s ability to assert itself on the world stage as well. He is left facing the wreckage of his policies.
For this is one of Trump’s fundamental misconceptions—one that contributes to undermining U.S. global influence. He believes that alliances benefit only the weaker partners and that the U.S. would be stronger on its own. The opposite is true. The fact that the U.S. has strong allies across the globe—in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia—has always been the foundation of its power, not a weakness. Yet Trump treats partners like parasites—as seen recently with the Europeans regarding the Greenland issue. He recently threatened to utterly devastate Oman, a key ally in the Middle East. Now, South Korea is coming under heavy fire.
Trump is not going to change. Yet he will carry on like this for at least another two years. How long can the United States afford that? During the election campaign, Trump once claimed that other countries were laughing at the US. Right-wing populists around the world rail in this same way against what they call the "mainstream" and the "establishment"—even though they have no way of knowing who abroad might be laughing or not. But if anyone is laughing at the US now, the ones doing the laughing are likely in Moscow and Beijing.
