Throughout his presidential campaign last year, US President Donald Trump regularly insisted that he would stop the Ukraine War on ‘day one’ of his presidency. This promise ostensibly contrasted Trump with sitting US President Joe Biden. Trump was energetic and a deal-maker; Biden was slow and weak. Projecting an image of strength has always been important to Trump and played well, particularly with male voters.
Yet, as president, Trump has found foreign conflicts just as intractably difficult to solve as Biden and other presidents. Trump has apparently been deeply frustrated by Russia’s refusal to negotiate regarding the Ukraine War.
Trump seems to have thought that his personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would bring Putin to the table. Yet, like most world leaders, Putin has interests that precede and supersede relationships with any individual leader. If Trump’s second-term cabinet were less sycophantic, Trump’s advisers might be telling him the force of personality is not enough.
Trump has similarly struggled in the Middle East and with China. And last week, two nuclear powers—India and Pakistan—came to blows. Candidate Trump almost certainly would have claimed this conflict would not have happened were he president. Yet it did happen, and the US had little impact on its course. In fact, Trump seemed almost oblivious to the stakes and that it might be in America’s interest to cool down a shooting war between two nuclear weapons states.
Two lessons can be drawn from Trump’s inability to stop conflicts despite his regular claims he will do so.
Trump Has No Midas Touch Other Presidents Lacked
The most obvious takeaway is Trump is no different from any other US president.
He has no special magic or unique feel for international politics. Indeed, foreign policy competence has become a serious problem in the Trump administration. Trump rarely takes his intelligence community’s daily brief and never reads it. He has made Marco Rubio both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, which will almost certainly overtax Rubio’s time and energy. Trump’s all-purpose foreign policy envoy, Steve Witkoff, has no relevant experience with the conflicts he seeks to resolve.
All of this suggests that Trump is centralizing foreign policy authority in himself, which reflects his apparent belief that foreign policy is a personalistic affair between important decision-makers. Hence, Trump emphasizes his friendships with various leaders. But there is little to suggest that Trump’s various ‘bromances’ have worked.
In 2018-19, he repeatedly talked up his relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, insisting that he even deserved a Nobel Peace Prize, but nothing came of it.
Trump has notoriously wooed Putin for a decade, yet Putin has ignored Trump’s outreach this year, despite the very pro-Russian deals on the war that Trump has suggested in the last months. Trump has yet to land a major peace deal or breakthrough in a world hot-spot which would be noticeably different from what traditional US diplomacy would return.
American Preponderance is Not Omnipotence
Trump is uniquely hung up on his centrality to global questions of war and peace, but the larger structural cause of this vanity is the elision of massive US power with America’s ability—or inability—to shape global outcomes. Put differently, America’s enormous economy and capable military do not, in fact, guarantee that other countries will do as we tell them.
Trump seems to have expected global deference of this sort in his trade war. He demanded that other states not respond to his tariffs with their tariffs. A few particularly close allies—Japan and South Korea—held their fire.
However, most countries, including US allies, immediately clapped back at Trump with their own duties. Trump’s instinct was to raise US tariffs even further. But after just a month, he folded.
The India-Pakistan dispute is yet another example of how countries retain agency despite American preponderance. According to Trump’s logic of American dominance, one or both parties should have consulted him before escalating. Instead, they simply ignored Trump.
Donald Trump and Modi of India. White House Flickr Image.
Hopefully, Trump will draw the lesson, at last, that the US cannot simply bully the planet. America benefits when it gets along with the world, especially with US allies. Trump marketed himself on foreign policy as a populist break with the neoconservatives who dominated the last Republican presidency.
Yet he speaks with the same unilateralist belligerence and overweening confidence in US power, which made the neocons so unloved. Perhaps his multiplying foreign policy frustrations this term will finally temper his rhetoric.
About the Author: Dr. Robert E. Kelly
Dr. Robert E. Kelly is a professor of political science at Pusan National University. Kelly is also a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor. You can find him on X: @Robert_E_Kelly.
