A November prediction on Trump’s foreign policy seen from five months later

The Nation’s Jeet Herr wrote an analysis of Trump foreign policy and the team he was putting in place to run it last November 18.

Five months later, it is holding up pretty well: “Nothing in Trump’s record should make us confident that his spasmodic anti-war tendencies will result in genuine restraint” in foreign policy. (1)

And he went on, “Instead, we should be troubled by the incoherence of Trump’s cabinet picks. The governing principle of his nominations is neither hawkishness nor restraint but rather cravenness. Trump is putting together not a team of rivals but a team of cronies, united by obsequiousness to his whims.”

Writing a couple of months before Trump would even take office, Jeet prudently acknowledges that it’s always possible, at least by some happy accident, that Trump could stumble into doing something that would actually turn out to be positive in foreign policy. He cites a couple of conservative foreign policy commentator arguing “that Trump will in fact override his more hawkish advisers and implement an American First foreign policy that will decisively turn away from Joe Biden’s reckless interventionism and sponsorship of multiple wars.” He also immediately follows that by quoting an Ernest Hemingway character saying, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Peace President Trump’s actual foreign policy so far more than justifies Jeet Herr’s skepticism from back in November! (How many countries has he threatened with war so far? I’m losing count.)

Jeet’s final word on the subject in that column: “[Trump] is not a genuine anti-war leader but rather the American empire in a new guise. The most plausible path for the second Trump administration is not America First but Chaos First.”

Which recalls Woody Guthrie line in his song about Hitler fan Charles Lindbergh who was the star of the mostly fascist-sympathizing original America First group: (2)

They say America First
But they mean America Next

Notes:

(1) Herr, Jeet (2024): Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Will Be Chaos First, Not America First. The Nation 11/18/2024. <https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-foreign-policy-team-chaos/> (Accessed: 2025-21-04).

(2) Lindbergh. <https://youtu.be/BzLOTHciIKI?si=m4R_F8LgLxDz9DN-> Woody Guthrie-Topic YouTube 05/19/2015. (Accessed: 2025-21-04). “Hoover, Clark, and Nye” in the song referred to three prominent anti-Roosevelt political figures of that time. Former President Herbert Hoover, Idaho Sen. David Worth Clark, and North Dakota Sen. Gerald Nye. Montana Sen. Burton Wheeler also gets a mention as one of the villains of the song.

Why Stephen Walt is my favorite foreign policy commentator

Because he writes things like this:

If you’re a regular reader of this column, you know that I often criticize what the United States is doing on the global stage. I thought George W. Bush’s presidency was a foreign-policy train wreck; Barack Obama’s eight years in office were a disappointment, Donald Trump’s first term a hot mess, and Joe Biden’s four years were tarnished by damaging strategic and moral lapses. Alas, it has taken Trump and his appointees less than three months to outdo them all for incompetent foreign-policy wingnuttery. And this would be true even if Signalgate had never occurred. [my emphasis] (1)

I would use even stronger language than “damaging strategic and moral lapses” to describe Biden’s all-but-unconditional support for Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza. But Walt is right to avoid fake sentimentality about the cold-bloodedness and blundering that have plagued US foreign policy for decades.

And on this evaluation, he splits the apple nicely: “To be clear: I don’t think Trump is acting on behalf of a foreign power or that he consciously wants to make the United States less secure and less prosperous; he is just acting as if he were.” Although Craig Unger in his books and Substack column has also been reminding us of all the ways that first the USSR and later Russia have worked to cultivate Trump over the decades. (2) That doesn’t mean he’s a so-called “Manchurian candidate, or a “Manchurian” President. But Russian governments have been playing him successfully for a while.

Relying on toadies and sycophants for advice is one of the Trumpian practices Walt describes. (Hi there, Special Envoy to Everywhere Steve Witkoff!) (3) Trigger warning! This video report may produce sudden gagging. Credit to the producers for including this observation: “Steve Witkoff is no career diplomat.” In case anyone has been mistaken on that point.

 

Another problem is not remembering that it’s a good idea to cultivate allies and try to minimize the number of your enemies. Walt also thinks that Trump 2.0 comes up somewhat lacking in this regard:

What is Trump doing instead? In less than three months, the Trump administration has repeatedly insulted our European allies; threatened to seize territory belonging to one of them (Denmark); and picked needless fights with Colombia, Mexico, Canada, and several other countries. Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance have publicly bullied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office and, like Mafia bosses, keep trying to coerce Ukraine into signing over mineral rights in exchange for continued U.S. assistance. With great fanfare, the administration has dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, withdrawn from the World Health Organization, and made it abundantly clear that the government of the world’s largest economy is no longer interested in helping less fortunate societies. Can you think of a better way to make China look good by comparison? [my emphasis]

Well, no, now that your mention it!

Also, this reminds me that during the Cheney-Bush Administration, there was a lot of high-level fretting about China taking the place of the US as the leading world power. Which made me tend to think that, based on the US experience, could we wish any worse fate on China than that?

He also mentions the tariff fiasco. That one is also obviously on the mark. “[E]ven countries that don’t hit back will try to reduce their reliance on the American market and begin pursuing mutual beneficial trade arrangements without the United States.” Also, to compound the ineptness: “It takes a remarkable level of diplomatic ineptitude to turn a friendly neighbor like Canada against us, but Trump has been up to the task.” So Trump has at least managed to achieve that!

Using alliances to enhance your own country’s influence and national interests, and showing that your country is a reliable negotiating partner, also have powerful advantages:

Trump and his minions don’t understand any of this. They think international institutions and norms are just annoying constraints on U.S. power, and they believe that being unpredictable keeps other states off-balance and maximizes U.S. leverage. They don’t realize that the institutions that shape relations between states were mostly devised with U.S. interests in mind, and that these arrangements usually enhance Washington’s ability to manage others. Tearing up the rules or withdrawing from key international organizations just makes it easier for other states to rewrite the rules in ways that favor them. [my emphasis]

Well, uh, yeah, that’s right, too! Walt expands on the point: “Why would any sensible state adjust its behavior because Trump promised to do something for them in exchange, when the president has demonstrated repeatedly that his promises mean little?“ He’s probably too generous there. It would probably be more descriptive to say that Trump’s promises don’t mean squat.

It worth recalling that the supposed isolationist tendency of Peace President Trump shares a lot of the basic perspective of the most bellicose neocons, i.e., thinking that “international institutions and norms are just annoying constraints on U.S. power.”

At least the liberal internationalists pretend to care about those considerations, and in practice often act as though they do. (But not always!)

Then there’s the Trumpistas’ militant ignorance, or enthusiastic support for ignorance, exhibited in their hostility to science and medical research and to learning in general. Militant ignorance in action, combined with astonishing level of corruption. “Trump is feeding a key ingredient of U.S. power, prestige, and influence into the woodchipper.” Because all this here fancy learnin’ stuff is WOKE and we all need to stay ASLEEP!! As Walt reminds us, “autocrats always go after universities and other independent sources of knowledge when trying to consolidate power, even if doing so inevitably leaves the country dumber and poorer.”

And Walt sums it all up this way:

In short, the Trump regime is violating most of what we know about how decisions should be made and much of what we know about world politics. It welcomes groupthink and privileges blind obedience to The Leader over honest policy debate. It ignores the natural tendency for states to balance against threats and risks alienating current allies or even turning some of them into opponents. It overlooks the enduring power of nationalism and rejects what history and Economics 101 teach about the damaging impact of protectionism. Instead of making America great again, these errors will make America poorer, less powerful, less respected, and less influential around the world. [my emphasis]

But Amurca will be great again! At least in terms of what Know Nothings, Birchers, and idiot-savant TechBro billionaires take to be great.

A final observation: Walt’s “defensive realist” theory of great power politics does not assume that some kind of irresistible unconscious forces are dictating the details of foreign policy. Actual humans make foreign policy. Sometimes they do it better than others. And sometimes they are really terrible at it!

Notes:

(1) Walt, Stephen (2025): How to Ruin a Country. Foreign Policy 04/07/2025. <https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/04/07/trump-ruin-us-foreign-policy-country/> (Accessed: 20025-19-04).

(2) Craig Unger Substack. <https://craigunger.substack.com/>

(3) Who is Steve Witkoff, Trump’s man behind Israel-Gaza negotiations? Middle East Eye 04/17/2025. <https://youtu.be/FXUry4IBBms?si=g-MZDewIuMLrYId> (Accessed: 2025-19-04).

How bright is the Trump 2.0 foreign policy?

The foreign policy scholar Dan Drezner publishes in thorough respectable foreign policy journals. He is also negatively impressed by the incompetent diplomacy of the Trump 2.0 Administration, which, as he notes, is even worse than the Trump 1.0 version, which was also pathetic.

The title he chose for his latest Substack column is, “American Foreign Policy Is Being Run by the Dumbest Motherfuckers Alive.” (1) His main point in the column is that even though Trump came into his second Presidency with a more coherent team of MAGAists and the whole Project 2025 blueprint for vandalizing democratic government, his approach to diplomacy is still remarkably incompetent.

On the one hand, that incompetence could have the side benefit of limiting the damage Trump 2.0 can do in some ways. But the idea of having democratic governance that works well means that the everyday functioning of public institutions needs to be competent and effective. Including foreign policy, which is a field whose implementation does require a great deal of professionalism to be done right. But as Drezner puts it:

In two short months, the second Trump administration’s abject incompetence has managed to make his bumbling first-term crew look like a paragon of professionalism. Trump’s needless, groundless hostility towards Canada — egged on by advisor Peter Navarro and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick — has managed to turn one of the friendliest neighbors in international relations history into a prickly porcupine of a neighbor, complete with consumer boycotts and everything.

Drezner points out that in the international arena, China is potentially the biggest beneficiary from even the DOGE cuts Co-President Elon Musk is making. Foreign policy wonks tend to think in terms of various kinds of power-balancing, and China is the current “rising hegemon” in the world in foreign-policy-wonk terms. So “China will benefit” is kind of a default argument that can be used against any policy you don’t like on Trump’s part.

But Trump operates in a world in which being able to claim the publicity of having made a good “deal” is the primary goal in international negotiations. And not the substantive practical and strategic benefit for the country that it will produce. Drezner quotes from a column he did back in early June 2017, after only a few months of Trump 1.0:

It’s hard to overstate just how badly Trump has navigated the global stage. The Chinese and Saudis have figured out how to buy him off with a couple billion dollars and some flattery. There is zero evidence of any appreciable policy gains. U.S. leadership is being constantly questioned. Whatever soft power resided in the United States has dissipated. Outside of the Persian Gulf, Trump’s approach has done nothing but alienate allies and bolster potential rivals. [my emphasis]

Drezner stresses the particular idiocy in purely practical terms of Trump’s lunatic threats to annex Canada:

In two short months, the second Trump administration’s abject incompetence has managed to make his bumbling first-term crew look like a paragon of professionalism. Trump’s needless, groundless hostility towards Canada — egged on by advisor Peter Navarro and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick — has managed to turn one of the friendliest neighbors in international relations history into a prickly porcupine of a neighbor, complete with consumer boycotts and everything. [my emphasis]

It's always important to keep in mind that there are economic and geopolitical trends that shape the international environment in which countries operate. But it’s also worth keeping in mind this observation of John Kenneth Galbraith’s from 1977 with reference to the beginning of the First World War – which also was driven by larger trends – on what he called the Stupidity Problem:

There was a final consideration, one that it is always thought a trifle pretentious to stress. Rulers in Germany and Eastern Europe, generals in all countries, held their jobs by right of family and tradition. If inheritance qualifies one for office, intelligence cannot be a requirement. Nor is its absence likely to be a disqualification. On the contrary, intelligence is a threat to those who do not possess it, and there is a strong case, therefore, for excluding those who do possess it. This was the tendency in 1914. In consequence, both the rulers and the generals in World War I were singularly brainless men.

None was capable of thought on what war would mean for his class - for the social order that was so greatly in his favor. There had always been wars. Rulers had been obliterated. The ruling classes had always survived. To the extent that there was thought on the social consequences of war, this was what was believed. (2)

The book was based on a documentary series, and this is the episode that corresponds to the cited portion: (3)

Notes:

(1) American Foreign Policy Is Being Run by the Dumbest Motherfuckers Alive. Drezner’s World 03/24/2025. (Accessed: 2025-27-03).

(2) Galbraith, John Kenneth (1977): The Age of Uncertainty, 137-8. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

(3) The Age of Uncertainty Episode 5 (16:45ff in the video). sveinbjornt YouTube channel 10/17/2011. <https://youtu.be/sxAoymq_SEA?si=kj8j9mAhLbfh1iZD> (Accessed: 2023-22-12).

The Oval Office fiasco and The Peace President’s approach to Europe

By all appearances, Trump within the space of two weeks, with the Munich Security Conference speech by J.D. Vance and the Oval Office ambush of Volodymir Zelenskyy on February 28, flipped the US position from support of Ukraine to support of Russia in the ongoing war.

In the proverbial grand scheme of things, a pro-Russia orientation is not bad or good in itself. The New START nuclear-arms limitation treaty between the US and Russia the came into force in 2011 and was extended by five years by President Biden. Russia suspended it on their side in 2023 but pledged to adhere to the treaty's limits on nuclear warheads. (1) The New START treaty was agreed to by both nations, i.e., they both recognized their agreement on the matters covered by the treaty was in both countries' national interest. On that point, supporting that treaty was pro-America and pro-Russia at the same time.

But those moves in these early weeks of Trump’s 2.0 term look like an arbitrary shift to treating Russia as a friendly power and the NATO countries as now longer partners - to the point of threatening military action against two of them, Canada and Denmark. But the future of nuclear arms-control agreements with Russia looks grim at this point in time. (2)

Sorting through the current situation on the Russia-Ukraine War requires keeping in mind not only the varying national interests at stake and the intensions of the Trump and Putin governments. It also requires taking into account Trump’s obvious lack of anything like a sensible strategic perspective in foreign policy, how ill-suited his “transactional” negotiation style is to major international agreements, and his erratic decision making. It’s one thing for a country to leave ambiguity and flexibility in its public diplomatic positions. But we’re putting tariffs on Mexico and China, except tomorrow we’re dropping them again, but we’ll put them on again a month from, unless we decide something different tomorrow – that looks very much like outright disorientation and incompetence.

The Peace President’s diplomatic accomplishment during Trump 1.0

Laura Rozen reminds us of one of Trump’s actual diplomatic achievements in his first term, the agreement for the US to leave Afghanistan at a particular date, which wound up being done during the time Joe Biden was President:

In 2019-2020, Trump’s envoy opened negotiations with the Taliban, cut the western-backed Afghanistan government out of the talks, and in February 2020 signed a deal with the Taliban agreeing to the full withdrawal of U.S. and foreign forces from Afghanistan the following year in exchange for the Taliban’s pledge to prevent Afghanistan being used as a base for international terrorism. Joe Biden inherited the U.S.-Taliban deal when he became president in 2021, withdrew the last remaining U.S. military forces on a slightly adjusted timetable - -and then took the political blame when the Afghan government rapidly collapsed and the Taliban took over Kabul just weeks later, in August 2021. [my emphasis] (3)

That agreement let Trump say, look, I’m a peacemaker! Though he didn’t actually execute the withdrawal himself, that fell to Biden on the timeline Trump’s agreement set. Now Trump is criticizing the withdrawal itself as disgraceful and so on. But Trump’s agreement led directly to the swift reversion of the Afghan government to Taliban rule after 20 years of US war to prevent just that.

The Abraham Accords were the most notable diplomatic seeming success stories of Trump 1.0. It promoted better relations with Israel for Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The negotiating effort was nominally led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose Affinity Partners private equity fund coincidentally received $2 billion dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund soon afterward, (4) with Qatar’s Investment Authority and Lunate, an asset manager based in Abu Dhabi, kicking in another $1.5 billion more recently. (5) As they say: Nice work if you can get it.

Marcy Grossman, Canada’s Ambassador to the UAE at the time they were negotiated, noted even almost a year after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel: “While the accords have faced criticism for sidelining the Palestinian issue, there is still potential for them to serve as a framework that encourages renewed dialogue.” (6) In fact, Israel and Trump 1.0 obviously saw the Accords as a way to cut the Palestinians out of US-Arab and Arab-Israeli relations altogether. With Israel now conducting a literally genocidal war in Gaza, and having devastated Lebanon, and now trying to establish de facto control of Syria south of Damascus, it would be hard to see the Middle East is a more peaceful place today thanks to Trump 1.0’s Abraham Accords.

Trump 2.0 and the Russia-Ukraine War

Lawrence Korb and Stephen Cirnbala give a helpful example of what a real diplomatic solution to the war could look like. The prospects for Trump 2.0’s current diplomacy delivering a deal anything like this are vanishingly close to zero:

1) Arranging a cease-fire in place at a time agreed upon by Ukraine and Russia;

2) Stipulating which forces on each side can remain stationed on Ukrainian territory after the ceasefire and during follow-on negotiations. For this purpose, Crimea will be assumed as Russian territory, but the status of other oblasts and towns in the east and south of Ukraine will be subjects for further discussion.

3) During the negotiations, neither side should be permitted to engage in short or long range attacks by ground, maritime or air forces against the forces of the other side, nor against populations located within their respective spheres of influence; this restriction includes clandestine operations making use of proxies or other unconventional warfare or covert action.

4) States or groups of states represented at the talks should include, in addition to Ukraine and Russia: the United States; the European Union; the UN Security Council; and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Observers representing other interested states and organizations can be invited, including from NATO and the European Union. (7)

It is often suggested that Trump has an ideological affinity for Putin and other dictatorial/authoritarian figures. And that’s probably true in the sense that he admires their level of executive power and impunity from the rule of law. But Western commentators also sometimes seem to be making a lazy assumption that this is some kind of restoration of the ideological role the Soviet Union played with affiliated Communist Parties in other countries. Those parties did recognize the Soviet Party as the leading part in what they understood to be a process of world revolution and shared its political ideology - with varying degrees of faithfulness ranging from open rebellion of those in China and Yugoslavia to the public grumping over “Eurocommunism” in the 1970s.

But not only does Trump seem to have no strategic vision of foreign policy in any normal sense, he also seems to have little actual political ideology beyond dislike of racial minorities and a weird fondness for tariffs – though he also really doesn’t seem to understand the basics of how tariffs work. And Putin? Although he has made formal agreements in the past to far-right parties in France, Italy and Austria, he is not claiming to lead a global political movement or ideology. And even his own political ideology appears to be a fairly vague mixture of nationalism, theocratic Christian conservativism (Russian Orthodox variety), and a spattering of notions from assorted anti-democratic, rightist cranks like Alexander Dugin.

The Russia-Ukraine War appears to have made Über-Realist John Mearsheimer at age 77 more famous than he has ever been, although he’s been a prominent foreign policy scholar for decades. He has been appearing on a variety of podcasts, some of which don’t apply as rigorous of standards as one might wish when selecting guests. He appears weekly, for instance, on the podcast of Andrew Napolitano, who seems to be a rightwing crank in his general political outlook. Plus, Napolitano has had a dubious-sounding gold coin sales business as one of his frequent advertisers, for whom Napolitano himself does the pitches. But Napolitano is also a competent interviewer. (Welcome to the media environment of 2025!)

This segment begins with a discussion of Israel, then turns to the Ukraine crisis. (8)

Mearsheimer describes Trump in this interview as an “anomaly.” Works for me: the Orange Anomaly.

He is generous in describing Trump’s goals in the Russia-Ukraine War negotiations. But he also knows that Ukraine and the European allies (ex-allies?) are going to have an important influence on the outcome, no matter what Trump’s and Putin’s governments negotiate on their own. “He’s not a warmonger,” says Mearsheimer about Trump. By which he presumably means Trump doesn’t use the standard blustering language that both neocons and liberal interventionists conventionally employ. (As always, if you listen to one of Mearsheimer’s interviews of this length and you’re not irritated by something he says – you’re probably not paying attention.)

In a new print interview with Spiegel International, Mearsheimer discusses his view on what Trump 2.0 policy means for Europe. (9)

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Mearsheimer, will the beginning of Donald Trump's second presidency go down in history as the turning point when the bond between America and Europe was broken?

Mearsheimer: I think the answer is yes. The Trump administration is bent on fundamentally changing America’s relations with its European allies and greatly reducing the U.S. role in NATO, if not pulling the U.S. out of NATO.

And he thinks that the relations between the US and Europe are definitely in a qualitatively new state:

DER SPIEGEL: Is it ultimately in vain, therefore, when European politicians such as French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and soon Friedrich Merz make pilgrimages to Washington?

Mearsheimer: This breakup is going to take time. The Europeans want to gauge, face to face, exactly what Trump thinks about relations with the EU, about his relationship with Russia and about how to settle the war in Ukraine. From their point of view, this makes perfect sense. But I bet they know that there’s no way to change Trump's mind and to repair this relationship. [my emphasis]

So, yes, the times, they are a’changin’. But with Trump 2.0 in charge in the US, it’s certain to be a confusing and ugly process.

In this segment from the British Channel 4, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and the British historian Mark Galeotti discuss the diplomatic challenges of the Russia-Ukraine War. (10) This is a helpful exchange to hear, because diplomacy is a smoke-and-mirrors act, where excruciating nuances in what is being put on the table and how are important. It’s a decent companion piece to Mearsheimer’s interview above. Because I have the definite impression that Mearsheimer is not especially interested in the diplomacy as such, though he obviously pays attention to it. His focus is on trying to understand the interests and assumptions behind the goals of governments in international relations, not so much the fog of diplomacy.

Unlike Mearsheimer’s coy – and probably intentionally provocative – characterizations of Trump’s goals, the Amanpour-Galeotti discussion gives a better understanding of the (severe) limits of Trump’s diplomatic concepts. It would be giving him too much credit to talk about Trump having strategic concepts beyond fantasies about pre-First World War imperialism.

Matt Duss of the Center for International Policy in his own analysis of the instantly-infamous Trump-Zelenskyy Oval Office meeting focuses on that understanding of Trump’s international politics:

You can say this for Trump: at least he’s consistent. The previous administration’s approach to two major wars – Ukraine and Gaza – was characterized by a glaring double standard in which Russia’s blatant violations of the laws of war were rightly condemned, while Israel’s commission of the same were shamefully excused and supported. The rights of the Ukrainian people to freedom and self-determination were treated as unquestionable, while those same rights for the Palestinian people were considered negotiable, if considered at all.

Trump now appears to be resolving this tension by throwing the Ukrainians under the bus along with the Palestinians. And as with his forced-displacement proposal for Gaza, he seems to see Russian talks over Ukraine as primarily a business venture, with the state department readout of the meeting highlighting possible new “investment opportunities” in warming US-Russia relations. (This shows again how wildly off the mark the Washington establishment’s “isolationist” criticisms of Trump have been. In truth, Trump is much more an old-school imperialist, always looking for new spoils to be enjoyed. The amount of time and energy devoted to the idea that Trump is a “Russian asset” obscured the more prosaic homegrown danger posed by his predatory authoritarian capitalism.) [my emphasis] (11)

Finally, Stephen Wertheimer offers this analysis of Trump’s Ukraine view:

The crux of the message seems to be this: the US will either broker an end to the war in Ukraine in short order or remove itself from the conflict, unless perhaps it deems Russia to have obstructed a ceasefire. (As Trump told Zelenskyy on Friday: “You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out.”) Washington will also refuse to make any commitment to Ukraine’s postwar security, such as Nato membership, that would run a major risk of drawing the US into direct war with Russia – “world war three,” as Trump sees it – if Russia invades Ukraine again.

The US has the sovereign right to adopt this stance, for the sake of its own interests, which include limiting the costs and risks the US is bearing for European defense. So Europe cannot dissuade the US, but it can work with Washington to achieve US goals while finding the best possible arrangement to protect Ukraine, secure Europe, and preserve Nato. …

The other version is far more optimistic: European leaders still hope to convince Trump to make a major US security guarantee to Ukraine. This effort drove British, French and Ukrainian leaders to visit the White House last week. In public remarks, all three attempted to sell Trump on providing a US “backstop” for a European military force, involving perhaps some 30,000 troops, to be placed in Ukraine once the fighting stops. Trump did not rule out some sort of US support for a European military contingent, but he indicated little willingness to put much American muscle behind it. “I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much,” Trump said. “We’re going to have Europe do that.” [my emphasis] (12)

Notes:

(1) Kirby, Jen (2023): The last US-Russia arms control treaty is in big trouble. Vox 02/26/2023. <https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/2/25/23610797/ukraine-war-putin-nuclear-new-start-treaty-suspension> (Accessed: 2025-08-03).

(2) Rumer, Eugene (2023): The Method Behind Putin’s New START Madness. Carnegie Endowment 02/28/2025. <https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/2/25/23610797/ukraine-war-putin-nuclear-new-start-treaty-suspension> (Accessed: 2025-08-03).

(3) Rozen, Laura (2025): Trump approach to end Ukraine war echoes his deal with Taliban. Diplomatic 03/05/2025. <https://diplomatic.substack.com/p/trump-approach-to-ukraine-echoes> (Accessed: 2025-07-03).

(4) Debusemann, Jr., Bernd (2024): Jared Kushner defends controversial $2bn Saudi investment. BBC News 02/14/2024. <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68296877> (Accessed: 2025-07-03).

(5) Grossman, Marcy (2024): As the Israel-Hamas war continues, the Abraham Accords quietly turns four. Atlantic Council 09/11/2024. <https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/abraham-accords-anniversary-gaza/> (Accessed: 2025-07-03).

(6) Tan, Gillian (2024): Kushner’s Affinity Gets Additional $1.5 Billion From Qatar, Abu Dhabi’s Lunate. BNN Bloomberg 11/20/2024. <https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/company-news/2024/12/20/kushners-affinity-gets-additional-15-billion-from-qatar-abu-dhabis-lunate/> (Accessed: 2025-07-03).

(8) Prof. John Mearsheimer: What I'd Tell Lavrov. Judge Napolitano-Judging Freedom YouTube channel 03/04/2025. <https://www.youtube.com/live/XYzesWfrSms?si=0f0bkK3MPocpUiia> (Accessed: 2025-06-03).

(9) Mearsheimer, John (2025) (Interview): The Shifting World Order. "Trump and Vance Have Contempt for The Europeans": Spiegel International 08.03.25. <https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-shifting-world-order-trump-and-vancehavecontempt-for-the-europeans-a-7e70c5b5-b307-45cc-940e-62e40a506ad2> (Accessed: 2025-08-03).

(10) Is Trump sacrificing Ukraine to Putin? The Fourcast/Channel 4 News YouTube channel 03/04/2025. <https://youtu.be/HUCN5Rnl8Ps?si=4NjFt7_wYOoZpEUn> (Accessed: 2025-06-03).

(11) Duss, Matt (2025): What are we to make of Trump’s Ukraine policy? The Guardian 02/21/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/21/trump-ukraine-russia-policy> (Accessed: 2025-02-03).

(12) Wertheimer, Stephen (2025): Is Europe misunderstanding Trump’s position on Ukraine? The Guardian 03/03/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/03/europe-trump-ukraine> Accessed: 2025-03-03).