At a recent speech in Detroit, President Trump summed up his first year in office thusly: “I told you we were going to do a lot of things, Nobody thought it was going to turn out like this. This has been crazy.” When it comes to Trump 2.0’s foreign policy over the past 12 months, he is certainly right about the “crazy” aspect. For the quote to be more accurate, however, the second sentence should have read, “Most people didn’t think it was going to turn out as bad as this.”
With that editorial work out of the way, let’s take a look at what Trump accomplished in the international realm since his inauguration in late January 2025. Starting with the good, he did succeed in helping to establish a cease fire in Gaza between the Israelis and Hamas. While the current situation isn’t peaceful, the absence of widespread, systemic violence on both sides offers an opportunity for further progress in achieving a more sustained and verifiable cessation of hostilities.
Staying on the peace bandwagon, the president has claimed to “end” seven other wars across the globe since returning to office. There is no doubt that his efforts have been helpful in some of these conflicts, but many — Pakistan and India, Africa’s Great Lakes region, and Thailand and Cambodia — are merely paused, not ended. Furthermore, Trump tends to use coercive methods, often the threat of tariffs, as part of his negotiating tactics. Despite some short-term success, his bullish diplomacy will ultimately engender long-term resentment.
On the bad side of the geopolitical ledger, Trump has essentially blown up the post-World War II liberal order. Reading his December 2025 National Security Strategy and the recently released National Defense Strategy, it is painfully clear that alliances are out, democracy support/defense/promotion are in Washington’s rear-view mirror, and the White House aspires to an aggressive hegemony in the Western Hemisphere while leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself. Beijing and Moscow will undoubtedly benefit from America’s abandonment of its previous “leader of the free world” mantle.
These changes have manifested most clearly in the Venezuela saga where, under the guise of fighting “narco-terrorists”, somewhat analogous to Putin’s oft-stated accusation of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, the administration abducted President Maduro and his wife in a lightning blitz. Since the raid, the president has opted to work with Maduro’s vice president instead of supporting the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, whose party, by all independent accounts, easily won the Venezuelan presidential elections in 2024. Consequently, American control of Caracas and its oil wealth, not democracy or the war against drugs, is the driving force in U.S. policy. That fact is not lost on other potential target countries on the president’s openly stated hit list.
Questionable motives have also been evident in Trump’s approach to ending the war in Ukraine, which he famously claimed during the campaign he would solve in 24 hours. Over a year later the killing goes on as Russia, with whom the administration seeks “strategic stability,” mercilessly pounds the Ukrainian energy grid. While Trump deserves credit for at least getting the two sides talking, to this point very little pressure has been exerted on Putin to make any substantive concessions in the negotiations. Only the president and his closest aides know why Washington has seemingly treated the Kremlin with kid gloves, despite the demonstrated fact that Moscow started the war.
As for the ugly, Trump’s use of his “venal pulpit” to harangue, insult, demean, and coerce erstwhile allies and adversaries alike has been nothing short of appalling. Though his schoolyard taunts may resonate with the MAGA base, they simply have lost all effectiveness and serve only to sink America deeper into a self-inflicted maelstrom of ignominy. In just the past two weeks our “insulter in chief” has questioned our closest allies’ service in Afghanistan (really?), criticized the Norwegian government for the president’s lack of a Nobel Peace Prize, and threatened high tariffs on our closest European allies for having the temerity to stand with Denmark on the Greenland issue.
The end result of Trump’s exceedingly petulant, performative rhetoric is that nobody trusts America anymore. Countries that used to be our most supportive allies (Canada and the European Union) are recalibrating their foreign policies toward China and India, convinced that those Asian giants are more reliable partners than Washington. Aside from that being a sad commentary on Trump’s effect on the world, alienating our heretofore closest global friends will make it more difficult in the future for the White House to protect our interests and project power when needed.
Nevertheless, look for Trump to charge full speed ahead in his bull in the global china shop routine. The one bright spot on the horizon is that mid-term elections in November will offer Americans an opportunity to change the political dynamic in Washington, in the process reasserting some balance in our foreign policy and hopefully arresting our sharp descent into “rogue superpower” status. This presumes, of course, that free and fair mid-terms take place as scheduled.
Robert Beck of Peterborough served for 30 years overseas with the United States government in embassies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He now teaches foreign policy classes at Keene State College’s Cheshire Academy for Lifelong Learning.