Foreign Policy Malpractice

When have we given up so much power so quickly?

Donald Trump insisted that America had become weaker, less respected in the world, and more vulnerable under his predecessor. Those claims look increasingly ridiculous. Once more, an unfounded accusation turns out to be a confession of Trump’s manifest ineptitude and instability.

Trump’s Memorial Day ranting hit a new high for incoherence and self-indulgence. His mean-spirited and vulgar attacks echoed his partisan and bizarre remarks at West Point. If he were an elderly relative, family members would be staging an intervention to prevent such public displays of distemper.

Had the corporate media cared more about the apparent cognitive decline and unhinged, disordered thinking of the current president, the debate about his fitness might have transpired before the election. (Even before the most recent episodes, Rex Huppke argued persuasively, “Despite Biden showing his age, it was clear more often than not that he remained sharp and had a deep knowledge and understanding of both politics and the world. . .Trump, on the other hand, seems to know little, and he has grown increasingly incoherent and rambling, often wholly detached from reality.”) Now they face second-guessing about their lack of acuity and aggression in covering (or not covering) Trump properly.

Trump’s weakness has translated into a looming national security crisis for the U.S. His delusions about Vladimir Putin and diplomatic foolishness have not only failed to end the Ukraine War “on day one,” but encouraged Putin to step up bombardment of Ukraine. Republicans sound like Democrats in decrying his misguided and immoral effort to hand Ukraine to Putin on a silver platter.

The New York Times reported on Republicans “diverging sharply from President Trump’s conciliatory stance after months of staying mostly quiet and deferring to his hands-off approach”:

The shift intensified over the weekend in the wake of Russia’s most aggressive wave of attacks since the war began. But it has been building for weeks as Senate Republicans and Democrats alike have signed on to legislation that would impose sweeping sanctions on Moscow. The bill now has 80 cosponsors, more than enough to override a veto in that chamber.

The U.S., to the rest of the world, looks feckless, unreliable, and naïve.

Meanwhile, the ethically challenged, unprepared, and dull-witted Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has unsurprisingly turned the daily operation of the Pentagon into a chaotic soap opera.

“An enduring rift among Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s cadre of senior advisers has divided the Pentagon’s front office and fueled internal speculation about his long-term viability in the Cabinet post after several episodes that attracted White House scrutiny, according to numerous people familiar with the matter,” the Washington Post reported. Despite his show of bravado, “continued behind-the-scenes dysfunction, brought on by unresolved personality conflicts, inexperience, vacancies in key leadership roles and a steady-state paranoia over what political crisis could emerge next” should alarm anyone worried about the United States’ national security. (Republican senators, including Joni Ernst of Iowa and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, shoulder the blame for this catastrophe.)

On top of that, our influence in the Middle East is waning. Outfoxed and ignored by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump and his minions watch passively as the Hamas truce deal that they once boasted about lies in ruins, and Gaza’s condition is more desperate than ever.

Trump beats his chest about an Iran deal—at the very time Iran has racked up a slew of executions in one of the bloodiest months in its atrocious human rights history. “According to Iran Human Rights, an Oslo-based nongovernmental organization, as of May 27, Iranian authorities had executed 478 people in 2025,” Human Rights Watch reports. “The organization reported a 75 percent increase in executions in the first four months of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024.” At this rate, it will execute 1000 people by year’s end.) Is now really the time to be touting progress in negotiations with the mullahs?

And finally, Trump’s erratic, illogical, and unnecessary trade war with allies sent convulsions through our political and economic relationships. Now, thanks to a federal court ruling, his invocation of “emergency” powers has been struck down. While appeals will continue, Trump emerges humiliated with his key initiative, one widely ridiculed, now in ruins. Meanwhile, the MAGA tax/budget plan that threatens to drown the economy in red ink continues to play havoc with the bond market. We have gone from the world’s most envied economy to the most confused—and confusing.

Trump’s non-stop attention-getting and chaos-spreading antics belie his fundamental weakness and ineptitude. Not only have his domestic power-grabs been rejected at a rate unimaginable for veterans of the Justice Department, but he has left us isolated, unstable, and diminished on the international world stage. When our soft power (e.g., economic strength, diplomatic prowess, foreign aid) is diminished and the threat of hard power is undercut by turmoil in the Pentagon, America is weaker. Far from making us greater, Trump has made us more feeble, disdained, and irrelevant on the international stage.

As Michael Hirsh at Foreign Policy put it, “[N]obody has ever seen such an unprecedented display of weakness from a would-be strongman. . . Trump has gone a long way toward unilaterally surrendering the United States’ dominant power and influence around the world—especially in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.”

It does make one pine for the days when an aging but experienced, knowledgeable, and effective commander-in-chief could rightly claim the title of Leader of the Free World. Frankly, there is some question as to whether we are even active participants in the “Free World” anymore.