In recent days, there has been much speculation about the causes for a supposed discrepancy in the relative success of U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy versus his domestic policy.
The reason for this is fairly obvious. From the moment that a cease-fire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas was announced, Trump has basked in accolades for having brought about the seemingly impossible. It’s not just his devoted supporters who have given him credit but his usual detractors and political opponents as well.
In recent days, there has been much speculation about the causes for a supposed discrepancy in the relative success of U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy versus his domestic policy.
The reason for this is fairly obvious. From the moment that a cease-fire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas was announced, Trump has basked in accolades for having brought about the seemingly impossible. It’s not just his devoted supporters who have given him credit but his usual detractors and political opponents as well.
Realistically speaking, however, the notion that there has been a grand success in the Middle East is overblown—or at least premature. When one takes a careful look at Trump’s foreign policy more broadly, the idea that he has compiled a strong record of success since his return to office in January stands on even flimsier ground. In fact, the erratic and highly personalized way Trump conducts international relations raises almost as many troubling questions as anything his critics have found fault with at home.
Before we look at broader patterns, though, a few words about Israel and Gaza are in order. Much of the credit Trump has received has focused on his willingness to apply pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If that is true, what is most remarkable about this is not the modest application of muscle. Rather, it is the utterly supine way that Washington deferred to Israel’s death-and-devastation approach to Gaza throughout the late Biden administration and well into Trump’s first year in office.
While Israel starved, strafed, and bombed Palestinians, neither administration mustered a moral response to the crisis, even as the world condemned what more and more qualified experts have concluded was a genocide. What is worse, Washington continued supplying many of the weapons that Israel used in its campaign in Gaza; ran interference at the United Nations to blunt criticism of its ally; and, under Trump, threatened domestic critics of Israel on U.S. campuses and other forums. Trump even spoke grotesquely about turning Gaza into a vast real estate development site, one that Palestinians would have little place in.
As for the celebrated diplomacy that brought about the badly needed cease-fire, it is exceedingly vague about the future. Along with others, I rejoice deeply in the return of the Israeli hostages held for so long by Hamas. But there are precious few details in the agreement about how lasting peace and order will be maintained in Gaza and even fewer about self-determination for Palestinians in Gaza or eventual statehood for Palestinians in general. This all raises real fears that once the sugar high of the cease-fire has faded and Trump’s attentions have turned elsewhere, Gaza will be set adrift, its reconstruction will be deferred indefinitely, and Israel will once again feel unrestrained as it invokes any and all violations of the cease-fire agreement—whether real, contrived, minor, or even instigated by Israel or by gangs it supports—as justification for aggressive new actions. Already, Israel has begun restricting aid distribution over complaints that Hamas has not returned the bodies of deceased hostages quickly enough.
When thinking about the broader patterns in Trump’s foreign policy, what seems most remarkable is how unconstrained the U.S. president is from both law and tradition. This has been clear in a host of areas, from the extralegal execution at sea of supposed narcotraffickers from Venezuela to the elimination of broad swaths of Washington’s foreign aid programs. It has also included extortionate visa fees on people from many African countries and generalized hostility toward access to the United States for much of the global south.
Trump’s personalized rule and the clientelism it lends itself to are evident in his decision to order up a $20 billion economic rescue package for Argentina, a chronic debt defaulter, for little other apparent reason than his sympathies for its populist libertarian president, Javier Milei. It is equally apparent in the way that Trump has sought to punish Brazil and its leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, through extraordinarily high tariffs, largely on the basis of his ideological attraction to former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was recently convicted for attempting a coup against Lula. And it is found in the way that Trump has continually threatened Venezuela with sanctions and possible military action, all while holding discussions about securing a bigger role for U.S. companies in the Venezuelan economy.
The personalization, favoritism, and corruption that underlie Trump’s diplomacy are perhaps most evident of all in the Middle East, which has been the source of his recent plaudits. Trump’s acceptance of a presidential jet from Qatar, which might become his personal property when he leaves office, represents a grave departure from previous U.S. presidential norms and a disquieting and possibly illegal sidestepping of the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act.
During his recent visit to Egypt, following a stop in Israel to celebrate the Gaza cease-fire, Trump spoke almost longingly of the United Arab Emirates as a source of “unlimited cash.” And in remarks before other Middle Eastern leaders, he made an appreciative wink toward Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for having been with him “from the beginning.” This was a possible allusion to long-standing claims, murky and unresolved, that Sisi provided funding to Trump during his first victorious campaign for president.
As a whole, Trump’s comportment in the Middle East has sent a message to the region that this White House, its leader, and his family are eager for opportunities for profit and can be influenced on this basis. Trump has shown similar proclivities outside the Middle East. In a recent conversation on the sidelines of a press event, for example, Trump cryptically told Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto that he would have his son Eric, a businessman who is not part of his administration, call him after Prabowo brought up an undisclosed issue.
For all its faults and inconsistencies, over a string of decades the United States has earned popularity and admiration around the world for its association with the ideal of democratic rule. Trump’s foreign policy, however, is making the country popular among autocrats and other personalized regimes. Not only do they no longer have to worry about being called out for their democratic shortcomings or human rights abuses, but in the U.S. president, they have a leader who exults in their language and approach to erasing limits on executive power and turning diplomacy into an exercise of lucrative back-scratching.
Finally, Trump’s foreign policy thus far must be judged as a failure on the basis of his dealings with two traditional U.S. rivals, Russia and China. Many have wondered about the nature of his relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and whether something secretive in their history and ongoing dealings, economic or otherwise, could explain why Trump has so frequently expressed admiration for Putin and so seldom seemed willing to apply serious pressure toward constraining his actions in Ukraine or elsewhere.
Whether or not there are things that remain hidden that can explain this, Trump has been ineffective in influencing Putin to end his war against Ukraine, and as this conflict has ground on, he has provided comfort to Russia’s leader by gradually downgrading Washington’s support for NATO.
With China, arguably the single-most important relationship for the United States, Trump has lurched between tariff threats and efforts at lowering the temperature between the world’s two giant economies. There is little evidence of a strategic vision in Trump’s diplomatic approach to Beijing and precious little realism or consistency.
China is too big to be bullied, unlike many of the other countries Trump has imposed his will on. It is the ultimate foreign-policy challenge and one that has flustered a string of recent U.S. administrations. For starters, mutual respect and equipoise are indispensable in dealing with Beijing, and so far, Trump has displayed little of either. Meanwhile, albeit with many challenges of its own, China seems to be working much more methodically toward strengthening itself and its position on the global stage than the United States under the disruption-revering style of Trump.
China is a challenge that will not go away. Until the United States begins to articulate a policy that will allow the two countries to relate to each other more productively, thinking that Washington has built a successful foreign policy under Trump will remain a delusion.
Correction, Oct. 16, 2025: A previous version of this article misattributed Trump’s comments about “unlimited cash.” He was referring to the United Arab Emirates.
