The Unveiling ‘Nakedness’ of Trump Foreign Policy
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There is nothing like a conflict to reveal, often not intentionally, the foreign policy strategy driving that leadership. This certainly seems to be the case for President Trump now after several, and possibly a still growing list of conflict actions. In fact, we already have all too many examples of this President’s conflict decisions - none more revealing and important than the current Iran imbroglio.
The confusion is wide and deep on Trump actions in Iran. Now, a possible land attack; or maybe not. Possibly, continuing air strikes from the US; but maybe not. A possible declaration by this President of victory and retreat; but maybe not. As noted by Dan Drezner in Drezner’s World, in his outlining of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s role in this Iran conflict:
“The Iran war — and Rubio’s relative silence about it — raises an interesting question, however. U.S. allies are confused about what the United States even wants out of this conflict. Congress is even more confused. The Trump White House keeps gyrating on its endgame, toggling between wanting a quick end and planning a massive escalation.”
“The abject lack of strategic and policy planning in Gulf War Three is manifestly obvious. Given that this is planning failure is within Rubio’s remit, why is he not the target of more ire?”
But nobody outdoes Trump when it comes to confusion and gyrating strategic actions. My good colleague, Tom Wright, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution having served as the senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council during the Biden administration has tried to capture the current Trump confusion. In his recent piece in The Atlantic, titled, “The Countdown to a Ground War” Tom seeks to capture the various strategic threats that Trump faces in his going forward actions. First, Tom makes clear that the negotiating positions of the two adversaries are unbridgeable:
“The administration’s 15-point proposal, delivered to Iran via Pakistan, requires Tehran to dismantle its entire uranium-enrichment infrastructure, surrender its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, sever all ties with proxy forces across the region, and accept strict limits on its conventional military. In exchange, Washington is offering sanctions relief and support for a civilian nuclear-energy program. The proposal is very similar to the deal that the United States put on the table before the bombing campaign began.”
“The war has not moderated the Iranian regime. It has hardened it. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now dominates Iran’s internal deliberations to a degree unprecedented even under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”
As regards control of the Strait of Hormuz Tom writes:
“Iran effectively controls the strait, and it knows that this control affords Tehran real leverage. Iran appears to have concluded that it is better positioned for a war of endurance than for a negotiated capitulation.”
“A deal that leaves the IRGC in effective control of the world’s most crucial shipping lane, imposes no enforceable limits on Iran’s missile or enrichment programs, and offers the regime international legitimacy [that] cannot easily be framed as victory, especially when America’s closest regional partners will be lining up to say otherwise.”
A number of Trump’s allies in the region, like the Saudis, were not enthusiastic about this preemptive attack but now in the midst of the maelstrom that has been created, they want the US to continue the fight to eliminate, or severely undermine the regime. Again as Tom describes:
“Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly told Trump that the United States should continue fighting to destroy the Iranian regime and remake the region.”
“The United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States rejected the idea of a “simple cease-fire,” calling instead for “a conclusive outcome that addresses Iran’s full range of threats.””
“Meanwhile, Israel remains committed to regime change or, failing that, maximum degradation, and it worries about a deal that meets Tehran halfway or a cease-fire.”
But here Trump is of at least two minds over immediate action. According to Tom:
“But Trump wants to avoid a messy, long war, which could lead to sustained high oil prices and a possible recession. Ground troops would seem likely to bring this outcome about—but Trump appears to believe that their introduction will instead deliver a decisive knockout blow, which will either compel Tehran to accept his terms or make a U.S. declaration of victory credible.”
Tom then describes the most likely actions that Trump and his people are examining:
“According to media reports about internal Trump-administration deliberations, three ground operations are most likely: a raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Isfahan to seize its stockpile of highly enriched uranium; the seizure of Kharg Island, Iran’s principal oil-export hub; and the deployment of troops to Iran’s shoreline to suppress its attacks on shipping through the strait.”
Each carries significant risks and points to the fact that Trump and those few around him underestimated the strength and resilience of at least parts of the Iranian regime. As Tom then concludes:
“Trump has a long history of claiming victory in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This may be the rare moment when that instinct serves the country—because the alternative appears to be doubling down on a losing strategy by launching a ground war.”
It is a distressing outcome for those who believed the preemptive US and Israeli action was a necessary step to defanging the regime in Iran. And, moreover, it reveals that Trump’s ‘strategic’ actions were dramatically premature and are leading to greater US foreign policy incoherence. It leads those who at least tried to outline a Trump strategic logic without a ‘paddle in the US foreign policy canoe’. It reveals that for those experts that at least tried to apply some foreign policy logic and strategic thinking to this President, well, left holding an empty vessel.
Look, I can understand the concerted effort by experts and colleagues to try and bring logic to this administration’s foreign policy actions as they have to any other administration. It may however be beyond reasonable exertion and demands, instead, that one accept, and call out the incoherence at the heart of Trumpian actions.
I was therefore keenly interested in the examination that Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper, both participants in the prior Biden administration, brought to Trump foreign policy in a recent article in FA, titled, “The False Promise of “Flexible Realism””. Trump sought electoral success in suggesting that his foreign policy efforts would reflect ‘realism’. No more ‘forever wars’; rather Trump would bring great power diplomacy, balance and restraint. But as the two argued:
“... and this anti-interventionism helped propel him to the White House in 2016. Under the tagline of “principled realism,” the first Trump administration was unapologetic in its pivot away from the Middle East and toward competition with China—a focus on great-power dynamics that most realists would expect to see from the United States facing a peer competitor.”
“These early assertions of Trump as a realist assumed a judiciousness and focus on great-power politics that many scholars and analysts believed had been missing from U.S. foreign policy for some time.”
But it was not to be. Instead, what we now see according to the two experts:
“In abandoning both military restraint and the strategy of great-power competition, the current Trump administration has pivoted to what it calls “flexible realism.” Anchored in the principle that might makes right, this new approach seems designed to justify the president’s expansive use of coercion.”
“After the 2025 National Security Strategy put forth flexible realism as a basic principle, Trump called his January snatch-and-grab of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro an expression of “the iron laws that have always determined global power.””
Where has Trump landed? Here is their analysis:
“There may be echoes of realism in Trump’s muscular approach, such as his focus on exercising military might and securing economic resources. But a penchant for power, unmoored from strategy or a clear definition of the national interest, does not qualify a leader as realist. And a proper reading of realism proves this description of Trump has not held up over time.”
“Realists pride themselves on their keen sense of strategy and laser focus on the requirements of great-power competition. Trump’s war of choice against Iran should permanently debunk the notion that he is the natural heir to the realist foreign policy tradition. Where realism counsels discipline, the Iran war represents the opposite. ”
So where are we after all these Trump conflicts, most particularly after Iran:
“Debunking Trump’s claim to realism is more than an academic exercise. His critique of so-called globalist elites, his professed foreign policy restraint, and, above all, his opposition to U.S. military interventions overseas have always been intrinsic to Trump’s political brand.”
“The “Make America Great Again” movement has long claimed noninterventionist foreign policies, and Vice President JD Vance pledged his fealty to Trump on the basis that he would not begin any new wars. Across multiple campaigns, that orientation proved remarkably popular with the American electorate.”
“Herein lies the opportunity for those who oppose Trump’s war as well as for the politicians and policymakers who come after him. There is a genuine public demand for a more disciplined, pragmatic approach to U.S. foreign policy. Trump’s war is not merely reckless because it ignores congressional war powers, international law, or the value of allied cooperation. It is reckless because it exemplifies the warmongering excesses that Americans have consistently decried because of their wasting effects on American power.”
“Realism after Trump, then, must meet that appetite with something Trump never offered: a coherent, affirmative vision for how American strength can be exercised with purpose, restraint, and strategic clarity to advance U.S. interests.”
Trump actions fail to add up. And now, it seems, the experts too are accepting that Trump foreign policy carries no strategic core. It adds up to: incoherence and little more. Trump foreign policy actions represent a dangerous, dangerous US foreign policy.