#trump-foreign-policy

#trump-foreign-policy

I'm hearing they want to talk badly. It's possible. Depends on what terms, possible, only possible. You know, we sort of don't have to speak anymore, you know, if you really think about it, but it's possible.

Trump has governed as a hawkish interventionist whose approach better aligns with his neoconservative secretary of state, Marco Rubio, than with the anti-interventionists in his administration, such as J. D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard. The United States is now enmeshed in so many conflicts that its foreign policy is closer to "world police" than "America First."

Well, most of the people we had in mind are dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also based on reports. So I guess you have a third wave coming in pretty soon, we're not going to know anybody.

Spain has been terrible. In fact, I told Scott [Bessent] to cut off all dealings with Spain. Spain, first of all, it started when every European nation, at my request, paid 5%, which they should be doing and everybody was enthusiastic about it, Germany, everybody, and Spain didn't do it.

Meeting in Munich over the weekend, officials on both sides said they wanted to continue to work together. In the world of geopolitics all eyes were on Southern Germany over the weekend where the Munich Security Conference (MSC) served as the latest make or break moment for Germany-US relations. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz delivered the event's opening speech in which he acknowledged that a rift has opened up with the US, and urged trans-Atlantic partners to repair and revive trust.

It's not a common phrase used in mainstream politics. I just stumbled over it. Today, we asked Grok for a definition, and here's what it said: Class-based internationalismmeans that the principle that workers and the working class across all countries share the same fundamental interest in opposing capitalism and should unite internationally, prioritizing class solidarity over national, ethnic, or even patriotic loyalties.

Late last month, President Trump took to social media to issue a not-at-all-veiled threat to the theocratic rulers of Iran: Come to the negotiating table and agree to "NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS," or risk the same type of swift and violent response that plucked Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from Caracas in the middle of the night. "Time is running out, it is truly of the essence!"

Trump said on the eve of the hastily arranged White House meeting set to begin at 11am that he was weighing sending a second US armada to the Middle East to pressure Tehran to reach a nuclear deal. But Netanyahu, making his sixth visit to the United States since Trump took office, will also be urging the US leader to take a harder line on Iran's ballistic missile program.

Donald Trump has achieved an unlikely redemption: By pursuing a shambolic foreign policy, he has made the bygone days of "regime change" look restrained, strategic, and pragmatic by comparison. Trump campaigned in 2024 saying he would begin "no new wars," eschew "regime change" and "nation building," and generally prioritize domestic policy over foreign affairs. No more Coalition Provisional Authority, as in Iraq. No more extended U.S. military deployments, as in Afghanistan.

Fast forward to the present day, and Trump is threatening an even bigger attack, and backing up the threat with a large-scale movement of US military assets, including an aircraft carrier, towards Iranian waters. Trump says that these threats are his way of convincing the Iranians to agree to a deal reported to include demands to effectively end Iran's nuclear programme, limit its ballistic missile programme, and stop support for allies across the Middle East.

Despite months of warnings from party members up and down the caucus that President Donald Trump has been "lawless," "destructive, and "authoritarian" in his wielding of power both domestically and abroad, 149 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives on Thursday night joined with 192 Republicans to pass a sweeping military spending bill - a vote that progressive critics say exposes the fecklessness and hypocrisy of what claims to be an opposition party.

He announced a 10 percent tariff on eight European countries that had sent troops to Greenland for a military exercise. On Sunday afternoon, he composed a poorly punctuated, paranoiac note to the Norwegian prime minister in which he blamed the Norwegian government for not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said the rejection had liberated him to stop thinking about peace, and claimed that it had set him on the path to conquer Greenland to protect the United States.

Donald Trump is leading the world into a carrot-and-stick scenario only without the carrot while each nation, for the moment, does what it can in response. Early Tuesday morning, as the Republican posted AI-generated images on his social media showing European leaders listening to some kind of explanation from him about the United States' needs regarding Greenland, Mexico, a keen observer of Washington's strategies, was preparing another mass transfer of prisoners north.

Andrew Neil, the veteran right-leaning British broadcaster, posted an ominous warning about President Donald Trump pushing away the U.S.'s traditional allies in Europe. Neil, who has held various senior positions at publications owned by Rupert Murdoch, ended his lengthy post writing that Under Trump America is on the brink of becoming the enemy, not our most important ally. As a lifelong supporter of the US it is chilling to write and say such words.

"incoherent strategy."

Donald Trump is hardly the first US president to look south and conquer. Over the last century, no fewer than a dozen of Trump's predecessors embraced the belief that democracy and profit in Latin America were only one successful coup d'état away. But the particular strain of imperial ambition that Trump appears to have set loose with this weekend's raid in Venezuela appears simultaneously to be deeply atavistic and uniquely Trumpian. And it's one that doesn't look set to die down anytime soon.

MAGA is primarily a personality cult, the objectives of which evolve to suit Trump's capricious moods. Yet his pivot to new wars of conquest is not some shocking reversal. The "Donroe Doctrine," as he calls his assertion of regional supremacy-a Trumpian extension of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which established the United States' claim over the Americas in order to keep Europeans out-is in fact consistent with his deepest beliefs. In some ways, it represents the ultimate expression of the world order he hopes to engineer.