#us-foreign-policy

#us-foreign-policy

Taking centre stage is Josh Paul, former director of congressional and public affairs at the US Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. In 2023, Paul resigned in protest over the US's role in enabling Israel's war on Gaza. Since then, he has co-founded A New Policy, a political organisation pushing for change in US policy towards Palestine and Israel.

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, can rarely be described as looking happy. His brick wall of a face and somber voice, worn down by many years of smoking Marlboros, have earned him the nickname "Minister No." But when the question of Greenland came up yesterday at his press conference in Moscow, Lavrov seemed to come alive, even permitting himself a smile and a chuckle as he talked about President Trump's imperial designs on the Danish territory and the response from NATO allies.

One foreign policy achievement that Donald Trump prefers not to boast about is his role in helping Mark Carney win last year's Canadian general election. The incumbent Liberal party faced crushing defeat before Mr Trump threatened to annex Canada. Mr Carney's candidacy was buoyed up by a patriotic rally against US bullying. Perhaps because his country has also been coveted by Mr Trump, Mr Carney has given one of the most clear-sighted responses of any democratic leader to the US president's designs on Greenland.

The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source, he told world leaders. When even one person stops performing the illusion begins to crack. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality, Carney added. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Donald Trump has told the Davos economic forum without us, most countries would not even work, but for the first time in decades, many western leaders have come to the opposite conclusion: they will function better without the US. Individually and collectively, they have decided to live in truth the phrase used by the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel and referenced by the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, in his widely praised speech at Davos on Tuesday.

One year into the second Trump administration, an actual US foreign policy remains just a nice idea. Instead, the world has been forced to adapt to the world according to Donald Trump: one increasingly shaped by his erratic shifts and unpredictable decisions, his fury at perceived slights and his growing desire to stamp his legacy in the model of an imperial leader from centuries past. Think of it as the mad king's court, where every day is a carnival.

Three of the four things that gave Trump a foothold, in my opinion, were failures in this century (the fourth is the legacy of slavery and the organized political violence that replaced it). The other three, though, are the War on Terror, the financial crisis, and social media. (COVID was the final catalyst, I think; having moved during the height of COVID, I can't express how much worse the US dealt with it than much of the EU.)

Sánchez warned that if there is a military invasion on the Arctic island that this will be a "death sentence for NATO." In 2017 the US President revealed his desire to want Greenland, Donald Trump said at the time he would pay $600 million a year for life to use the country. When Trump returned back to power in 2025 he then raised the question of acquiring Greenland, then at the start of 2026 he doubled down and has said that he "want it now."

A Spirit of Dialogue: the theme for this year's World Economic Forum, the gathering of the global elite in the sparkling Alpine air of Davos, seems a heroic stretch, when star guest Donald Trump has spent the past year smashing up the world order. The president will touch down alongside the snowcapped Swiss mountains with the largest US delegation ever seen at the WEF.

The administration turned its back on the climate "hoax", as Trump describes it, withdrawing from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the basis for the Paris climate agreement (abandoned twice by Trump in his two terms), and signed by 197 nations in 1992. Other non-U.N. organizations were dropped as well, including the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and the Global Counterterrorism Forum.

TRUMP: We've been told that the killing in Iran is stopping And there's no plan for executions, or an execution, or executions. So, I've been told that on good authority. We'll find out about it. I'm sure if it happens, we'll all be very upset. Including you will be very upset. But that's just gotten to me, some information, that the killing has stopped, that the executions have stopped. Obviously the killing stopping would be a very good thing.