Trump‘s weakness: Opting for the path of least resistance
Many foreign-policy actors, analysts, and ordinary people around the world remain confused about what truly drives the President’s myriad and mercurial foreign-policy decisions. A traditional observer could be forgiven for looking at the pieces of the puzzle and seeing nothing but arbitrary choices, randomness, and graft. A President not guided by geostrategic calculation, a coherent ideology, or a combination of both is, after all, difficult to predict.
For a Trump supporter, however, everything appears naturally ordered, because Trump is seen as infallible.
Unfortunately, a dangerous pattern does exist—one that helps predict what this administration will or will not do. It is an unsettling pattern rooted in two interrelated character traits of the President himself. First, his policies are not driven by principles or values he cherishes—whether for good or ill—but by the ones he plainly lacks. While his predecessors believed in liberal democracy, he does not, and therefore feels no obligation to invest in any struggle that pits free people against forces seeking to extinguish their liberty.
This indifference is compounded by his personal tendency to exploit and dominate the weak while appeasing any nation, regime, or leader he perceives as strong or ruthless.
This dynamic is the inverse of the liberal world order, which was designed to protect weaker allies and partners from stronger adversaries—adversaries who, without U.S. engagement, would be free to shape the world in their own image and act as the architects of their own fate, unrestrained and with potentially terrible consequences.
Trump is not an ally of China or Russia. If he could, he would make China more docile and friendly; if it were solely up to him, he would tell Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory immediately and never attack again. If it were within his power, he would force Kim Jong-un to denuclearize North Korea.
But some countries are more difficult to handle than others. Allies may feel compelled to accommodate their indispensable security provider. Weak and vulnerable regimes in Caracas or Tehran, or Hamas in Gaza, may have no choice but to accept U.S. decisions, attacks, or ultimatums. Yet the most dangerous nations on earth have never been small, fragile states or U.S. allies. That may have seemed true in the two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but history has reasserted itself: great powers that once begrudgingly accepted U.S. primacy now long for the return of their lost power, influence, and prestige.
If the President cannot push back against the major powers that most vehemently oppose a U.S.-led world order, then a two-day raid over Iranian skies, ineffective strikes on the Houthis, or the destruction of fishing boats in the Caribbean all become powerful statements that nonetheless conceal a deeper strategic weakness.
Even when confronting minor powers, this administration routinely pulls its punches. The President and his national-security team had no concrete plan to destroy Iran’s nuclear program by force before making a spontaneous decision under convenient duress. The Israeli government skillfully created a fait accompli that fortunately forced the President to act—action he might otherwise have avoided, as he did when he failed to respond to Iranian attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf, the missile strike on Saudi Arabia, or the downing of a U.S. drone during his first term.
When he did act, he declared a premature end to the operation after roughly 48 hours, even though the Iranian regime was nearing institutional collapse and Israel was prepared to further loosen the Ayatollahs’ grip on power by expanding operations against the leadership and its machinery of repression. Similarly, anti-Houthi operations ended before achieving any strategic objectives, and rather than toppling the Venezuelan regime, the administration confined itself to sinking a few drug-running vessels.
Some may interpret this restraint as prudence, but it is anything but. It exposes the President’s lack of strategic patience and determination. We do not live in a world where dangers can be neutralized in two days without casualties, after which they simply disappear. They may drop below the media radar, but that does not mean they cease to pose a threat. A government with a short attention span and a low tolerance for risk or pain will always fight the symptoms of a strategic disease rather than its causes—and that is exactly what Trump has done whenever he mustered the will to use force in the Caribbean, Yemen, or Iran.
The ability to quickly and almost effortlessly treat symptoms without addressing causes is a luxury afforded to the United States only when dealing with small and powerless states. Once the adversary is a major power—such as Russia in Ukraine—confrontation is no longer a matter of days or weeks, but of years and hundreds of billions of dollars if the United States truly intends to shape events in a manner consistent with its interests and ideals.
It is therefore crucial to understand that the cost of challenging an adversary correlates directly with the urgency of doing so. If pushing back against such a nation is already burdensome now, one must consider the far greater costs of stopping it after it has been allowed to secure its preliminary objectives.
For a Trump supporter, however, everything appears naturally ordered, because Trump is seen as infallible.
Unfortunately, a dangerous pattern does exist—one that helps predict what this administration will or will not do. It is an unsettling pattern rooted in two interrelated character traits of the President himself. First, his policies are not driven by principles or values he cherishes—whether for good or ill—but by the ones he plainly lacks. While his predecessors believed in liberal democracy, he does not, and therefore feels no obligation to invest in any struggle that pits free people against forces seeking to extinguish their liberty.
This indifference is compounded by his personal tendency to exploit and dominate the weak while appeasing any nation, regime, or leader he perceives as strong or ruthless.
This dynamic is the inverse of the liberal world order, which was designed to protect weaker allies and partners from stronger adversaries—adversaries who, without U.S. engagement, would be free to shape the world in their own image and act as the architects of their own fate, unrestrained and with potentially terrible consequences.
Trump is not an ally of China or Russia. If he could, he would make China more docile and friendly; if it were solely up to him, he would tell Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory immediately and never attack again. If it were within his power, he would force Kim Jong-un to denuclearize North Korea.
But some countries are more difficult to handle than others. Allies may feel compelled to accommodate their indispensable security provider. Weak and vulnerable regimes in Caracas or Tehran, or Hamas in Gaza, may have no choice but to accept U.S. decisions, attacks, or ultimatums. Yet the most dangerous nations on earth have never been small, fragile states or U.S. allies. That may have seemed true in the two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but history has reasserted itself: great powers that once begrudgingly accepted U.S. primacy now long for the return of their lost power, influence, and prestige.
If the President cannot push back against the major powers that most vehemently oppose a U.S.-led world order, then a two-day raid over Iranian skies, ineffective strikes on the Houthis, or the destruction of fishing boats in the Caribbean all become powerful statements that nonetheless conceal a deeper strategic weakness.
Even when confronting minor powers, this administration routinely pulls its punches. The President and his national-security team had no concrete plan to destroy Iran’s nuclear program by force before making a spontaneous decision under convenient duress. The Israeli government skillfully created a fait accompli that fortunately forced the President to act—action he might otherwise have avoided, as he did when he failed to respond to Iranian attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf, the missile strike on Saudi Arabia, or the downing of a U.S. drone during his first term.
When he did act, he declared a premature end to the operation after roughly 48 hours, even though the Iranian regime was nearing institutional collapse and Israel was prepared to further loosen the Ayatollahs’ grip on power by expanding operations against the leadership and its machinery of repression. Similarly, anti-Houthi operations ended before achieving any strategic objectives, and rather than toppling the Venezuelan regime, the administration confined itself to sinking a few drug-running vessels.
Some may interpret this restraint as prudence, but it is anything but. It exposes the President’s lack of strategic patience and determination. We do not live in a world where dangers can be neutralized in two days without casualties, after which they simply disappear. They may drop below the media radar, but that does not mean they cease to pose a threat. A government with a short attention span and a low tolerance for risk or pain will always fight the symptoms of a strategic disease rather than its causes—and that is exactly what Trump has done whenever he mustered the will to use force in the Caribbean, Yemen, or Iran.
The ability to quickly and almost effortlessly treat symptoms without addressing causes is a luxury afforded to the United States only when dealing with small and powerless states. Once the adversary is a major power—such as Russia in Ukraine—confrontation is no longer a matter of days or weeks, but of years and hundreds of billions of dollars if the United States truly intends to shape events in a manner consistent with its interests and ideals.
It is therefore crucial to understand that the cost of challenging an adversary correlates directly with the urgency of doing so. If pushing back against such a nation is already burdensome now, one must consider the far greater costs of stopping it after it has been allowed to secure its preliminary objectives.
