Beware of an Unconstrained Trump Foreign Policy

We have a good idea of the kinds of terrible decisions we can expect.

Paul Poast expects more of the same on foreign policy from a second Trump administration:

We’ll never know whether Trump being in the White House would have averted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 or made Hamas think better than to attack Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But what we do know is that, with those wars now raging, Trump’s only pronouncement on what he would do if he wins a second term is to insist he could “stop wars with a telephone call.”

Again, much of this should sound familiar, not just to those who have been following the current campaign closely, but for anyone who remembers the policies and rhetoric of Trump’s first term. None of Trump’s bold pronouncements this time around point to any new ideas.

Poast is right that Trump doesn’t have any new ideas. Trump arguably doesn’t have any ideas at all beyond “we’re getting ripped off” and “we should get paid for this.” His foreign policy was often driven by grievances and impulses more than anything else, and we can assume that it would be the same in a second term. Trump didn’t renege on the nuclear deal because he was deeply concerned about so-called sunset clauses or other minutiae of the agreement. He did it because he loathed Obama and wanted to destroy as much of Obama’s legacy as he could.

There will probably be a lot of continuity in U.S. foreign policy under another Trump administration simply because he doesn’t have the patience or attention span to make major changes, but he could decide to go off on strange tangents that we can’t anticipate right now. What petty score will he want to settle? What niche exile cause will he be persuaded to embrace? Which ally will he decide to shakedown out of spite? Which corrupt petrostate will bribe him through his family or his company to change U.S. policy to their liking? We can’t know the precise answers to those questions yet, but we have a good idea of the kinds of terrible decisions we can expect.