{"id":277942,"date":"2025-07-20T17:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T17:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/277942\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T17:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T17:53:09","slug":"trump-and-foreign-policy-bold-promises-unmet-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/277942\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and foreign policy: Bold promises, unmet goals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins in record time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said he would halt Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine<\/a> in 24 hours or less, end Israel\u2019s war in Gaza nearly as quickly and force Iran to end to its nuclear program. He said he\u2019d persuade Canada to become the 51st state<\/a>, take Greenland from Denmark and negotiate 90 trade deals in 90 days<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president believes that his force of personality \u2026 can bend people to do things,\u201d his special envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, explained in May in a Breitbart interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Six months later, none of those ambitious goals<\/a> have been reached.<\/p>\n

Ukraine and Gaza are still at war. Israel and the United States bombed Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, but it\u2019s not clear whether they ended the country\u2019s atomic program once and for all. Canada and Denmark haven\u2019t surrendered any territory. And instead of trade deals, Trump is mostly slapping tariffs on other countries, to the distress of U.S. stock markets.<\/p>\n

It turned out that force of personality couldn\u2019t solve every problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe overestimated his power and underestimated the ability of others to push back,\u201d said Kori Schake, director of foreign policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. \u201cHe often acts as if we\u2019re the only people with leverage, strength or the ability to take action. We\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president has notched important achievements<\/a>. He won a commitment from other members of NATO to increase their defense spending<\/a> to 5% of gross domestic product. The attack on Iran appears to have set Tehran\u2019s nuclear project back for years, even if it didn\u2019t end it. And Trump \u2014 or more precisely, his aides \u2014 helped broker ceasefires between India and Pakistan and between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But none of those measured up to the goals Trump initially set for himself \u2014 much less qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize he has publicly yearned for. \u201cI won\u2019t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this<\/a>,\u201d he grumbled when the Rwanda-Congo agreement was signed.<\/p>\n

The most striking example of unfulfilled expectations has come in Ukraine, the grinding conflict Trump claimed he could end even before his inauguration.<\/p>\n

For months, Trump sounded certain that his warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would produce a deal that would stop the fighting, award Russia most of the territory its troops have seized and end U.S. economic sanctions on Moscow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe he wants peace,\u201d Trump said of Putin in February. \u201cI trust him on this subject<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

But to Trump\u2019s surprise, Putin wasn\u2019t satisfied with his proposal. The Russian leader continued bombing Ukrainian cities even after Trump publicly implored him to halt via social media (\u201cVladimir, STOP!<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n

Critics charged that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. The president bristled: \u201cNobody\u2019s playing me.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as early as April, he admitted to doubts about Putin\u2019s good faith. \u201cIt makes me think that maybe he doesn\u2019t want to stop the war, he\u2019s just tapping me along,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, \u2018Well, that was a nice phone call,\u2019 and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,\u201d Trump complained last week. \u201cAfter that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn\u2019t mean anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president also came under pressure from Republican hawks in Congress who warned privately that if Ukraine collapsed, Trump would be blamed the way his predecessor, President Biden, was blamed for the fall of Afghanistan in 2022.<\/p>\n

So last week, Trump changed course and announced that he will resume supplying U.S.-made missiles to Ukraine \u2014 but by selling them to European countries instead of giving them to Kyiv as Biden had.<\/p>\n

Trump also gave Putin 50 days<\/a> to accept a ceasefire and threatened to impose \u201csecondary tariffs\u201d on countries that buy oil from Russia if he does not comply.<\/p>\n

He said he still hopes Putin will come around. \u201cI\u2019m not done with him, but I\u2019m disappointed in him,\u201d he said in a BBC interview.<\/p>\n

It still isn\u2019t clear how many missiles Ukraine will get and whether they will include long-range weapons that can strike targets deep inside Russia. A White House official said those details are still being worked out.<\/p>\n

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sounded unimpressed by the U.S. actions. \u201cI have no doubt that we will cope,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Foreign policy experts warned that the secondary tariffs Trump proposed could prove impractical. Russia\u2019s two biggest oil customers are China and India; Trump is trying to negotiate major trade agreements with both.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Trump has dispatched Witkoff back to the Middle East to try to arrange a ceasefire in Gaza and reopen nuclear talks with Iran \u2014 the goals he began with six months ago.<\/p>\n

Despite his mercurial style, Trump\u2019s approach to all these foreign crises reflects basic premises that have remained constant for a decade, foreign policy experts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a Trump Doctrine, and it has three basic principles,\u201d Schake said. \u201cAlliances are a burden. Trade exports American jobs. Immigrants steal American jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert Kagan, a former Republican aide now at the Brookings Institution, added one more guiding principle: \u201cHe favors autocrats over democrats.\u201d Trump has a soft spot for foreign strongmen like Putin and China\u2019s Xi Jinping, and has abandoned the long-standing U.S. policy of fostering democracy abroad, Kagan noted.<\/p>\n

The problem, Schake said, is that those principles \u201cimpede Trump\u2019s ability to get things done around the world, and he doesn\u2019t seem to realize it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe international order we built after World War II made American power stronger and more effective,\u201d she said. \u201cTrump and his administration seem bent on presiding over the destruction of that international order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, Kagan argued, Trump\u2019s frenetic imposition of punitive tariffs on other countries comes with serious costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cTariffs are a form of economic warfare,\u201d he said. \u201cTrump is creating enemies for the United States all over the world. … I don\u2019t think you can have a successful foreign policy if everyone in the world mistrusts you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Trump and his aides don\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt cannot be overstated how successful the first six months of this administration have been,\u201d White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. \u201cWith President Trump as commander in chief, the world is a much safer place.\u201d<\/p>\n

That claim will take years to test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[104812,2000,299,805,2194,774,1319,6496,37059,1551,2046,104813,332,3075,1757,657,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-277942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-ability","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-foreign-policy","12":"tag-gaza","13":"tag-iran","14":"tag-last-week","15":"tag-month","16":"tag-other-country","17":"tag-president-trump","18":"tag-putin","19":"tag-robert-kagan","20":"tag-russia","21":"tag-tariff","22":"tag-trump","23":"tag-ukraine","24":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114886843188800873","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}