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Trump’s Favorite Role? Foreign-Policy Czar.
“… By now, following decades of tightly woven interdependence, distrust has become a
central feature of trans-Atlantic relations. No matter what happens next in Ukraine or how the remainder of Trump’s time in office plays out, it will be difficult to recover mutual confidence.
In the shorter term, though, not even the fundamental weakening of the United States’ most important relationship constitutes the worst of the damage. What the Trump administration’s recent diplomacy has laid fully bare is the utterly erratic, unplanned, and personalized character of the president’s method of dealing with the rest of the world.
… From all appearances, the Trump administration’s foreign-policy operations lack in interagency coordination, leading to galling oversights and an overall impression of sheer amateurism. How else to understand the failure to consult with Ukraine’s neighbors before announcing a peace plan delivered with
a short-term ultimatum on compliance?
… At this point, no one would be surprised if that included hints that Trump and members of his family and inner circle, such as Witkoff, could personally profit in the future from large real estate and natural resource deals.
If this theory is borne out, the Trump administration will have laid U.S. diplomacy to ruin by abandoning the principle that international borders should not be changed through force and actively disregarding the country’s longest-standing allies. If naked transactionalism is indeed the motor driving U.S. foreign policy, it will drive Washington’s standing in the world into the ground.“
