or months and months, President Donald Trump has bullied other countries on everything from trade to how they govern themselves.
In just the last few days, however, a handful of global players have defied him, showing the limits of his influence.
Iran’s Islamist leaders abandoned peace talks with the U.S., choosing to keep waging war instead. Hungary’s voters tossed out one of Trump’s closest European allies, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Then there’s Pope Leo, who presumably answers to a higher power, saying he has “no fear” of Trump after the president taunted him.
Trump and his aides often appear to operate as if most other people on the planet are “non-player characters” in a video game. They believe, with few exceptions, that America can use threats, economic muscle and military action to bend other capitals to its will.
But foreign policy has some basic laws. One of them, similar to physics, is that every action has a reaction. It may not be equal or opposite, but it also may not be what the Trump team wants.
So far, the Trump administration does not appear to be adjusting well to the reality that more international players are willing to buck the American superpower.
“If there were an appreciation that bullying was no longer a likely to succeed tactic you’d see a move away from it,” but there’s no real sign that Trump is doing so, said Richard Haass, a former president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
More than ever, I’m hearing concerns from foreign officials that critical information about geopolitical dynamics is simply not reaching the president because his aides won’t tell him hard truths. A New York Times rundown of his decision to go to war with Iran has fueled this worry.
“He is surrounded by ‘yes’ people,” one senior European diplomat fumed to me.
The Trump administration’s brash style came across in Vice President JD Vance’s comments after he held 21-hours worth of peace talks with Iranian officials over the weekend.
Iran, Vance said, had “chosen not to accept our terms.”
Such a statement, which Vance gave some version of twice, implied that the U.S. was dictating, not negotiating, despite Vance adding that the U.S. was “quite accommodating.” It did not go over well with supporters of the Islamist regime, while many in other countries saw the whole drama as a missed opportunity to deescalate tensions.
“If you want something from somebody you have to give them something, unless like in World War II they’ve truly surrendered,” said a Western diplomat based in the Middle East. “It can’t just be ‘we’re going to keep beating you.’”
The Trump administration, naturally, rejected my suggestion that its hardline approach is counterproductive.
“Previous administrations, for decades, stood idle while the American people were being ripped off — on imbalanced trade, inequitable defense spending and burden-sharing, uncontrolled illegal mass immigration, anti-American bias in international organizations, and the list goes on. President Trump said ‘no longer,’” Tommy Pigott, a spokesperson for the State Department, told me.
To date, there’s little evidence that Trump or his deputies understand the chain reactions they set off when issuing diktats or that they have learned lessons from past instances of blowback. Or maybe they don’t care?
Sure, Trump may retreat here and there on an issue (the so-called TACO phenomenon), but that is often followed by him later making another push on the same issue.
Take Trump’s insistence that Denmark hand over Greenland.
That was a red line for much of Europe, whose leaders had largely cozied up to Trump during his first year back in office. In January, as Trump ratcheted up his demands for Greenland, European leaders made clear to Trump that he couldn’t have it, then used NATO to promise the U.S. more military access to the island.
Trump backed down, but the damage was done. His Greenland gambit and his constant threats to pull out of NATO have added urgency to European efforts to reduce reliance on the U.S. security apparatus.
As these countries grow less dependent on the U.S., they’re likely to grow more willing to defy Trump.
Rather than responding to that risk, Trump recently signaled he’s not done with Greenland. On April 8, fuming over Europeans’ unwillingness to team up with the U.S. against Iran, Trump vented on social media: “REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!”
Sometimes, it’s anyone’s guess what Trump knows about the second- or third-order effects of his menacing moves.
Trump’s tariffs, for instance, are leading other countries to find new trading partners beyond the U.S., reducing their economic reliance on America. Similar to countries reducing their military dependence, nations with less economic dependence on America are less likely to listen to the U.S. in the future.
Many in the foreign affairs establishment have long fretted that Trump and his team approach the world as if it’s all about making real estate deals the way the president once did in New York. But treating Russia’s war in Ukraine or the Palestinians’ claims on Gaza as being merely about land misses out on how identity, politics and the desire to simply survive as a people is what fuels many conflicts.
Trump and his team often “fail to realize that people tend to fight for what gives their life meaning beyond the purely rational or material cost-benefit analysis,” a former Latin American official told me, having been granted anonymity to talk candidly about a sensitive topic.
There are times when Trump is responsive to the negative impact of his strong-arming.
When China stood up to him on trade — imposing massive retaliatory tariffs and restricting rare earth mineral exports — he essentially called a truce. Still, Trump has always paid closer attention to heavyweight global players such as Beijing or Moscow than he has to ones he dismisses as weaker entities. Besides, it’s hard not to notice blowback from China when it affects stock markets.
A White House official defended Trump’s trade moves, noting that the European Union, Japan, India, South Korea, and the U.K. have lowered trade barriers against U.S. exports and continue to pay tariffs — “proof that the president successfully leveraged America’s economic dominance with respect to our trading partners.”
Haass said Trump could be helping lead the U.S. into a “post-American world” where it is no longer the center of gravity. That is certainly what Beijing wants.
It could be a world in which the U.S. must regularly plead for help instead of knowing it can count on friends who instinctively trust and support it.
“Look, the U.S. is powerful and we have a lot of influence, but we don’t have infinite influence,” said Dan Shapiro, who dealt with the Middle East as a Biden administration official. “Even the best need allies, friends, partners.”
