A scathing new analysis reveals how Donald Trump's much-vaunted foreign policy promises have crumbled into chaos and contradiction, with a leading expert saying the former president "doesn't really know how to 'put America first,' despite his constant bluster."
Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, didn't mince words when speaking to the New York Times about Trump's international record.
"He has delivered no peace, whether in Europe or in the Middle East," Wertheim declared, pointing to Trump's complete failure to end conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza or broker any meaningful diplomatic breakthrough with Iran.
The expert's most damning assessment came when describing Trump's reckless approach to Iran: "His strike on Iran sums up his struggles: a frantic, fumbling attempt at negotiation cut short by a risky attack that sets the stage for further war."
But Wertheim warned that Trump's "inartful dealings are only half the trouble," exposing a deeper systemic problem with America's military overreach.
"Year after year, the United States stations its military forces on geopolitical fault lines in Europe, Asia and the Middle East simultaneously," he said. "And year after year, it gets exactly what it has placed itself to receive, inheriting distant conflicts as its own and lurching from crisis to crisis at times of its many adversaries' choosing."
Despite campaign promises to reduce America's "exorbitant defense burdens," Trump has proven incapable of following through, Wertheim noted. The expert pointed out a glaring contradiction in Trump's approach to Europe.
"Since his secretary of defense announced in February that Europeans must 'take ownership of conventional security on the continent,' U.S. military assets there have essentially remained in place," Wertheim observed.
The problem, according to the expert, is that Trump "can't seem to decide whether to remove some U.S. forces or simply get Europeans to spend more."
"If the United States is going to withdraw certain capabilities, Europeans need to know what they should replace; they cannot step up unless America steps down," Wertheim explained, highlighting the incoherence of Trump's strategy.
Wertheim reserved his harshest criticism for Trump's handling of Asia, saying the former president "saved his most characteristic shortcomings for Asia."
Trump's blanket tariff approach proved catastrophically counterproductive, the expert argued. Rather than targeting just China, Trump imposed "huge tariffs on everyone — not only China but also Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and others" — a move that "damaged U.S. prospects for cooperation and competition alike for much of Asia."
The result? Trump "managed to reduce America's own influence there, while making Beijing look reliable by comparison" — essentially handing China a strategic victory.
At the heart of Trump's foreign policy failures lies a basic intellectual deficit, according to Wertheim's brutal assessment.
"At the bottom of the president's foreign-policy vision is a curious void," the expert stated. "Mr. Trump is famously all about putting American interests first. Yet he has never figured out what he thinks America's most basic interests are."
Wertheim described Trump as someone who "flits between caring little about geostrategic matters, especially compared with trade or immigration, and defaulting to the exorbitant aims of the status quo."
The devastating conclusion: "He may not truly believe in the latter, but he won't devise a replacement if he has no concept of what is essential for the United States to defend and what is not."
