Trump 47 Foreign Policy
It's still murky but already quite different from the Trump 45 administration's.
In yesterday’s post, “The Artlessness of the Deal,” I argued that, “while I don’t think Trump has a grand strategy in the way that Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, or Ronald Reagan did, he very much has a foreign policy instinct. It’s that of someone who has spent decades in the world of commercial real estate, which he sees as a system to be played and where rules are for suckers.” He sees the world in a very transactional manner and operates off his gut, not some ideological vision.
Because of that, it’s just not clear what the administration’s foreign policy goals are. Marco Rubio is a pretty conventional choice for Secretary of State but Pete Hegseth at Defense was anything but. Michael Waltz, his National Security Advisor, is a huge China hawk, who thinks we’re in a new Cold War. Elbridge Colby, the incoming Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, is in that camp as well.
And, yes, people matter. Regardless of how much attention a President personally pays to a given issue, the people he puts in place at the top of agencies will drive their policy actions. And, to the extent the agencies remain in place, they will carry on day-to-day business regardless.
Behind the blustery language, the Trump 45 foreign policy was, with a handful of exceptions, pretty normal. The 2017 National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy were not a huge leap from where the Obama administration left off. Obama and Hillary Clinton announced a “pivot to Asia,” later rebranded as a “rebalance,” in 2011 and the Trump administration carried that to its natural conclusion, announcing that Great Power Competition with China and Russia was now the cornerstone of US foreign policy. While they were billed as equals, it was clear that China was the priority. Notably, despite Trump’s own rhetoric, there were many references to the value of allies and partners.
But that administration’s foreign policy team mainly consisted of normies. There were a lot of general officers, retired or otherwise, who had spent decades defending traditional U.S. foreign policy goals. And most others in key positions were long-time Republican foreign policy hands or, like Rex Tillerson, globally-minded businessmen.
The vision was so normal that the Biden team merely tweaked it, declaring China the “pacing threat” that would drive defense procurement and force design but listing Russia as an “acute threat” because of its aggressive actions in the neighborhood, notably the invasion of Ukraine.
It’ll be months before we see the Trump 47 NSS and NDS. I do expect that it will be heavily focused on competition with China. By all indications, there will be a lot less emphasis on Russia. And, given the humiliation of Zelensky, the dismantling of USAID, and other indicators, a lot less emphasis on soft power.
While I disagree with much of this, it makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of a transactional view of foreign policy. While I instinctively support the traditional primacy approach, the fact of the matter is that even the near-trillion dollar annual defense budget was inadequate to prepare to fight the pacing threat, contain the acute threat, and also deal with the persistent threats of Iran, North Korea, violent extremist organizations, pandemics, and the effects of climate change. (This is a longstanding critique of every post-Cold War President’s strategy documents.) While we’ve been claiming to prioritize China for fourteen years now, we really haven’t.
Realistically, we’re not going to increase our toplines. It’s really, really hard to justify spending a trillion dollars a year on defense in what appears to the average citizen as peacetime. And all indications are that Trump is going to push for a massive increase in the Navy’s shipbuilding budget. That money has to come from somewhere.
So, while very much deplore the style, the instinct that Europe is going to have to significantly increase its defense spending in order to take on the lion’s share of the Russia burden is right. But I fear the style is going to do permanent damage to a hard-built alliance, if it hasn’t already.
I’ll expand on some of these themes in subsequent posts.
Is that Trump in the picture? He is barely recognizable.
With Trump, that personnel is policy is doubly true, as he’s not paying attention to details.
@James: I feel like you are downplaying, if not almost ignoring, the degree to which the administration’s approach to Europe is not just about Asia and NATO defense spending levels but is an attack on the post-WWII alliance structure. This, in turn, threatens the rules-based, US-led system and has the very real possibility of shifting the foundation of global politics back to a system that looks more like the 19th-century sphere of influence/great power politics system.
Do you not see it that way?
What Trump is doing vis-a-vis Europe strikes me as seismic, but you keep writing about it like it is thermostatic.
I think a lot of this is the way they are going about it. I think it helps to remember that communication from Trump always has as his primary or secondary audience his base. He needs to give them a constant stream of red meat, which I think he actually seems to enjoy and its one of the few things he is good at. His base needs people to blame for why we arent “great agian” which really means why dont they have great jobs and lots of money. The right wing is convinced that among other reasons, we spend too much money on Europe so being mean to Europe and anyone from Europe is good.
As you note there is an element of truth here in that Europe is able to shoulder more of the burden of its own protection and it should do that. A more normal administration would sit down with NATO and lay out a schedule. It wouldn’t side with Russia and abandon Ukraine. It wouldn’t focus on trying to make foreign leaders grovel.
Steve
Foreign Policy Goal #1; enrich Trump.
Foreign Policy Goal #2; please Putin.
Nothing has changed.
In addition to his Gaza wet dreams…
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/25/politics/trumps-foreign-business-partners-promoting-projects-invs
I understand that everyone sees China on the rise and the need to thwart its ambitions but I don’t see any hard power global expansion. That is all geared to the adjacent countries: Japan, S. Korea, Philipines, Taiwan. The rest is its huge use of soft power; specifically, its Belt and Roads program. Yet we are cutting our soft power capabilities and I doubt that an expansive Navy is the hard power answer. It just seems to be very old 19th century, Great White Fleet thinking.
@Scott: And the Trump admin just gutted our soft power agency.
@Scott:
The amusing thing is that China is also destroying the capacity for separate power of a very important neighbour: Russia.
Xi has managed that very neatly indeed.
However, China would certainly like its neighbours to be subservient; or in Taiwan’s case, absorbed.
Once that’s achieved?
Power is an appetite that often grows with the eating.
The Soviet Union major threat was never really global.
That was more distraction and compensation.
The key was always Europe.
Similarly with China: if it is able to coerce or co-opt Japan and South Korea, it will massively increase its potential power.
@Steven L. Taylor: this sentence caught my eye: the very real possibility of shifting the foundation of global politics back to a system that looks more like the 19th-century sphere of influence/great power politics system. If Trump lusts for the Gilded Age economics – i.e., tariffs and no income tax – why not also look to the same era’s foreign policy? America’s new emoji can be a Model T’s a rear view mirror.
This whole post reads like someone desperately trying to convince himself that there is something else going on than Trump following his worst inclinations.
Just more sanewashing to make the indefensible a bit more palatable. It’s intellectual cowardice.
@drj:
We could even make a short list. Trump:
* has announced trade wars against the US’ closest allies
* wants to annex Canada
* threatens military intervention in Mexico
* threatens Denmark over its unwillingness to sell Greenland
* wants to annex the Canal Zone in Panama
* does not just abandon Europe, but also accommodates Russia in everything
Of course, Trump also refuses to commit to the defense of Taiwan. So pivot to Asia? Really?
Am I the only one thinking “Agent 47”?
47, an assassin, had better morals.
@Steven L. Taylor: I think James’ analysis also ignores the force multiplier effect of our NATO engagement. It would be one thing to fight a two-front war where NATO was significantly engaged on at least one of those fronts and an entirely different thing to fight two such wars entirely on our own. In addition to actively cratering our soft power, the Trump administration appears to be isolating our military power. Is it our plan to coordinate our armed forces with Russia? We have seen their capacities. This would be like giving up a fighter jet for a biplane.
A transactional view of foreign policy makes sense only if the transactions are tethered to some reality, no? It seems too generous to me if the foreign policy includes transacting Gaza into a Mediterranean resort, transacting Ukraine into West Russia, and transacting Canada and Mexico into adversaries.
This is the simpleton’s view of a transactional foreign policy.
China is going to eat our lunch with these idiots in charge.
I know a bit of Mandarin because of an ex, but I should brush up hard.
If you’re going into the abyss anyway, might as well accelerate.
@Scott F.:
I forgot about Gaza. Totally sane foreign policy idea, not really what I would prefer, but makes perfect sense if one sees the world in transactional terms.
I am not a crank.
@Daryl:
Exactly right. Trump is flatly incapable of thinking beyond his own greed for money, his need for praise, and his need to always stay on Putin’s right side. That is the entire Trump policy.
To the extent that any other policy positions are taken they are crafted by others and will be abandoned the instant Trump sees a chance of advancing goals #1 and/or #2 above. See: the Trump Gaza Resort.
As for growing the Navy, the questions are why and how. The effect of better anti-ship missiles and the startlingly fast rise of drones, limits the sea an aircraft carrier can sail safely. There is a pretty good argument that our reliance on aircraft carrier battle groups is the equivalent of the fantasy that battleships would dominate naval warfare in WW2. Carriers cannot sail safely into the Persian Gulf, or the Taiwan Strait, the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea and increasingly, the South China Sea. This dramatically reduces the usefulness of carrier-based planes.
It costs $13 billion to build a new aircraft carrier. More if you add things like, well, aircraft. An anti-ship missile costs typically 1-2 million. One can disable a carrier. Of course the carrier battle group has defenses, but defenses against 100 missiles? 500 missiles, costing just half a billion to a billion dollars? Taking it to a reductio ad absurdum, an opponent could fire thousands of missiles against a single carrier. And if the carrier is disabled or sunk, the entire battle group is effectively useless.
But I’m sure the drunk talk show host running the Pentagon, along with all the Chiefs who’ve been willing to lick Trump’s backside, will make the right choices.
@Steven L. Taylor: I’ll write about this separately, although I think I indirectly addressed it yesterday: he thinks the liberal international order is a sucker’s game for the leading power.
@Steven L. Taylor: Moreover, Europe must have a Great Power sponsor. They can’t isolate into ‘Europe First’.
Guess which Great Power that brings into play—when pretty much
If that’s not America—then guess who they gravitate closer to? Which, in turn submarines any Pacific strategic. If Trumpski’s world view is for Russia (Europe), China (Asia) and America (South America) to carve up the world—then people should know that the pie Americans typically enjoyed is about to get a lot smaller. Under a sphere of influence model—The Americas are a middling piece of Real Estate.
And oh, by the way, China has made significant inroads there that they don’t simply just “give up”.
Shorter — these are the moves of a stupid man enabled by people who are motivated by cultural dominance of perceived domestic enemies than by real economic consideration. There is no pacific strategy if Europe is isolated by America because they will make deals with China. ALL of US Global security guarantees assume a coalition. Without it—we are a regional power masquerading as a global power.
The substance is also trash. Plenty of Americans inside and outside of the national security apparatus have loudly raised objections to Europe’s sleepy fecklessness on security issues — especially post-MH17. That’s not the thrust of what Trump is doing. In addition to being an Epstein-bestie rapist who incited a terror attack on Congress, Trump is also an incompetent narcissist and compulsive liar who has spoken favorably of Hitler, has Nazis like Elon Musk at his side. His bashing of Europe is based on a) his anti-American and, frankly, evil affinity for murderous dictators and b) his sloppiness, recklessness, and incompetence.
Competent presidents have wisely kept these frustrations behind closed doors, to avoid isolating America and weaken the democratic world.
I would hope our military is not falling for this, “It’s just Trump’s style that’s the problem here” gaslighting. He is incompetent, amoral, criminal, and unqualified. There is no justification for putting the US in league with North Korea, Iran, China, and Russia.
Meh. As glib as claiming Hitler “Stalin and Pol Pol very much had a depopulation instinct.” Trump has textbook narcissistic personality disorder. His instinct is me me me me me. What he’s doing is not coherent enough to qualify as foreign policy. This weak, insecure orange idiot is allowing Putin, Xi, Musk, and Netanyahu direct US foreign policy by exploiting his mental and moral deficiencies.
The reckless MAGA administration is making errors at all points: aviation safety, international relations, public health, inflation, deficits, basic HR and on and on.
I envy past me. Past me didn’t have to worry about our government trying to undo America.
@Jim X 32:
Ding ding ding!
Trump is a idiot. It’s not much deeper than that. Stupid people continually make big mistakes.
Like, for example, the stupidity of voting for an already-failed president who publicly sexualized his own daughter, incited a terror attack on Congress, and left us with mass death and recession due to his COVID incompetence.
Derp.
@James Joyner:
I agree. I just do not see how you are accounting for the implications of that in your ongoing analysis.
@Jim X 32:
I think you are overestimating Russia’s status.
The real threat is not, as far as I see it, anyway, Europe aligning with Russia but, rather, Europe eventually turning on itself. The great power competition that will arise will be the old school Germany, UK, France game as they all try to assert their own vision of post-NATO Europe.
Trumps policy towards ANYTHING is always “What is good for Donald Trump”.
That’s it. There are no other goals or considerations.
Every action is to maximize his wealth or ego.
The bullying, the lies, even the flexes of arbitrary capricious power are all in service to inflating himself.
It’s frustrating that after more than half a century in the public eye and a full decade as the head of the GOP people are doing this chin stroking routine of “But who is Trump, really?”
@Chip Daniels: The chin scratching is a reflection of amazement on the part of punditry that the American people made the same mistake twice.
And needing to still make a living by commenting on the circus in ways that offend neither the consumers of the product nor the sources of access. It’s really a mess.
I’ve been super busy and without time to comment.
In general, I agree with your posts on this and would maybe characterize it a bit differently.
In my view, as I’ve noted many times before, Trump’s view of the world is not based on principles, ideology, or the rules-based order on which modern secular democracies and alliances are built, but a kind of patrimonialism or even patrimonialism directly. I think everything he’s done so far this term supports that view, both domestically and internationally.
Ukraine is a country, in his view, that has done nothing for the US except waste resources we’ve given them, and to add insult to injury, Zelensky consistently refuses to kiss the ring and swear fealty in a material way.
I think there is also a big element of Trump wanting to make a deal that achieves “peace” he can personally claim credit for. His flavor of patrimonialism is highly egotistical and narcissistic.
John Bolton was on the Fifth Column podcast (well worth a listen) talking about Trump, and his experience as his “longest serving national security advisor” is all along these lines. Bolton says that Trump constantly sees everything in terms of “deals” that he can “win” and claim credit for, usually through bullying tactics. Being a “sucker” is the worst thing which he avoids. Bolton says Trump doesn’t care who wins or loses the Ukraine war, or the specifics of any settlement, he only cares about being the one to make the deal happen in such a way that he looks good, and so that he can point to some tangible material benefit (like minerals). Trump will then expect a Nobel Peace Prize, which is, apparently, something he aspires to.
Anyway, in patrimonialism, principles don’t matter. Trump represents a return to the pre-modern way of doing politics. Those of us who actually believe that principles, processes, the even application of the rule of law, and other values are important are naturally aghast because Trump doesn’t share any of them, and patrimonialism is the opposite. The reality is there’s nothing that will change Trump’s worldview, and attempts to argue for the rules-based order, principles, etc., are doomed to failure.
@Chip Daniels:
In 1988 Spy magazine had a feature article about this god-awful real estate nepo-baby blatantly being an attention-seeking asshole named Donald Trump. Didn’t know him from Adam.
I subscribed. Article mostly went over my head. I lived in Minneapolis, naming clubs and micro-neighborhoods in Manhattan bypasses me.
The Spy article is the origin of Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian”.
I read the article even though I had zero knowledge of who he was. Some asshole who gatekeepers actively hated.
I read and moved on. Wasn’t my problem.
This jag-off has been President twice!
Imagine being so awful that a magazine writes an article about how shitty you are in your upswing.
Jonathan V. Last’s opinion on this topic:
@de stijl:
Now imagine what kind of society has a system and population that elects such a[expletive, deleted] twice.
@Steven L. Taylor: In my analysis, the Great Power sponsor of Europe would indeed be China.
Russian is a regional power who, absent selling you gas and weapons, lacks the GDP to be considered an attractive trading partner.
China has no real beef with Europe outside of its antagonism of the United States.
@DK: @Steven L. Taylor: I’ll get to implications in a post later this week. Given constraints, I’ll mostly have to rely on quoting others. Right now, I’m just trying to set the stage for how I think Trump sees the world. And I do think there’s more to it than the “he’s Putin’s puppet” or “he’s just a grifter” angles I see in the comments section.
@Steven L. Taylor:
After 75 years of increasing integration, that ship has sailed. Won’t happen in our or our children’s lifetimes. The Germans and French will not go to war with each other. Any politician suggesting such a thing would get laughed out of the room.
@James Joyner: All things considered, I’ll be OK with it if you downplay some topics, including foreign policy, even though they’re within your expertise.
@Jim X 32:
And when the likely conflict comes between the US and China, the felons destroying the Atlantic Alliance will allow Europe to sit on the sidelines.
@Steven L. Taylor:
My fear is that if the rapist successfully takes over any territory, some in Europe will want to follow suit.
I could get all snarky and ask about the popular grievance level over Schleswig-Holstein or Alsace & Lorraine, but fact is pickings are far easier in the global south, and perhaps the former Soviet Republics.
*Of his wish list, the felon might possibly take the Panama Canal, because no one would get into a war with America to stop him. Plus the canal is most important to the US and North America than to the rest of the world.
How long and how bad would the subsequent guerilla war go on after occupation is anyone’s guess. On the one hand, it’s not like Cuba or Russia or Venezuela have the resources to supply them. On the other hand, guerillas historically operate on very little past grit, determination, and principle.
@Andy:
Bolton (and you) are spot on.
You can see this just play out unless some “grownup” in the Trump universe grows a pair and takes a stand on principle against The Donald. (Secretary of State Marco “Conventional Choice” Rubio would be in the appropriate position, but that ain’t happening if his performance on Friday is any indication.):
— Trump brokers a “deal” wherein the borders of a sovereign country are changed against the will of that country’s citizenry, plus those citizens of neighboring countries. Resistance fighting will persist for years or decades.
— Trump will “look good” in his head and the campaign for his Nobel Prize will start in earnest through his proxies in the GOP and on Fox, OANN, Newsmax, etc.
— Either Trump gets the Nobel Prize for Peace (forever changing the import of the terms “peace” and “Nobel Prize”)
— — OR he doesn’t get the prize and we’ll get non-stop whining until after Trump is long dead and even posthumous award is no longer a possibility for his sycophants. (“Okay, Ivanka. We’ll rename the airport in Jacksonville after your dad, if you’ll just drop this whole Nobel thing!”)
@Scott F.:
You can personally murder thousands and the Nobel committee will give you an award for stopping.
@Andy:
What deal has he struck with Putin that explains a decade during which Trump attacked everyone in the world except Putin, never uttering even the slightest criticism?
@James Joyner:
I’m not sure he’s only talking about Ukraine.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/03/trump-foreign-policy-russia-vision-comparison/81148272007/
40 years ago Russia was the “Evil Empire “, now we’re “aligned”. How did that happen?
@Andy:
In the Putin-Trump relationship, who is the bully, and who is the bullied? IOW, who’s the Top? And who’s the sucker, so to speak?
If Putin is not the Top, why is Trump so carefully deferential to Putin, and only Putin? In a scenario in which one random man broadcasts nudes of the other random man’s wife, who would you say is the bully? What’s the deal, and who got the best of it?
@Michael Reynolds:
Mad Vlad is the top, and the rapist tries to top from the bottom.
My speculation, and that’s all it is, that if there is indeed KGB kompromat, the conclusion within the US intelligence community would be that revealing the truth is more dangerous than the truth itself. Especially now, with a Russian stooge as DNI.
That aside, it would be reckless for the 5 Eyes to continue to share Russia-related intel with the US. Or intel period. Between Elon and Tulsi it is absurd to think that we can keep a secret from the Russians.
@James Joyner: Looking forward to reading it, restraints of the current situation not withstanding. And I agree that grifter and puppet only scratch the surface. And may misinterpret what people are looking at.
@James Joyner:
My objection is that framing Trump as possessing some coherent political ideology or principle normalizes him, turning him into a rational player who can be bargained with and worse, someone who can be constrained by the norms and guardrails of American political structure.
His actions refute this. Aside from personal aggrandizement and ego, the tariffs and enabling of Musk serve absolutely no rational purpose, not even the establishment of an authoritarian state.
A rational fascist could have instituted pogroms against trans people, immigrants, and a certain class of women and remained powerful and popular enough to control the government indefinitely.
But what we are seeing defies any rational analysis. He is savaging not just the outclass, but his own base, and especially rural farm interests, Social Security recipients, Wall St., military veterans and the bureaucrats who he needs to turn the machinery of governance.
I think pundits NEED Trump to be some mysterious figure who can be unlocked and explained by punditry the same way that theologians NEED the cosmos to be a mysterious place which can be given meaning and purpose or conspiracists NEED assassins to be the puppets of vast global forces.
To admit otherwise, that events are random and that sometimes a single mad nihilist can bring down the pillars of the global order is just too terrifying to confront.
Trump. Power bottom.
@Michael Reynolds:
The common element in Trump’s bullying is the perception that the US is getting taken advantage of. He’s going after our major trading partners (including China), NATO, and Ukraine, but not the whole world.
The thing about Russia is that we don’t really give them anything or trade with them, and they don’t give us anything or trade with us. For Trump, there isn’t an asymmetry between the US and Russia that is unfavorable to the US. He doesn’t see, therefore, America as a “sucker” who Russia is taking advantage of.
And Russia isn’t alone in this regard. Trump is playing hardball on tariffs with Mexico, Canada, and China and not anyone else. Trump has threatened tariffs against the EU, which he thinks was “formed to screw the US” but not the UK or other individual countries. The exceptions are cases where a country doesn’t do what we (or Trump) wants – for example, the incident with Colombia where the Trump threat went away once Colombia kissed the ring (in a manner of speaking). There’s no reason to play hardball with Russia for the same reason there’s no reason to play hardball with Brazil or India, or Australia or any number of other countries – Trump doesn’t see an American disadvantage that needs correcting.
On NATO and Ukraine, it’s a similar situation, but instead of economic or trade unfairness, it’s security.
And these can combine. Back in 2017-2018 he was talking loudly about how stupid Europe was for being dependent on Russian gas and energy. He said Europe was “captive to Russia” and expanded on this by also saying it wasn’t fair that the US is spending money to protect Europe from Russia while Europe is doing billions of dollars of deals with Russia and becoming dependent on them for energy. While this aligned with the policy views of previous administrations, Trump took this further and talked about fairness to America, not just the logic of Russian dependency. He pointed this out in terms that Europe is being a sucker emphasizing how unfair it was to America to foot most of the bill for defending Europe. And just today, Trump is talking about the same thing, pointing out how Europe is still buying a lot of natural gas from Russia three years into the war.
Another aspect of Trump is that he is nice and says nice things to people who please him and say nice things about him, and also the opposite – he is unafraid to dump on anyone who isn’t nice to him, even nominal allies. Putin has never said a bad word about Trump. Additionally, although I’m sure Trump would be reluctant to admit it, I bet he appreciates Putin’s tacit support. Why, in Trump’s mind, should he be angry with someone who isn’t (in his view) screwing over America and who, rhetorically at the very least, has supported him? A patrimonialist doesn’t do that – a mob boss has a certain level of respect and deference to another mob boss who plays by the mob boss rules. Putin understands this too, as do many other leaders around the world.
This post is already too long, but I think the kommpromat theory has a lot of problems. The first is that Trump is shameless – a shameless person is difficult to blackmail. The second is that Trump hasn’t given Russia nearly as much as he could. In his first term, Trump first turned on the spigot of weapons to Ukraine (while trying to get a quid pro quo “deal”) and that early support turned out to be crucial for Ukraine’s early successes. Trump is nominally still willing to support Ukraine as long as Ukraine bends the knee and makes an acceptable quid pro quo. All that speaks primarily to Trump’s self-interest, not Russian interest. The third issue is that Trump is the Alpha, and his ego and narcissism would be incompatible with having a master. The final problem is that this would be incredibly difficult to keep secret, especially, as some speculate, if Trump is passing information and receiving instructions. That would be incredibly difficult to do without detection for someone as famous as Trump. The Mueller report was a thorough investigation that found nothing approaching this level of relationship.
It’s not a completely disproven theory (it’s hard to prove a negative), but I consider it to be extremely remote at best.
@Andy:
It’s late for me, but some quick reactions:
The first is that Trump is shameless – a shameless person is difficult to blackmail.
I’m shameless, I could still be blackmailed. Everyone can be blackmailed/extorted and a smart operator would find a lever. But, say, sex in a Moscow hotel with a 14 year old? Color video of Trump taking a messy shit? Everyone can be pressured.
The second is that Trump hasn’t given Russia nearly as much as he could.
In his first term he was constrained by grown-ups. He was obviously frustrated with that and has now done away with all of them. And we have no idea what he’s given them. Boxes of Top Secret documents?
Trump is nominally still willing to support Ukraine as long as Ukraine bends the knee and makes an acceptable quid pro quo. All that speaks primarily to Trump’s self-interest, not Russian interest.
Nominally? Meaning whatever he said five minutes ago? And how does a mining deal serve Trump’s self-interest? Do you know the proposed terms?
The third issue is that Trump is the Alpha, and his ego and narcissism would be incompatible with having a master.
Being seen as the Beta would certainly be incompatible with Trump’s ego. So why does he tolerate being seen that way? Why does he sit mum while Melania’s nudes are splashed all over Russian state-controlled TV? Russian TV refers to him openly as Putin’s lapdog – that ‘s Putin’s media. Trump is not the Alpha.
You don’t understand the psychology. To allow yourself to be in a hierarchy, whatever position you occupy, is to accept domination at some level. A major obeys a colonel, a colonel obeys a general. All those ‘Alpha dogs’ are someone’s Beta. (Why I don’t do hierarchies and have no one below or above me.)
The Mueller report was a thorough investigation that found nothing approaching this level of relationship.
Trump stonewalled Mueller and got away with it. Also, see my speculation above that a revelation of such a relationship would quite possibly be suppressed by the national defense community.
The final problem is that this would be incredibly difficult to keep secret, especially, as some speculate, if Trump is passing information and receiving instructions.
Recall in his first term the phone call with Putin where he excluded the US interpreter and everyone else from the room? And now he’s opened the country’s databases to Musk. Has Musk been vetted? Does he have a security clearance? You have no idea what Trump has given to Putin. And again, who in the US intel community is going to out him?
@Michael Reynolds:
Putin probably “P-whupped” him with praise. Assumed the role of the approving father figure that Trump never had was probably the base, enhanced by other appeals to grandeur, wealth and such. The KGB is legionary for their use of excellent shrinks to analyze their marks professionally, and with great effect.
IMO, Cheney played a similar game on George W. btw.
It’s absurd to describe Trump’s policies as “transactional” when Trump has zero desire to ever follow through on his end of any deal, as Mexico and Canada have just learned.
My opinion: the Transatlantic Alliance is now dead.
We’re just going to wait for it get stinky enough that it actually gets buried.
The French have tghought this for a long time.
Chancellor Merz now seems to agree:
It’s quite plain to the UK as well, but the government is still desperately hoping against hope that Trump can be wheedled and cozened via the Republican and military/security/diplomacy establishments back to the hither shores of sanity.
It’s hard to accept, and still more act upon, the cold truth: a lifetime of British international relations and defence policy basic assumptions has just been burnt to ashes and blown away on the wind.
@JohnSF: I’m coming to your side of the pond this weekend to attend the London Book Fair. I shall be very interested to see what your press has to say about this whole rolling fiasco. At least in London I can get the genuine version, not the watered-down version.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think you are veering into conspiracy theorizing, especially in questioning the credibility of the Mueller report as well as America’s security and intelligence services.
Trump “got away” with the criminal charge of obstruction because of the DoJ policy not to indict sitting Presidents – the obstruction itself wasn’t ultimately successful, and the Mueller report did not find anything close to the kind of relationship you’re suggesting.
You’re simply asserting that the national defense community would suppress information – without evidence. The reality, as we’ve seen for decades now, is that the national defense community leaks information all the time, especially info that is politically damaging. But somehow, this, along with what really happened to JFK, alien bodies, and the rest, were successfully suppressed.
You say I have no idea what Trump has given to Putin. That’s true, but it’s also true that there’s no evidence he’s given Putin anything you’re suggesting, including boxes full of classified documents. But it’s also the case that you have no idea either and also don’t have any evidence – all you have is innuendo, speculation, and skewed interpretations of events that don’t account for the actual ambiguity and full range of possibilities.
Again, it’s possible you could be right, but there are many other improbable theories that one could come up with that could also be right. In my view, the set of interpretations, unknowns, and low-probability circumstances that would need to perfectly align to confirm your theory make it extremely remote, at best.