foreign policy

“I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
— Donald Trump, in his victory speech Nov. 6, 2024

It’s bad enough that President Trump has broken that oft-repeated pledge and unilaterally started a war, without engaging either Congress or the American public. And that, by his war of choice against Iran, he has in the most perilous way to date betrayed his signature “America First” standard, at least as longtime proponents Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson and others mean it, and as many people thought he did too.

What’s even worse than Trump’s mendacity about stopping foreign wars is the broader truth that his war on Iran underscores: In the major theaters of U.S. foreign policy — the Mideast, Europe and Asia — he is essentially letting foreigners set his course, America’s course. And to state the obvious: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping do not have America’s interests at heart.

It has long been a defining contradiction of Trump that the wannabe strongman repeatedly shows himself to be in thrall to the world’s actual strongmen. His affinity for them has for years puzzled observers in this country and abroad. Trump strikes a pose — say, on negotiating with Iran about its nukes program, promising peace in Ukraine, hitting China with tariffs — only to crumple after a phone call, a meeting or a slap back from his opposite number.

It’s always hard for a person without a strong core to maintain a stand.

Obviously different factors are at play in Trump’s relationships with Israel, a U.S. ally, with longtime adversaries Russia and China and, more specifically, with each nation’s leaders. But all three cases reflect a personalization of foreign policy that is dangerously unique to Trump. For him, it’s less “what’s good for my country” than “what’s good for me” and “who likes me.” Time and again, he’s been explicit about that.

For all Trump’s cosplaying as a strongman, he shows his weakness as a national leader when he lets foreign counterparts share the wheel with him. As a consequence, he’s driving America erratically at best. At worst, he’s steering into another costly, bloody “forever war” of the sort he railed against for decades.

He’s gone in a direction in the Middle East that, polls show, pluralities or even majorities of Americans didn’t want to go. Trump has received none of the initial rally ’round support that past presidents enjoyed after initiating military operations. That’s a hazardous place to be domestically. Most Republicans are behind Trump on the war, but not by the usual high numbers. After all, it was disgust with forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that sent many people flocking to Trump’s “America First” banner to begin with.

For years he warned that other presidents and presidential candidates would start a war in Iran, World War III even. Yet here we are. And after days of what Kelly derided on air as the “10,000 different explanations” that Trump has given for attacking Iran and killing its top political and military leaders, on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphatically provided just one: Because Israel was going to strike Iran first, the United States had to join the attack to protect U.S. personnel and assets in the region from Iran’s retaliation.

Cue the blowback in MAGA world: “He’s flat out telling us that we’re in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand,” MAGA pundit Matt Walsh lashed out online. And then Trump contradicted his secretary of State on the rationale for the attacks. Yet Rubio wasn’t the only one citing Israel’s plans as the war’s predicate. So did House Speaker “MAGA Mike” Johnson. On Tuesday, Trump himself said he had to act fast because the Iranians “were getting ready to attack Israel.”

As Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, responded, “If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory.”

Similarly, in June, Trump ordered a devastating one-off strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities to support Israel’s 12-day war against Iran. For months after, Netanyahu hounded Trump to stop the subsequent peace talks with Iran and go back on offense with Israel. So now Trump has complied, striking even as negotiations with Iran were ongoing. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the once respected Republican from South Carolina, offered his sycophantic spin: “Bibi and Trump are the modern Roosevelt-Churchill combination.”

The latters’ grave sites surely trembled.

As for Asia, Trump talks a good game against China, and, yes, he’s imposed big tariffs. But just as often he’s backtracked, often after talking with Xi. Trump’s admiration of the Chinese autocrat and his eagerness to please him is palpable. In fact, in dealing with Xi, Trump in both of his terms has violated his own words in “The Art of the Deal”: “The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.”

No one is more worried about Trump’s regard for Xi than the Taiwanese, living under threat from China. Just recently Trump delayed arms sales to Taiwan approved by Congress lest he upset Xi ahead of their Beijing meeting in April.

In Europe, meanwhile, Trump continues to be played by Putin at the “peace” table to end Russia’s war in Ukraine — the war that candidate Trump said he’d settle in a day. More than a year later, he continues to harangue Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky to make concessions to the invader, never demanding anything from Putin.

Most heinously, Trump’s 28-point “peace” plan last November incorporated everything that Putin/Russia dreamed of extracting from Ukraine, and for good reason: The proposal came from Moscow, passed from Putin’s flunky to Trump’s. That followed Trump’s humiliating summit with Putin last August in Alaska, giving the globally reviled Russian an American stage and pageantry and serving no purpose for the United States, only for Trump the showman. All the while, Russia continued ravaging Ukraine.

So much for Trump’s election promise. He doesn’t stop wars (his repeated claims to the contrary). But he does start them.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
Threads: @jkcalmes
X: @jackiekcalmes

The United States, President Trump said Tuesday night, is “bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever.”

“We are the hottest country anywhere in the world,” Trump said in his State of the Union address. “The economy is roaring like never before. America is respected again like never before. We’re winning so much we can’t take it.”

Not so, countered U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

“We just heard Donald Trump do what he does best: lie,” Padilla said.

In a Spanish-language rebuttal delivered on behalf of the Democratic Party, Padilla rebuked the president’s claim that he has brought about the “golden age of America,” accusing Trump of spurring economic uncertainty and plunging U.S. cities into violence.

President Trump gives his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

“The truth is that the State of our Union does not feel strong for everyone,” Padilla said. “Not when the costs of rent, food and electricity keep rising. Not when Republicans raise our medical costs to fund tax cuts for billionaires. And definitely not when federal agents — armed and masked — terrorize our communities by targeting people because of the color of their skin or for speaking Spanish — including immigrants with legal status and citizens.”

Padilla and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who delivered the Democratic rebuttal in English, countered Trump’s upbeat pronouncements by painting a starkly different picture of a country that is deeply divided months before critical midterm congressional elections.

Trump, whose approval ratings have slumped amid concerns about the economy and the harsh tactics deployed in his mass-deportation campaign, touted what he described as victories on foreign policy, including the U.S. ouster of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, and a slowing of inflation.

Padilla sought to counter those claims and rally support for Democrats, who have struggled to formulate an effective response to Trump as he has dominated national discourse in recent years.

Spanberger, speaking from Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, questioned whether Trump is working on behalf of Americans — or in his own self-interest.

Trump, she said, repeatedly has sought to deflect attention away from accusations that he is using the Oval Office to enrich himself and his family and the scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex offender.

“We did not hear the truth from our president,” Spanberger said. “He lied, he scapegoated and he distracted.”

Spanberger, who beat her Republican opponent in the purple state of Virginia last fall by 15 points, said voters are struggling under Trump’s policies and beginning to turn on him. Political winds, she said, are shifting in favor of the Democrats.

Padilla focused heavily on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in cities such as Los Angeles and Minneapolis, where agents this year killed two U.S. citizens who were protesting deportations.

“We see ICE agents using excessive force: entering homes without judicial warrants and shooting at cars with families still inside,” Padilla said. “We are living a nightmare that divides and destroys our communities.”

He was, he said, partly speaking from experience.

Last year, federal agents tackled Padilla to the floor and handcuffed him after he sought to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a news conference in Los Angeles.

Padilla referenced the incident in his speech and encouraged others to defy Trump.

“I am still here standing. Still fighting,” he said. “And I know you are still standing and still fighting too.”

“Trump does not want us to recognize our power,” he said.

Padilla also slipped in a reference to Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny, who was criticized by Trump for performing in Spanish during the halftime of the Super Bowl.

“As Bad Bunny reminded us a few weeks ago: ‘Together, we are America.’” Padilla said. “Together, we rise, because our faith is stronger than any disappointment or any obstacle — including Trump. And together, we will build the future our children deserve.”