Natasha Lindstaedt
President Donald J. Trump attends the 2019 Army Navy Game in Philadelphia, Pa., Dec. 14, 2019. Photo: US Army / Sgt. Dana Clarke
During Donald Trump’s first term, he made clear that he wanted his foreign policy to be as unpredictable as possible, stating: “I don’t want them to know what I’m thinking.”
With the United States’ recent attack on Iran, Trump certainly kept everyone in suspense. While US enemies may not have known what Trump was thinking, the problem was that neither US allies nor US legislators knew, either. Trump apparently did not bother to inform his own vice-president, J D Vance, when he had made the decision.
Trump has portrayed this as a strength. He sees himself as the only one capable of getting certain things done in foreign policy because his unpredictability and risk-taking behavior give him more leverage.
But thus far he has had fewer successes than wins with this approach. His dalliance with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Trump’s first term only resulted in the acceleration of North Korea’s nuclear program.
His great relationship with Vladimir Putin has so far led to no concessions from Moscow regarding the war in Ukraine – even causing Trump to effectively give up trying to resolve that crisis, at least for now.
In Trump’s second term, his MAGA base has been a bit more divided than in his first. On the issue of tariffs, key Republican senators begged him to backpedal, due to concerns that the new tariffs would be catastrophic for the US economy – improving the economy having been one of the issues that propelled him to victory. Yet he went ahead with the tariffs anyway, as some members of his base were in support.
With the Middle East crisis, Trump supporters appeared to be mostly against the US getting involved in a foreign conflict. “No more wars” is a common slogan on the campaign trail.
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