American Power Extra: What Even Is Trump's Foreign Policy?

with one of our experts designed to go deeper into the energy, military, and geopolitical stories driving the news. If you're looking for more context, more history, and a better understanding of forces shaping global events, you're in the right place. Take it away, Chad.

“So what exactly is Donald Trump's foreign policy at this point?”

Because it seems we're seeing contradictions everywhere.

Back in April of 2016, Trump promised an American first foreign policy that would replace

"randomness" with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace. He promised allies that quote, "America is going to be reliable again." But in that same speech, he also declared, quote, "we must as a nation be more unpredictable," maybe he meant unpredictable to our adversaries, but anymore, it's just unpredictable. We have ability and unpredictability work against each other when you make both of them

central to a foreign policy, and 10 years later, we can see which one he picked. And that is the first contradiction in his foreign policy, reliability versus chaos, essentially. And it's not nearly the last one. I've counted seven major contradictions, and I'm going to walk you through every one of them.

Now the 2026 national defense strategy prioritizes defending the homeland, deterring China in the Indo-Pacific, making allies carry more of the defense burden, and rebuilding the American defense industrial base.

“It says explicitly that this is not a strategy of isolation.”

It's supposed to concentrate American power on the threats that matter most, while allies handle more of everything else. And in small doses, parts of this strategy have worked. In 2016, Trump complained that only four of America's 28 NATO allies were meeting the alliance's 2% defense spending target.

By 2025, every NATO member had reached 2% and is now moving past it. Trump deserves some credit for pushing burden sharing into the center of NATO's debate. But Putin and his invasion of Ukraine share some of that credit, as does the fact that some of these countries are rightfully nervous about Trump's claims towards Greenland and parts of Canada.

Now Taiwan is moving in the same direction. They just proposed an 18% increase in defense spending for 2027, taking their budget above 3% of GDP, with a goal of 5% by 2030. That also fits Trump theory almost perfectly.

“Countries facing the threat should invest far more in defending themselves, and I agree with”

that theory. What I don't agree with is how Trump did it. But he was part of that push, and China's balladrins in the South China Sea did the rest. But then, Trump repeatedly acts in ways that work against his own strategy.

Let's start with China. In early December, the White House published a national security strategy that said we were pivoting away from the Middle East, and it rested on the assumption that Iran's nuclear program was finished after midnight hammer. A month later, the Pentagon's national defense strategy translated that into force planning.

It warns about avoiding America being drawn into simultaneous major wars across theaters.

It names China as the military priority and calls for a powerful denial defense along

the first island chain which it includes Taiwan. And on Iran, it says our regional allies and partners take primary responsibility with Israel and the Gulf states out front and the United States in support. Both documents, two months apart, share the same answer. Iran belongs to our partners.

That all seemed in line with much of what we expected from Trump, but then Trump went to war with Iran bilaterally with Israel, and now faces the blowback, unilaterally. Five months in, the United States has used virtually all of its available long-range precision missiles. Estimates suggest roughly 65% of available patriot interceptors and 38% of fat interceptors

have been consumed along with nearly half of the Navy's Tomahawk inventory. Other estimates from the Washington Post put that depletion at near 80%. Basically, weapons built for a major war are being consumed in the Middle East, expended on a war of choice.

Now the administration knows this is a problem, they signed a deal worth more than 3 billion

to triple patriot component capacity and quadruple fat component capacity, as well as increased Tomahawk production from roughly 60 missiles annually to as many as 1000. That's a good policy. It's also a year late, because factories cannot instantly replace missiles that have already been fired.

This needed to happen before any movement toward Iran not after. Then we have the U.S. George Washington, which is pulled from the Western Pacific and moved towards the Middle East to replace the Abraham Lincoln. This left China's backyard without a deployed American aircraft carrier while China keeps pressure on Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines.

So we have contradiction number two, and he wrote it down twice. That Israel and the Gulf were to carry Iran so that we can carry China. Then we carried Iran ourselves for five months so far, using the missiles that we reserved

The missiles are not the only place where this China policy runs into China reality.

“On January 14th of this year, the administration reversed export rules that had stood since”

2022 and approved sales of NVIDIA's H-200 chip to China. Commerce moved its license review from a presumption of denial to a case by case standard. And the federal government now takes a 25% cut of the sales. And to me, that seems kind of shady. Now, that H-200 is not NVIDIA's best chip, Blackwell and Ruben were held back.

But it's roughly six times more powerful than anything Huawei can build at scale inside

China today. And Chinese firms placed orders for more than two million of them. So the national defense strategy says China is the threat we're organizing our entire military around, yet the same administration sold Beijing, the computing power it needs to close the artificial intelligence gap with the U.S. and the U.S. government took a cut

of the cash as those chips were moved out the door. So that is contradiction number three. China is this threat that we're rebuilding the entire military to deter. But also is a customer, we're selling some of our top technology to.

“And that brings us to North Korea, which is a part of that same China deterrence spectrum.”

Trump ordered the old chief freedom shield exercise with South Korea cut short by six days. He said it cost and South Korea's refusal to support his war in Iran as well as his quote "very good relationship with Kim Jong-un." Now I planned exercises like this in NATO for three years. So let me tell you what exactly got cut because just saying it was six days does not capture

what actually happened. Old chief freedom shield runs in two phases across 11 days. Phase one is defensive operations where you absorb the attack.

We always play defense first.

Phase two is the counterattack where you take back the ground you go on the offensive. Phase two is the part Pyongyang hates the most although they hate the whole thing in general. But phase two was the part that got canceled entirely. 14 joint field training events were on the schedule. Trump cut those in half.

The whole thing ended after five days. But here's the contradiction.

“This year's exercise was supposed to assess the command systems behind the transfer of wartime”

operational control to South Korea. It has the arrangement where in an actual war a Korean general commands Korean forces instead of relying on an American one. Seoul has wanted this for two decades but it was conditions based which means somebody has to certify the conditions are met and you certify them by running the exercise to completion.

You cannot certify a phase you did not run. So the timeline slips again and the ally we say we want to be more self-sufficient and gets told you got to wait a little longer for the one thing that would make you more self-sufficient. And North Korea's responsiveness will have a bunch of concessions to the United States of

course. No, I'm absolutely kidding. Instead, they deployed 8,500 more troops to Russia and launched 10 ballistic missiles as a training event for a potential war with South Korea in the US.

Basically each one of those being a big middle finger aimed at Donald Trump.

Kim Jong-un's sister Kim Yo-jung said the aggressive nature of the drills doesn't change just because somebody made them shorter. So it is Trump's art of the deal here. Apparently you make concessions to a country that hates us and is training to fight and kill us and get nothing in return.

South Korea's defense minister estimates North Korea's arsenal sits at between 80 to 120 nuclear weapons. Donald Trump said it is exactly 57 which if true is an extraordinary opposite for each letting North Korea know we know exactly how many nuclear weapons they have and why would we know that well probably because we have been infiltrated now Kim Jong-un might be going

and looking for these spies. But then again it could have just as equally been Donald Trump bullshitting. Either way, Pyongyang has made no nuclear concessions in exchange for reduced exercises, no concessions on assisting Russia and Ukraine, no concessions on human rights inside their own country.

Seoul is obviously frustrated here and we look very weak. But Trump's strategy says South Korea should take primary responsibility for deterring North Korea. You cannot tell an ally to take primary responsibility and cancel the exercise phase that certifies them to take it.

So we have contradiction number four. We told Seoul to own their own defense, then canceled the assessment that would let them own it. While we're contradicting this aspect, we are five months into a war with Iran to stop them from building a nuclear weapon while also providing concessions to a country that already

has up to 120 of them and may now be sharing that technology with the country where bomb bombing. And the long-term consequence is likely to be more nuclear proliferation around the world. American alliances have kept countries like South Korea, Japan and Germany from deciding they need their own nuclear weapons.

And the American nuclear umbrella has been that stop gap. But if ally start believing American protection depends on whether their government

America and build a deterrent of your own.

“That conversation is now happening everywhere, from Tokyo to Riyad in Saudi Arabia, as they”

just signed a security pact with Pakistan, another nuclear power. Europe has the same problem in a different theater. Trump helped pressure NATO into dramatically higher defense spending. Then during the Iran war, he threatened to leave NATO because European governments would not join the fight.

We later announced the withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany after Trump got angry about German criticism of the war and Iran. So what does that teach the Europeans that American cooperation gets cut if you declined to join an unrelated American war so you better get stronger on your own. And so we pull 5,000 troops out of Germany, not because Berlin is missing a spending target

or not meeting their obligations. They are. They're hitting their targets. We pulled them because Germany criticized Trump and his war in Iran. So that is contradiction number 5.

“The published standard is that you get rewarded for increasing your defense spending along”

the lines of what NATO is requiring for this current geostrategic scenario in a fight with Russia.

But the applied standard by the US is basically "Do you currently agree with Trump?"

And did you agree with him yesterday? And if not, he's going to throw a temper tantrum and punish you. And this brings us to Greenland. In January, Trump refused to rule out using military force to take Greenland from Denmark. Denmark is a NATO ally.

Trump then announced a 10% tariff on Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, starting February 1, and rising to 25% on June 1, unless Denmark handed the island over. Europe's answer was Operation Arctic endurance. Denmark led it.

Roughly a dozen European NATO countries sent personnel and aircraft to Greenland. Think about that for a second.

“NATO members ran a military presence operation on NATO territory in order to deter the United”

States of America. Yes, Trump reversed himself at Davos on January 21, and said he would not use force or impose tariffs. But the damage was already done. The alliance had rehearsed defending itself from the United States.

And by July, Trump was back to saying we need control of Greenland for the protection of the world and floating pulling every American soldier out of Europe. So that brings me to contradiction number six. You cannot demand loyalty from an alliance to help you fight in, say, Iran, and then threaten to invade his territory in the same month.

Now Ukraine is the other half of this, and it works the same way. The administration demanded Europe spend more on its own defense, and Europe did. Trump demanded Europe take more ownership in the war in Ukraine. They tried. But the negotiations surrounding the war in Ukraine that are taking place on Europe's doorstep

have been run over Europe's head by the United States. Steve Witkov has traveled to Russia six times as special envoy. He has not been to Ukraine once. All while Europe is left in the dark, but then scolded for not being involved. So that is contradiction number seven.

We told Europe to take responsibility for its own continent and then built the channels and the back channels that actually decide Europe's future without them in it. But now that makes me think of one additional contradiction. This will be contradiction number eight, and it's the most glaring, and it made me think of it when I was talking about Iran.

Trump campaigned against long Middle Eastern wars. His own 2016 speech argued that military force should only be used when absolutely necessary in limited quantities and tied to a plan for victory. So where is the plan for victory in Iran? We've lurched from targeted strikes on nuclear programs to a broader air campaign to a

blockade to negotiations bordering on pleading to now an economic day. This is a administration throwing darts at a dartboard while issuing hollow threats. So there is no plan for victory here.

And this war has already cost us around $50 billion with 18 American service members

killed and 543 wounded. Trump campaigned on deals that would put money back in American's pockets. Meanwhile, Brent Crude closed at around $95 a barrel, as of right now when I'm recording this in late August, and that number understands what is actually happening because refining capacity is the real constraint, and that is largely why gas prices stay elevated.

And the goal of this war remains elusive even inside the administration. Trump says preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon is the number one goal. JD Vance called lowering fuel prices is as goal number one. Rubio said the number one goal is reopening Hormuz, then later said the soul mission was denuclearization.

Trump has also said the primary goal is regime change to get a government friendlier to the US. And the incoherence runs all the way to Trump potentially even countering our own allies when he said if a man gets in the way, we'll bomb the shit out of them.

This is the absence of a strategy.

“If Trump rubio headset Vance and the co-com commanders cannot agree on which objectives rank”

first in this operation, then nothing downstream of these decisions can be coherent either.

And so that brings me to contradiction number eight. This is a man that campaigned against open-ended Middle East wars with no definition of victory. He is now running one. So Trump's on predictability is becoming dangerous.

It's pushing countries like Russia and China towards more belligerent decisions. Strategic unpredictability can be useful against an enemy, but allies need the opposite. North Korea needs to know whether America fights if it is attack. NATO needs Russia to believe article five is real. Taiwan needs Beijing to calculate that in attack becomes extraordinarily costly because

the US would respond. But when everyone is uncertain what the United States, the strongest power will do, order around the world degrades and are adversaries exploited. North Korea is now testing how much Trump values his relationship with Kim against the readiness of American coalitions.

“Russia is testing whether Europe and Washington will stay aligned as Moscow continues”

to prosecute its war in Ukraine. And Russia conducts gray zone warfare on the European continent all while Trump gushes over Putin. China gets to watch our carriers and missile invitories drift towards the Middle East while

calculating how much US combat power would actually be available in the first weeks of

taking kinetic action against Taiwan. Now, before I close this out, I want to address one of the best arguments that is often given by defenders of this administration's plan here to be chaotic because there really is only one. And it goes like this, predictability is what got us into this trouble.

When allies know exactly what America will do, they underinvest and free ride, because why pay for something that the United States covers anyway, predictability forces them to buy their own security. A European that can defend itself without us isn't a failure of the alliance. It's the point.

And it frees American power to concentrate on the Pacific or the real long-term competition sits. And the burden-sharing numbers say it's supposedly working in Europe. But here's where it falls apart in leadership. The theory only holds if that freed up American power actually shows up in the Pacific.

If it actually deters, it's not right now. It didn't deter. It's not right now because we're leaving for the Middle East. We burned through the Tomahawk's, the Patriots, the Thads, and our carrier presence in the exact theater that we were told in official documents by the Trump administration was

the priority is now not, or at least it's being ignored. And notice this defense, I just presented this defense that Maga will use to defend what the Trump administration is doing. Doesn't actually resolve a single one of the eight or so contradictions. Just argues the contradictions are worth the price.

So what should we do to actually fix this?

“If I were in the seated advising Trump, what would I say?”

Well, first off, name one objective in Iran and then rank the rest out loud after that.

The approach cannot be everything at once. You need to pick one. If it's no nuclear weapon fine, fuel prices and harm moves great. If it's regime change, because that's something Trump floated, I doubt it. Okay, great.

We'll work on that. It cannot change depending on who is at the microphone talking about the policy Obama focused on one agenda item and got a good deal with the JCPOA. So pick the top priority and address it. Everything else is a supporting effort.

Now second of all, rebuild before you spend. The Patriot and Thad deals and the Tomahawk ramp up are good, but they were signed well after we emptied the magazines. It's reactionary and factories don't work backwards. We can't go back in time.

So now we need to have production increases that lead any future deployments and we need to do this quickly. And if we do finally build up stocks, we need them allocated regionally. There should be Pacific-allitated stocks, European-allitated stocks, etc. And then we fence them off so a foolish Middle East campaign can't quietly eat the inventory

meant to deter Beijing or fight against Moscow. Third, stop giving concessions such as trading our readiness for nothing. If you shorten an exercise, something comes back across the table, a verified concession, a testing pause, something, and you don't cancel the phase that certifies the arrangement your ally has been asking for for 20 years.

Fourth, separate the alliances from the transactional nature of Trump. I know this is hard because Trump is in the seat, but terror threats and territorial claims against NATO members don't buy us anything. We could use a basing agreement and it would be cheaper. This Trump approach costs us to turn, that you can't purchase back at a cheap price.

Greenland is a case study in burning political capital and getting nothing in return when

And then finally, pick a lane on China.

“Either it's the threat the entire military is being rebuilt around, or it's a customer”

for our most advanced ships. It can't be both. Right now, we are contradicting our own selves and it's actually going to hurt our own national security interests. But the funny thing is, this is mostly the strategy they already wrote.

They just aren't following it. So while voters thought they were getting isolationism, that's not what this is.

“As I said, it is transactional American primacy.”

Trump wants the United States to remain the most powerful country on earth.

He wants a huge military, which is why he's asking for like a 41% increase in the budget. He wants economic levers that he can flex at any time. But transactional primacy creates weaker alliances, degrade the economic ties and intelligent sharing, as well as our deterrence. And it doesn't stop there.

Trump also wants maximum personal, and I'm emphasizing personal freedom to decide when alliance is matter, when treaties matter, when diplomacy matters. And when he gets to use force personally, whether it's in small bursts, in places like Venezuela, or massive campaigns as it is in Iran. One man deciding it all.

That's a problem.

Trump's America first policy wants fewer obligations to participate in the Western

order to defend that Western order, but also maximum freedom to do whatever he wants around the globe, but also drag our allies along with us. He wants allies strong enough to carry their own weight, but obedient to the United States. He wants to conserve military resources for China while fighting a major war against Iran that expands those very resources.

He wants China contained while selling China the chips it needs to catch up. He wants non proliferation in Iran while accommodating and gushing over a nuclear North Korea and a nuclear Russia. He wants America to stop policing the world while threatening countries all over the world, including allies, whether that's Greenland or Oman or even Canada.

Trump promised to replace this randomness with purpose.

“And 10 years later, our allies and our enemies have concluded that the only thing predictable”

about American foreign policy is that it runs on Donald Trump's wins. For allies, that means they have to hedge against a United States that acts this way. For adversaries, it means they get the opportunity and the space to test our limits. And for Americans, it means we end up paying severely for both.