Trump's Bellicose, Chaotic Foreign Policy Is Based on Doing Whatever He Wants

In Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 masterpiece The Great Dictator, there is a scene in which his character “Adenoid Hynkel,” ruler of the antisemitic and fascistic nation named “Tomania,” dreamily juggles a huge balloon painted as a globe—until it bursts. Should our balloon burst, and the possibility is becoming ever greater, the consequences will dwarf anything that Charlie might have imagined.

Since the start of Donald Trump’s second term in 2025, his cult of the personality picked up steam. The Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts has been renamed the Trump Kennedy Center. The president’s name also graces the new $300 million ballroom at the White House and various other Washington buildings. In this vein, he has also called for the construction of a new “Arc de Trump,” and—significantly—plastered his moniker on a new class of Navy battleships.

On the campaign trail, Trump had promised there would be no new wars and that the United States would no longer serve as the “world’s policeman.” But we should have seen what was coming. Glimpses of the future were already apparent when the president changed the “Gulf of Mexico” into the “Gulf of America,” demanded that Denmark surrender Greenland to the United States, and called upon Canada to become our 51st state. Nor was that all. Trump renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War and, despite the cost-cutting frenzy led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, he successfully pressured Congress into passing the first $1 trillion military budget in American history.

Trump’s crass public campaign for the Nobel Prize failed. An Israeli Peace Prize and another from soccer’s FIFA governing body, both hastily created for Trump, proved merely embarrassing substitutes. His attempts to coerce peace in the Russia-Ukraine War had been unsuccessful. The Gaza ceasefire was appearing increasingly fragile, and it was clear that the president had stoked international tensions with his strangely miscalculated tariff policy.

Trump’s actions normalize contempt for international law, rights of national self-determination, and sovereignty.

Trump claims that he has ended more than eight wars all over the globe. But the statement is thin on evidence, whereas it is abundantly clear that the United States was involved in 622 air and drone strike across seven countries in 2025: Afghanistan,, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. The president has never been a staunch advocate of international law or human rights. To the contrary: Trump stated quite openly that he recognized no constraint on his international decision-making authority other than his own “morality,” which should have surprised no one.

As 2026 begins, the president has taken over Venezuela, kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, charging them with “narco-terrorism.” To achieve these ends, the United States launched 22 strikes that killed 110 people, murdered sailors seeking to surrender, and shelled vessels without first determining whether they were actually carrying drugs. Nor did Congress approve Trump’s act of war; it was not even briefed. The enterprise was instead prepared by Trump and a few close advisers in consultation with oil company executives; indeed, this was a war waiting for an excuse to wage it.

Why did Trump do it? The president needed something dramatic in the face of slipping poll numbers, mumblings of discontent among a few supporters, the mess surrounding the Epstein files, the anger resulting from an economic “affordability” crisis, changes in healthcare that put millions at risk, and the growing repulsion against the storm-trooper tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement against immigrants. In 2024, moreover, Trump had demanded that oil companies and the energy sector donate $1 billion to his campaign. They gave him $75 million. Corporations always expect something for their money, and perhaps providing them with a profitable surprise would make them more generous the next time around.

Given Trump’s desire to recreate a past golden age, it made sense for him to justify his Venezuelan policy by invoking the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. This seminal document of American diplomatic history warned foreign powers against interfering in the Western Hemisphere, and contributed to the belief that Central and South America constituted the United States’ sphere of influence. However, Trump gave it a radical twist by declaring that the United States would “run” Venezuela until an “acceptable” sovereign is installed and for now, under his stewardship, the United States would “indefinitely” control sales of its oil and minerals on the open market.

This he calls the “Donroe” Doctrine. Justifications are of secondary importance. He insisted that the Maduro regime was an agent of “narco-terrorism,” which dominated fentanyl smuggling operations, but it turned out that Venezuela was responsible for only about 5% of the fentanyl entering the United States. Trump then changed the narrative by claiming that Maduro was the mastermind behind the cocaine plague, and when that accusation fell flat, he shifted it again by condemning him as a war criminal for possessing weapons of mass destruction.

Americans cheer interventions when they begin, but quickly grow weary when the price comes due. And invading Venezuela might prove to be a high price to pay. There are striking similarities with the plans laid bare in Venezuela and the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. In both cases, there was the lure of oil, a murderous dictator to overthrow, an exaggerated “existential” threat, an arrogant conviction the citizenry of another country would welcome American “liberators” with open arms, and disregard for the chaos that reckless regime change would generate.

Maduro’s regime was authoritarian, brutal, corrupt, and incompetent. But Trump’s actions normalize contempt for international law, rights of national self-determination, and sovereignty. Indeed, calling his overthrow an international police action against narco-terrorism doesn’t change that reality. Arbitrarily snatching world leaders creates widespread fear and destruction and contributes to creating a politics based on the “war of each against all’ that Thomas Hobbes feared above all else, if only because it heightens instability

As became clear in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, to leave a nation without a sovereign is to condemn it to violent rivalry between paramilitary groups. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was installed by the Venezuelan Supreme Court as “interim” president for up to 90 days, though that can be extended by legal means, and an election awaits in the future. She is in an untenable situation. Rodriguez must navigate between independence and submission. She must either stand on her own and risk regime change or serve as a shadow sovereign lacking legitimacy and power.

Trump is satisfied with what has transpired, and he feels emboldened. He is already saber-rattling while making similar charges of drug running against Colombia, Mexico, and Cuba. Trump has also grown more bellicose in insisting that Denmark prioritize American “national security” interests, and either sell or prepare to lose its autonomous territory of Greenland. Whether discord among members of NATO will strengthen its enemies is far less important than Trump’s ability to exercise power in an unimpeded manner

Besides, these policies can change in the blink of an eye should Trump find that alternative approaches better serve his purposes. He has stated openly that his vaunted unpredictability is a tactic to keep his enemies off guard. He neglected to mention, of course, that his erratic behavior gets in the way of planning, heightens distrust, and serves as an incentive for other nations to spend more on defense. He wishes only to be able to do what he wants, when he wants, and wherever he wants. This spirit is infusing his foreign policy and contributing to a spreading existential fear of military conflict.

Nationwide protests have rocked Iran in response to the Islamic Republic’s repression of all democratic tendencies, its incompetence in dealing with questions of infrastructure and water, the corruption of the mullahs, and the complete collapse of the currency. These are brave people risking their lives in the streets, but Trump feels it his duty to take center stage. He has warned that he will intervene should the government wind up killing protesters. It sounds heroic, but such warnings only put protesters at greater risk because the leadership can now claim that they are traitors and agents of “The Great Satan”—and that is precisely what the Supreme Leader has done.

Trump was not thinking about the negative consequences his words might have for those Iranians fighting for freedom. But that is the point: He never thinks about others, only about himself. More likely Trump is thinking about sabotaging further negotiations on a nuclear deal; undermining a regional rival; and making himself appear once again, as with the Maduro affair, as the champion of democracy and peace. Even if the rest of the world disagrees, indeed, that is how he can view himself—and that is what counts.