Impulse Is Not Strategy
By Patrick Theros - March 21, 2026
American foreign policy has always reflected the personality of the president who sets it. Modern presidents, however, relied on the institutional machinery that actually conducts foreign policy to shape and implement their decisions. Without those institutions -- the State Department, the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and a network of alliances and treaties built over eight decades -- no president can conduct a coherent foreign policy, no matter his reputation as a dealmaker in New York’s outer boroughs.
For the record, those institutions do not restrain a president. They advise him on how to achieve his objectives and then execute his decisions effectively.
Since January 20, 2025, however, one man, surrounded by a coterie of sycophants, has taken over both the making of foreign policy and its execution, largely without professional input. In a single year, Donald Trump has alienated allies, smashed agreements and norms built over more than a century, undermined the world economy, and strengthened America’s principal adversaries.
Trump dismantled the tools that sustained American national security. He withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization, weakening early warning against pandemics. He exited the Paris climate agreement, a decision that will haunt our children and grandchildren. He dismantled USAID and froze programs that prevented famine, slowed disease, and drew countries into the American orbit.
He gutted the diplomatic machinery that conducts foreign policy. Trump decimated the US Foreign Service and dismantled America’s information diplomacy, including Voice of America and the broadcasting services that carried truth into closed societies. He appears to believe military power can substitute for diplomacy. In his imagination, tanks, planes, and aircraft carriers replace alliances, relationships, and strategy.
Trump battered the alliances that underpin American power. He imposed tariffs on partners such as Canada, Mexico, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. He revived his obsession with acquiring Greenland and threatened economic retaliation against European governments. He engaged Russia over Ukraine without Ukrainian participation and halted military and intelligence support to Kyiv, stunning allies who had coordinated closely with Washington.
He does not merely strain alliances; he treats them as transactions to be exploited. For a country whose power rests on voluntary alliances rather than coercion, that is strategic malpractice.
Trump has used military force with increasing frequency. He ordered airstrikes in Somalia and Yemen and sank boats (and killed crews) in the Caribbean suspected of narcotics trafficking. “His military” struck Caracas and seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, shattering longstanding norms of sovereignty. I wonder if he has seen too many Rambo films.
His most dangerous decision came when he joined Israel in attacking Iran. The predictable failure of that strike to change the regime in Tehran now threatens a global financial crisis. Iran responded by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, interrupting the flow of one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas as everyone expected. Impulse is no substitute for strategy.
Just as damaging were the decisions he refused to take. Trump continued to supply Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover as the war in Gaza produced mass civilian casualties. He refused to use American leverage to halt what much of the world sees as genocide, making the United States complicit.
At this point, an old question demands an answer: cui bono? Who benefits?
The answer points in an uncomfortable direction. Russia, already fighting a brutal war against Ukraine, has gained directly. The war with Iran disrupted global energy markets and forced the United States to waive restrictions on Russian oil exports. Almost overnight, Trump gifted an estimated $150 billion to Russia’s war economy. His decision to ignite conflict in a region producing one-fifth of the world’s energy delivered a windfall to Vladimir Putin.
The strategic consequences are equally severe. American military resources, e.g., carrier groups, surveillance platforms, and missile-defense systems, are now concentrated in the Middle East rather than the Pacific or Europe. Every ship deployed to the Gulf is one less deterring Russia or countering China’s ambitions around Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
The financial cost compounds the damage. Iranian drones and missiles force American and allied forces to fire hundreds of extremely expensive interceptors such as Patriot, THAAD, and naval Standard Missiles. Each interceptor costs millions of dollars, while the drones they destroy cost a fraction of that amount. Trump has created a battlefield that burns through missile-defense inventories the United States will need if another war erupts elsewhere.
Russia gains yet another advantage through its partnership with Iran. Iranian attacks generate valuable combat data on how American radar and missile defenses operate. Russian engineers will study that data carefully. Trump has handed them a live laboratory for understanding American air-defense systems.
No one claims Trump deliberately set out to help Russia. But intentions matter less than results. The results are clear: he dismantled diplomatic institutions, alienated allies, improvised military adventures, and redirected American power to the benefit of its adversaries.
American power has never rested solely on tanks or missiles. It rests on alliances, credibility, diplomacy, and institutions that translate strength into influence. Trump has attacked each of those pillars. The question now is how much damage his personal foreign policy will inflict before the United States restores the institutions that once made its leadership possible.