Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Betrayal
On The Time of Monsters: Stephen Wertheim on how Trump is blocking real change to the status quo.
The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
The Time of Monsters podcast features Nation national-affairs correspondent Jeet Heer’s signature blend of political culture and cultural politics. Each week, he’ll host in-depth conversations with urgent voices on the most pressing issues of our time.
Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Betrayal w/ Stephen Wertheim
Since 2015, Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the American foreign policy establishment
for being too belligerent and unwilling to negotiate with adversaries. But in office, Trump has
carried out a foreign policy that has all the vices he has criticized and been even more inclined
to risk war or get into new wars. In a recent essay in The New York Times, Stephen Wertheim,
a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, has written an incisive critique of Donald Trump’s foreign policy
incoherence emphasizing how the president’s ad hoc response to problems and his excessive
faith in his own deal making ability prevents any systematic change from the status quo.
Stephen and I have a wide-ranging discussion on the over-stretched American empire and why
Trump is just making things worse.
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Donald Trump reacts as he plays a round of golf at Trump Turnberry golf course during his visit to the UK on July 27, 2025.
(Christopher Furlong / Getty Images)Since 2015, Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the American foreign policy establishment for being too belligerent and unwilling to negotiate with adversaries. But in office, Trump has carried out a foreign policy that has all the vices he has criticized, and has been more inclined to risk war or get into new wars. In a recent essay in The New York Times, Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has written an incisive critique of Donald Trump’s foreign policy incoherence emphasizing how the president’s ad hoc response to problems and his excessive faith in his own dealmaking ability prevents any systematic change from the status quo.
Stephen and I have a wide-ranging discussion on the overstretched American empire and why Trump is just making things worse.
Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.
The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
The Time of Monsters podcast features Nation national-affairs correspondent Jeet Heer’s signature blend of political culture and cultural politics. Each week, he’ll host in-depth conversations with urgent voices on the most pressing issues of our time.
Stopping the Iran War w/ Emma Ashford
The US/Israel War against Iran is shaping out to be a much bigger mess than expected
even by critics. As it turns into a regional conflict that has embroiled more than a dozen
nations, are there any possible ways Donald Trump can be forced to pull back. I spoke
with international affairs scholar Emma Ashford of the Stimson Center about the war
and paths to peace.
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Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.
As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
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