Donald Trump doesn’t practice traditional diplomacy. As in domestic policy, but with a thicker fog of ignorance, Trump treats each issue of foreign policy or engagement as a separate event, and reacts to it according to his mood.
This behavior is unlikely to change. If it does not and Trump’s presidency continues, the world, including the important part of it he governs, will become more dangerous. The considerable good that Americans do abroad will shrink. And the rule-based systems which the United States seeks to police will decay and be replaced with more regional and national confrontations and more failed states. Trump’s shifting moods have produced several notable flip-flops. Most prominent has been that on Russia, in part because he praised President Vladimir Putin again and again from mid-2013 to February this year. That stopped after the Syrian government’s chemical weapons attack in early April, at which point Trump promised retaliation and switched from admiration to distrust of Russia, Syria’s main ally.
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