When TIME Magazine released their “100 Most Influential People” list in 2017, it stood to reason that Jared Kushner would be listed. After all, Donald Trump had brought his son-in-law into the White House and given him a broad portfolio which, as the husband of the president’s favorite daughter, made him very powerful. Kushner couldn’t be fired. But the question of whether he was up to the job was pretty well answered by the man TIME chose to write the required encomium: former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It’s hard to read the late secretary’s words as anything but damning with faint praise. 

Kissinger opened his short two-paragraph tribute by essentially saying that the presidential transition process is difficult and that a president who doesn’t know anything must depend on his advisers to help him through it. Then he wrote:

This space has been traversed for nearly four months by Jared Kushner, whom I first met about 18 months ago, when he introduced himself after a foreign policy lecture I had given. We have sporadically ­exchanged views since. As part of the Trump family, Jared is familiar with the intangibles of the President. As a graduate of Harvard and NYU, he has a broad education; as a businessman, a knowledge of administration. All this should help him make a success of his daunting role flying close to the sun.

That was it. In Kissinger’s accounting, Kushner’s only qualifications were that he went to college, was a businessman and knew the president. And we all know what happened to the guy who flew too close to the sun. 

As it happened, Kissinger had actually been quite involved with the Trump transition and knew exactly how ill-prepared they were. Shortly after the 2016 election, the 93-year-old had met with Trump, Kushner and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn at Trump Tower and traveled at their behest to China to meet with Premier Xi Jinping and set up an early bilateral meeting between the two leaders. (Trump, ever the bull in a China shop, immediately fumbled the agreement by taking a call from Taiwan’s president. Apparently, no one in the president-elect’s circle knew about the One China policy, or that no president had spoken with a Taiwanese leader since 1979.) 

Kissinger helped set up a so-called “Kushner channel” to certain powerful Chinese leaders — even as the young staffer was privately pursuing private Chinese business deals on the side. But by the time the secretary was asked to write that plaudit for TIME, it was pretty clear that he didn’t have much use for the new administration. 

That apparently didn’t matter to Kushner. Trump’s son-in-law appears to see himself as the Kissinger of this era, consciously modeling himself on the notorious diplomat, perhaps not realizing that the secretary’s foreign policy achievements were tempered by his reputation as a ruthless, immoral purveyor of realpolitik who left millions of dead bodies in his wake. Then again, it’s also possible Kushner knows that very well and is fine with the comparison.

While Kushner’s approach to world affairs is remarkably similar to Kissinger’s, the older man’s worldview was shaped by his ideology and academic understanding of world power dynamics. Kushner’s, on the other hand, is primarily influenced by his alleged business savvy; like his father-in-law, he sees everything through the lens of a win-win real estate deal. 

Kushner’s portfolio during the first Trump administration was wide-ranging. But his heart was in international relations, particularly the Middle East, where he had an intense interest in resolving the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By the end, he managed to orchestrate the Abraham Accords, an agreement normalizing diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Israel. The accords were controversial, with some calling it a useful first step, while others viewing it as a sop to commercial interests that ignored the Palestinians altogether. 

Although Kushner chose not to officially rejoin his father-in-law’s second administration, he is serving, along with Trump’s real estate buddy Steve Witkoff, as its special diplomatic envoy. So far, the duplicitous duo have tried and failed to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine and failed to stop the war with Iran. The Gaza Peace Plan that had everyone strutting around declaring victory just a few months ago is stuck. 

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The exchange of prisoners took place as required by the agreement, and some aid has been allowed to flow, but the violence has continued. The current impasse hinges on Hamas disarming and Israel withdrawing, and neither side will make the first move. There appeared to be some movement a couple of weeks ago when Trump announced that his so-called Board of Peace had secured an agreement from Hamas to disarm and Israel to suspend all military strikes. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s immediate rejection of the idea brought Kushner back into the mix to see if he could resurrect a little of that old Kissinger magic. 

After Syria and Egypt’s surprise attack on Israel in October 1973, Kissinger spent nearly two years on “shuttle diplomacy,” flying back and forth between Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem in search of a lasting peace deal. If managing a fragile ceasefire counts as a win, he was successful. But it took Jimmy Carter to broker the Camp David Accords six years later, which brought a lasting peace between Egypt and Israel.

Over the past few days, in an attempt to salvage the obviously empty Board of Peace agreement, Kushner traveled to Egypt, along with his fellow board member and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, to meet with leaders of Hamas. The trip raised the ire of Israel’s supporters in the U.S., including former ambassador Eliot Abrams, who accused Kushner of legitimizing a terrorist organization. The leader of Hamas said they will not disarm unless Israel withdraws from Gaza, so Kushner shuttled to Jerusalem to meet with Netanyahu, who basically told him to pound sand; Israel will not withdraw until Hamas disarms. They decided to establish some working groups to talk further, and the next day Israel struck a seaside cafe in Gaza City, killing seven people. 

Kushner gave the game away in an interview with Fox News, putting the full onus on Hamas to end the impasse. “If they don’t follow through now on their commitment,” he said, “everyone will see that they’re not genuine about peace, and then Israel will have a lot more support from the U.S. and others to go and finish the job.” 

Trump’s special envoy for peace didn’t explain what he meant by “finish the job,” but considering what Israel has already done, it’s pretty clearly a terrifying threat. Even Henry Kissinger was more subtle than that.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correctly reflect the events of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

The post Jared Kushner’s Henry Kissinger cosplay should worry us all appeared first on Salon.com.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Wednesday that Seoul received no warning of Donald Trump’s plan to slash joint military exercises, a move the U.S. president announced publicly and linked to South Korea’s refusal to help with his war in Iran.

“Neither our government nor U.S. officials knew what President Trump wrote on his Truth Social,” Cho told the National Assembly’s foreign affairs committee. “We were not notified in advance.”

Trump ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday to “substantially reduce” the annual exercises, calling them costly and “totally inappropriate and hostile” toward North Korea. He tied the move to Seoul’s refusal to assist his effort to strip Iran of its nuclear capabilities and highlighted his “very good relationship” with Pyongyang’s ruler Kim Jong Un.

Cho said Trump’s announcement caught Seoul by surprise, but added the eventual changes to the drills were being worked out jointly. Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back was in “close consultations” with Washington, he said. “Since our defense minister was involved in the discussions, I do not think it amounts to a unilateral notification.”

He also warned that the smaller drills should not delay the transfer of wartime operational control, or OPCON, to Seoul — a longtime plan that would put a South Korean general in command of the combined U.S.-South Korean forces during a conflict.

The drills have anchored the U.S.-South Korean alliance for more than 70 years, born from the aftermath of the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with an armistice agreement but no peace treaty. North Korea, which routinely condemns the drills as rehearsals for an invasion, launched another round of ballistic missile tests last week after this year’s exercises were announced.

The rollback is already taking effect. South Korea said Wednesday that this year’s exercise will end on Aug. 21 rather than Aug. 27 after a U.S. request, cutting six days from the schedule.

Der Raketenterror gegen Kiew und andere Teile der Ukraine bringt Wladimir Putin militärisch keine Geländegewinne, zielt aber auf die Zermürbung der Zivilbevölkerung. Rixa Fürsen bespricht mit dem Sicherheits- und Verteidigungsexperten Nico Lange die Lage nach der russischen Frühjahrsoffensive 2026.

Lange kritisiert die zögerliche europäische Militärhilfe und das Fehlen strategischer Luftverteidigung scharf. Um Angriffe nachhaltig zu stoppen, müsse die Ukraine russische Rüstungsfabriken und Lieferketten mit Waffen wie dem Taurus gezielt ausschalten können.

Auch bei Rufen nach Diplomatie warnt er vor Naivität: Erfolgreiche Verhandlungen seien nur durch harten wirtschaftlichen und militärischen Druck möglich. Wirksame Hebel wären etwa ein umfassender Stopp für Schengen-Visa für Russen oder das konsequente Blockieren der Schattenflotte.

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BERLIN —Senior conservative and social-democrat lawmakers in Germany’s governing coalition are urging the EU to sanction Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir after he called for nightly targeted killings in Gaza.

“I think targeted killings should be carried out in Gaza, remove 30, 40 [people] every night,” said Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, in a podcast episode released last Saturday. “Not just those who pose an immediate threat. No, there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”

The comments drew an unusually sharp response from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives.

“Ben-Gvir’s inhumane remarks can only be condemned,” Jürgen Hardt, foreign policy spokesperson for the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union parliamentary group, told POLITICO. “The EU should sanction him as a sign of the universal validity of human dignity and human rights.”

Hardt went further, saying he was convinced an Israeli government without Ben-Gvir or fellow far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich would bring Europe and Israel closer together.

Germany’s Social Democrats struck a similar tone. Adis Ahmetović, the party’s foreign policy spokesperson, said the two ministers had shocked international opinion well before their latest statements, and urged the German government to support sanctions against both.

The criticism extended across the political spectrum.

The Left’s Dietmar Bartsch called Ben-Gvir’s remarks “deeply inhumane,” and urged Berlin and Brussels to consider sanctions, including an entry ban. Markus Frohnmaier, the far-right Alternative for Germany party’s foreign policy spokesperson, said calling for the indiscriminate killing of people who posed no immediate threat crossed “a clear line.” Green Member of Parliament Marlene Schönberger branded Ben-Gvir a “far-right extremist” and said his comments were “deeply inhumane,” adding that they had “nothing whatsoever” to do with Israel’s right to defend itself and its citizens.

The statements mark a significant shift in Berlin. Germany has repeatedly pushed back against EU measures targeting Israel, including proposed sanctions on Ben-Gvir in June and, as recently as last month, restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

EU sanctions require unanimity, giving Berlin considerable sway over whether the bloc can move.

Merz’s government has not yet followed the lawmakers’ lead. The Foreign Ministry declined to take a position Monday, while some in government fear sanctioning Ben-Gvir just weeks before Israel’s Oct. 27 election could play into his hands.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul will meet his EU counterparts in Ireland on Sept. 1 and 2, where Ben-Gvir’s remarks and the war in Gaza are likely to loom over discussions.

Maximilian Heimerzheim contributed to reporting.

The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network harnesses the resources of the company’s newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms: online, print, TV and audio.

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Pauline von Pezold und Frederik Schindler widmen sich in dieser Folge gemeinsam mit Jacob Ross, Research Fellow bei der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik , der Außenpolitik der AfD. Sie analysieren gemeinsam mit ihm, wie sich die Partei von einer reinen Protestbewegung zu einer gestaltenden Kraft mit einem eigenen Gegenentwurf zur Außenpolitik der Bundesregierung entwickeln will.

Im Zentrum steht das Konzept der „Multipolarität“. Einer Weltordnung, die in regionale Einflusssphären unterteilt ist, wie sie von Russland und China propagiert und von Teilen der AfD angestrebt wird. Schindler, Ross und von Pezold diskutieren, ob der Versuch der AfD, gleichzeitig die Nähe zu Putins Russland und zum Amerika unter Donald Trump zu suchen, ein Widerspruch ist oder vielmehr Teil einer kohärenten Strategie ist, um sich als neue Kraft in einer veränderten Welt zu positionieren.

Außerdem gehen sie der Frage nach, wie realistisch ein solcher außenpolitischer Kurswechsel für Deutschland wäre.

„Inside AfD“ ist der POLITICO-Podcast über die umstrittenste Partei des Landes. Trotz Radikalisierung und Beobachtung durch den Verfassungsschutz wächst die AfD weiter. Wie ist das möglich? Was treibt ihre Anhänger, Strategen und Gegner an? Wie funktioniert das Innenleben der Partei? Und was bedeutet ihr Aufstieg für das politische System Deutschlands?

Antworten liefern immer mittwochs Pauline von Pezold von POLITICO und Frederik Schindler von WELT — unaufgeregt, aber kritisch.

Fragen und Feedback gern an insideafd@politico.eu.

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PISA, Italy — Giorgia Meloni doesn’t want to be beaten at her own game.

With an election approaching next year and a new far-right rival emerging, the Italian prime minister — whose political origins lie in Italy’s post-fascist right — is putting aside the moderate image she has built over her four years in office and hardening her tone on migration and security.

Meloni’s government was the first in the EU to attack the Spanish government over a sudden influx of migrants from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta last week. 

While France and other countries tightened border checks, Italy went further and announced it had suspended the EU’s free-movement Schengen agreement with Madrid. Now, in Italian airports, passengers from Spain are asked to join a different line. 

Meloni’s office has made clear it has no intention of lifting the controls until at least Aug. 15, escalating the clash with Spain, which retaliated by imposing checks on travelers from Italy.

“We will not back down one millimeter on illegal immigration,” Meloni posted on X while her allies attacked the socialist Spanish government, accusing it of failing to manage migration flows. “Defending our borders, stopping human traffickers, and ensuring effective repatriation will continue to be this government’s policy,” she added.

The clash with Spain is just the latest sign that the Italian leader is doing all she can to secure her core, hard-right electorate in the face of a challenge from the right by Roberto Vannacci, a former general and member of the European Parliament.

With an election expected as early as next spring, Vannacci’s far-right National Future party has been advancing in the polls, overtaking one of Meloni’s coalition partners, the far-right League party, and gaining on another, Forza Italia, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. 

For Meloni, who began her political career in the youth wing of Italy’s post-fascist movement, the challenge strikes particularly close to home.

“There is no doubt that there is concern about containing the competition from National Future,” said Marco Tarchi, a leading right-wing political scientist. “It all boils down to a sharpening of tone. The issues — security, immigration, identity — remain the same as before.” 

During the electoral campaign that brought her to power in 2022, Meloni promised to crack down on illegal migration by putting in place a naval blockade off Italy’s coast. Though that project never ultimately happened, Meloni’s government did open detention hubs in Albania to house migrants while their asylum applications are processed. 

Vannacci, who is campaigning on security and a hard line on immigration, is calling for a more radical solution: “remigration” — a yet-to-be-detailed plan to encourage migrants to return to their countries of origin.

The crisis in Ceuta, during which tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish exclave and nearly 100 died, provided Meloni with an opportunity to show that fighting irregular migration remains an absolute priority for her government.

Meloni’s reaction was “purely the result of domestic political calculations,” said Giorgio Gori, a member of the European Parliament from the left-wing Democratic Party. The Italian prime minister is trying to secure her electorate “by showing that she is loyal to the right-wing slogan and propaganda on migration and beyond.”

For Giovanni Orsina, director of the political science department at Rome’s Luiss Guido Carli University, Meloni’s priority at this stage is “that the Brothers of Italy [Meloni’s party] doesn’t start losing votes too” — in preparation for a potential alliance with Vannacci before or after next year’s election.

“Vannacci has been growing a lot in polls, especially over the past two months,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco from the YouTrend polling firm, noting that National Future is polling at over 7 percent. 

“Without Vannacci, the center-right could lose the upcoming election,” he said. “These seven points matter a lot.”

The Vannacci effect

Nicola Procaccini, Meloni’s lieutenant and co-chair of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, denies that Meloni is shifting on policy to protect herself from Vannacci.

“She stands where she has always stood,” he told POLITICO. “She simply isn’t the racist, xenophobic fascist she was made out to be when she first took office. And she isn’t one now, either.” 

Meloni is also facing a challenge to her support for Ukraine, with both the League and Vannacci advocating a softer line on Moscow, opposing military aid to Kyiv and arguing against an increase in defense spending. 

Though Meloni has portrayed herself as a strong backer of Ukraine, her reliance on the League for support has meant Italy has contributed just €3 billion in four years, roughly the equivalent of €1 a month for every Italian citizen, less than the cost of an espresso.

Italy has also declined to join NATO’s PURL (Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List), an arms-buying scheme set up last summer after U.S. President Donald Trump ended new military aid commitments to Kyiv.

Ukraine is where Meloni’s real difference with Vannacci lies, argued Tarchi, who teaches at the University of Florence and is considered the key figure of a movement called the New Right.

“Otherwise, the gap is artificially exaggerated in rhetoric and posturing for tactical reasons,” he said.

Meloni’s allies haven’t ruled out an alliance with Vannacci but they stress that the possibility will depend on where he stands on key values such as foreign policy.

If he seeks “to position Italy, alongside Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, clearly, it is not possible to stand together,” said Procaccini. “If, instead, he chooses the West — the democracies, Western nations, Western liberal democracies — then we can certainly stand together.”

Most of Donald Trump’s success in politics has stemmed from his reputation as a savvy dealmaker. But in his 11 years on the national political scene, that has been exposed as a fiction — a persona invented by Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter for the president’s bestselling book “The Art of The Deal,” who followed him around for 18 months and realized in the process that no one would want to read a book about the real Trump. 

After Trump announced his run for president in 2015, Schwartz told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer he felt deep remorse for creating this erroneous image of Trump, saying if he wrote the book today, he would call it “The Sociopath.” He said, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes, there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

His words were startling, to say the least, but Schwartz’s description of the president’s true personality was revelatory. The man who touted himself as the world’s greatest dealmaker was a pathologically dishonest hype artist with the attention span of a four-year-old, described by Schwartz as having “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance” who seemed “driven entirely by a need for public attention.” His alleged negotiation prowess was actually nonexistent, as the multiple failures of his businesses should have made clear. 

In Trump’s first administration, it became obvious that his idea of dealmaking consisted of willingly succumbing to flattery by malevolent actors and ineffectually bellowing at allies. Professional diplomatic and national security advisers managed to steer him away from most disasters, although he commonly embarrassed the nation on the world stage by displaying his ignorance and fondness for sucking up to adversaries. 

Trump’s second term is a whole other story. 

The president has confused his “Art of the Deal” with the art of diplomacy, and they are most definitely not the same thing. Even if he were actually talented at the former, which he is not, it would have no bearing on the latter, and the consequences of that are turning out to be substantial and damaging. By this point, it’s a cliché that Trump is “transactional,” which many (if not most) people understand to mean he is negotiating on behalf of the American people, bringing riches and security to the nation. In reality, Trump’s often self-serving deals are gravely harming the national interest. 

Diplomacy isn’t just signing a particular agreement between two countries. That may be the culmination of negotiations or just the beginning, but it isn’t actually the goal, especially for a superpower. The aim is to manage relations between countries over the long term to maintain stability and predictability; it’s not a “winner take all” proposition. Credibility is everything for a country like the United States, and now, without it, we are unleashing powerful forces that will be very hard to control.

Trump is a pathological liar. Schwartz discovered that from the very beginning. He was attached to Trump at the hip for many months, listening in on every phone call, observing his conversations and racking his brain to figure out how to present the man as a lovable rogue rather than the damaged personality he really is. The whole world has seen this up close for the past decade. 

At first, allies depended upon the professional diplomatic and national security apparatus to continue to run things in spite of Trump’s erratic behavior and belligerence. They understood early on he loved pomp and circumstance, and that he was easily flattered by obsequious compliments, so they played along, giving him the pageantry of over-the-top state visits and paying homage to him at his properties and the White House. But for the most part, they were just trying to wait out the term, expecting that the American people would realize the error of their ways and revert to being a serious nation. 

This time around is different. A recent report in the Washington Post by Steve Hendrix and Anthony Faiola revealed that the world is no longer taking the U.S. seriously, leaving the government with no credibility. As a result, international relations are unstable and dangerous. 

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When Trump regained office the second time, the world quaked at his swagger, backed up by a bizarre tariff regime that seemed to be put together by Mad Libs. The markets dropped, recriminations flowed, and it looked as if Trump had finally been completely unleashed. To some extent, he had been. He and his close circle had decided to do whatever they wanted and see what they could get away with. But it soon became evident there wasn’t really any strategy or even any particular goals, despite the apparent participation of people like Elon Musk and the authors of Project 2025. In the end, it was all about Trump’s whims, which changed from minute to minute. 

The short attention span Schwartz described is now even more pronounced. The president’s obsession with building monuments to himself notwithstanding, he flits from subject to subject, bellowing threats to all who oppose him and rewarding his cronies with ever more obvious modes of corruption. 

The world has decided to stop paying attention. “[M]ost consequently,” Hendrix and Faiola wrote, “Iran refuses to bend under American bombs and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and Russian President Vladimir Putin persists in his war in Ukraine. Europe met Trump’s recently renewed demands for Greenland with a collective sigh, and trading partners have shrugged off the latest tariffs.” 

Over the years, world leaders have had varying reactions to American presidents of both parties. But the country’s leaders have never been disregarded. 

Jeremy Shapiro, director of the U.S. program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the Post he was surprised at how long Trump’s bluffs and bellicosity had worked, crediting it to the “awesome power and deep, long-stored-up diplomatic capital of the United States” that Trump has “finally started to blow through.”

The president’s threats are now seen as empty, and his so-called deals aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. This was most recently on display in mid-July when he made a big, splashy announcement of a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. Within a day, Trump added a poison-pill requirement by way of a Truth Social post that left the Saudis reeling. His threats to annihilate Iran are now falling on deaf ears because he’s all over the place, usually lying about the progress of diplomatic talks, showing that he’s full of bluster and bombast but lacks a strategy to win and ideas about how to get out. 

America’s political dynamics have us all just trying to hold on until he’s out of office so we can try to rebuild from the rubble. But the loss of credibility, the exposure of the nation’s weaknesses and the people’s willingness to put such a man in charge will not be easily repaired. The long-term damage to our international reputation, coupled with the weakness we are demonstrating in any number of areas, will leave us vulnerable for a long time to come.

The post The world is finally calling Trump’s bluff appeared first on Salon.com.

Wer regiert die Welt – und was treibt sie an? In unserem regelmäßigen Machthaber-Spezial geht es um die mächtigsten und umstrittensten Politikerinnen und Politiker unserer Zeit. Wir zeigen, wie sie denken, entscheiden – und was das für uns bedeutet. Eine Politikerin oder Politiker, ein Blick hinter die Kulissen der Macht.

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Here in the U.S., we’re looking at the Iran War in terms of whether the U.S. should have started it in the first place, how it’s affecting oil prices, how it’s going to affect the midterms and a bunch of other things. But there’s another way to look at it, which is that Iran is putting on a global performance of standing head to head with the full might of the U.S. military and pulling it off. By their actions, we can see pretty clearly that the Iranian government does not fear Donald Trump. They’re not acting scared. If anything, they’re upping the rate of their provocations, as the state of war and effective stalemate transitions to a new normal of sorts.

It is fair to say that this is not actually the full might of the U.S. military in a theoretical sense. The president could order the U.S. military to mount a full scale ground invasion of Iran, occupy the country, dismantle the state’s system of command, control and repression. Those things are very likely possible, albeit at vast cost. But the real test of a military is not what it can do in some theoretical sense, the precise armaments it has and so forth but what the country which controls that military is able and/or willing to do in a specific economic, geopolitical, and political context. And the U.S. is clearly not willing to do those things. So in a practical sense — not the abstract power and capabilities of the U.S. military but the country’s ability to do those things — this is the full force of the U.S. military.

It’s tough to find any semblance of a silver lining in the humiliating implosion of Donald Trump’s foreign policy over the last year, especially after a week that has brought us another escalation of the war no one supports, a recycled trade war with Canada, an out-of-nowhere nuclear deal with a country that should never have access to nuclear weapons, and yet more threats against a small nation that poses no threat to the United States. 

But here’s the upside, just maybe: The tiny and perverse cadre of “anti-anti-Trump leftists” has been decisively silenced. If you find that phrase baffling, consider yourself fortunate. You evidently haven’t wasted any of your one wild and precious life arguing with renegade Marxists about whether the Trump-Putin alliance, in world-historical terms, was “objectively” superior to neoliberal internationalism on the Clinton-Obama model. 

If this is a safe space, I will admit here that at one time I was around one-third vulnerable to such arguments. I don’t mean the part about Trump being a force for progressive change in any sense, even if entirely by accident, since that was obviously and hilariously wrong, not to mention based on the same “enemy of my enemy” pretzel logic that produced the disastrous Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939. But on the level of a sophomore-seminar intellectual exercise, I could understand why self-appointed contrarians like Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald saw Trump as a disruptive force who might upend the softcore imperialism of the previous three or four decades, which had led to the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global hegemony of corporate capital. 

You didn’t have to be an unregenerate Leninist or an online troll or a Pat Buchanan-style paleoconservative (or all three at once!) to be momentarily seduced by Trump’s “America First” nonsense. Disgruntled Americans of all varieties voted for Trump by the millions, based in large part on his populist, isolationist rhetoric. Maureen Dowd’s notorious “Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk” column from 2016 should be inscribed above the gates of one of the lower circles of hell as a permanent warning to know-it-all media commentators. 

It was, of course, immensely helpful to Trump’s agenda of fabrications, exaggerations and outright lies that we experienced the failings of mainstream U.S. foreign policy all over again during the strange interregnum of Joe Biden’s presidency, with its pious invocation of a “rules-based order” — where the rules are set by America, of course — and its theological commitment to a now-entirely-imaginary “two-state solution” in the Middle East. Several things can be said in retrospect about Biden’s fateful embrace of Benjamin Netanyahu on the Tel Aviv tarmac after the Oct. 7 attacks: It was an authentic and heartfelt gesture, it was a grievous political error and it paved the way for a humanitarian catastrophe now widely perceived as genocidal. 

Trump’s return to power has, at the very least, finally confounded all the doofuses who ever took anything he said at face value, and has also dispensed with the contradictory or two-faced rhetoric of the Biden years. There’s no more talk of universal human rights or the spread of democracy. The fundamental logic of Trumpian policy is cynicism all the way down: We don’t care about any of those things and we never did. To paraphrase Stephen Miller, surely the most instrumental figure in the Trump White House, the only thing that matters is power. 

Maybe we should be grateful for the epic and reckless corruption of this administration, since Miller’s ambitious schemes to reshape America and the world as a white-supremacist wonderland are consistently undercut by the enormous levels of graft surrounding him. (Miller strikes me as a true believer whose corruption is moral rather than financial, one of many traits he appears to share with Joseph Goebbels.)

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As the Trump administration veers unsteadily into its lame-duck phase and a likely midterm wipeout, its quest for a legacy achievement becomes increasingly pathetic, not to mention increasingly dangerous. Trump’s dance of death with the Iranian regime might have a comical aspect if the lives of many thousands of people and the future of the global order were not at stake. By goading the president into restarting the war for the third time (by my count), the new roster of hardline leaders in Tehran, at least for now, have strengthened both their domestic control and their international reputation. It’s difficult to imagine, in fact, how Trump and his ludicrous cast of advisers could possibly have screwed this up worse than they did. (D.C. rumors suggest that high-testosterone “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth will ultimately be compelled to walk the plank over this fiasco.)

Meanwhile, the search for something that can be pitched to last-ditch MAGA loyalists as a victory, no matter how petty and insignificant, continues. Trump has never given up on his dream of seizing or annexing Greenland, but it was always more like an extortion scheme or a real estate scam than a military threat. Roughly the same applies to his improvised plan to rebuild Gaza as a Trumpified new Riviera, which took even Netanyahu by surprise and was never likely to escape the uncanny valley of AI fantasy. 

I’m inclined to feel similar about this week’s reports that Seb Gorka, an unhinged far-right free radical with some sort of roving-ninja role in the Trump White House, is urging a military assault against Islamist militia groups in Mali, a West African nation with complicated internal dynamics and no relationship whatever to U.S. national security. Again, this might be amusing if real human lives weren’t at stake, and if billions in taxpayer dollars appropriated by Congress for aid to impoverished countries like Mali weren’t being diverted to right-wing nationalists, white supremacists and anti-LGBTQ groups instead of humanitarian and healthcare NGOs. (Read this ProPublica report for more on that.)

Things have truly gotten dark if we’re looking to JD Vance and Marco Rubio as the proverbial adults in the room, managing the worst impulses of their increasingly disinhibited and incapacitated boss. I don’t know which of those two geniuses signed off on the reported nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, which may fall apart, goddess willing, under the weight of its impromptu idiocy and the fact that literally no one thinks it’s a good idea. Mohammed bin Salman, that kingdom’s journalist-murdering leader, is roughly the last person in the world who should have access to nuclear materials. If this deal goes through, it could rank among the very worst of Trump’s foreign policy blunders. Of course there’s still time for more. 

The post Trump’s foreign policy enters its decadent, desperate end stage appeared first on Salon.com.

For a man who considers himself the greatest builder the world has ever known — move over, Pharaoh Khufu! — Donald Trump has managed vanishingly little of it in either of his presidential terms. What his administrations have done is show an impressive talent for tearing things down. 

From the East Wing of the White House to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and public health, Trump has demonstrated a clear aptitude for demolition. Among his most successful accomplishments has been his assault on the international institutions that were created in response to the worst catastrophes of the 20th century. 

During his first campaign and administration, Trump constantly attacked NATO, the military and political alliance formed in 1949 in response to Soviet aggression that operates on the principle of collective security. He also withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords and ripped up the Iran nuclear agreement, cornerstones of Barack Obama’s foreign policy. But Trump didn’t stop there. He withdrew from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the World Health Organization, UNESCO, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the U.N. Human Rights Council. Since he returned to office in January 2025, he has continued to attacks on NATO and signed an executive order withdrawing from 66 additional international organizations. 

To be fair, Republicans have never really trusted international institutions. This tendency stretches back at least a century to the League of Nations. While the GOP has tended to back alliances like NATO, which they felt they could control, the party has been deeply suspicious of organizations like the United Nations, which they believe threaten national sovereignty — and impede America’s ability to act with impunity anywhere in the world. Since 1998, this has especially included the International Criminal Court, which is now coming under assault by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on behalf of the Trump administration.

Since its creation, the I.C.C. has been the bête noire of the American right. At first glance, one might have thought such an organization would have been championed by the U.S. After all, the country pioneered the idea of such a tribunal after World War II when it ran the Nuremberg trials to hold Nazi leaders accountable for crimes against humanity, while also pointedly declaring that waging a war of aggression is “the supreme international crime,” containing within itself “the accumulated evil of the whole.” The idea of holding individuals responsible for such violations was forged in that process and became the basis of international criminal law. 

In 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted and established four crimes over which it could take jurisdiction if the party state refused use its own legal system: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The statute was immediately decried by Republicans (and some conservative Democrats) as a threat to U.S. sovereignty on the basis that Americans could be subject to political prosecutions. But that wasn’t all of the story. It’s clear they also wanted to maintain the impunity conferred by America’s superpower status. 

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One hundred twenty-five countries are parties to the agreement. The U.S., under Bill Clinton, was a signatory to the treaty, but it was never ratified, and in 2002 it was officially withdrawn by George W. Bush. Israel, Sudan, Burundi, the Philippines and Russia have also withdrawn. 29 countries have signed but not ratified the agreement, while 41 others, including China and India, have neither signed nor acceded to it. 

Since then, the I.C.C. has tried war criminals and has a number of active cases, although few leaders have faced charges while in office. In November 2024, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became an exception for his conduct in Israel’s war against Gaza following the attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, joining the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. 

Even after Bush withdrew from the treaty, it was assumed the I.C.C. could grow its legitimacy among the holdouts — including the U.S., which has used the body itself when it was advantageous. But that is not to be. 

Project 2025, the plan for a MAGA overhaul of the entire federal government produced by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, explicitly demanded that the U.S. to “must end blind support for international organizations,” only using them to the extent that they help the country achieve its own goals regardless of the effect on other nations.

Now, in his quest to be the frontrunner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, Rubio has launched a full-blown assault on the I.C.C. with the support of Trump. The move is part of a variety of crusades the secretary is leading to establish his MAGA bona fides, and comes in addition to his international “far left terrorist crusade,” which I recently chronicled. Not content just to refuse to participate in the process and pledge to rely on our own justice system, as Republicans have done in the past, Rubio wants the I.C.C. destroyed completely. 

The administration has already sanctioned eight of the court’s judges, including its chief prosecutor, banning their travel to the U.S. On July 13, Rubio took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to declare that the I.C.C. “threatens every aspect of our political and legal system.” Using the usual sophomoric language of the MAGA movement, such as referring to “smug globalists,” he declared that the U.S. will now lead a “diplomatic campaign” against the Court, which will include penalties on countries that continue to cooperate with it, including by withdrawing foreign assistance. This is a tried and true Trump tactic that the president has even deployed on the home front against blue states that disagree with him. Now, it looks like the GOP establishment, of which Rubio has long been a representative, has signed on to the president’s mob-like coercion tactics against all rivals foreign and domestic.

According to Stewart Patrick of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, the administration’s goal is to destroy multilateralism altogether using what he called “four basic behaviors: defection, rebellion, substitution, and conditional cooperation.” Trump has quit some institutions, attempted to sabotage others and even tried to establish his own, such as the “Board of Peace” and the “Shield of the Americas,” both of which the administration believes it can dominate — and no doubt profit from. It has reengaged with others, such as the World Bank and the G20, but on a conditional basis: They are expected to do as they are told. But, as Patrick observed, “the administration’s campaign to dismantle the ICC is a campaign of pure destruction, a coercive attempt to impose the United States’s will on the rest of the world.”

The world has reacted in horror to Rubio’s moves, as we might expect. Patrick wrote, “Given the voluble reaction from America’s closest allies, the full-bore attempt by the administration to destroy the ICC would seem to be both imprudent and futile, an effort in symbolic politics that will further cement the reputation of the United States as an unhinged, domineering hegemon, rather than a benevolent and farsighted global leader.”

I’m afraid that ship has sailed.

This policy is Marco Rubio’s baby. He owns it. The secretary has established himself as the would-be statesman who took Donald Trump’s wrecking ball and made it his own. In doing so, his remake of himself in the Dear Leader’s image is complete.

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