When Donald Trump was first elected president, foreign policy seemed like the zone of greatest danger, the place where a political novice promising to remake the world order was most likely to blunder into true catastrophe.
Instead, Trump’s first-term foreign policy was broadly successful, with more stability, fewer dramatic stumbles and more breakthroughs than his domestic policy efforts. And it was much more successful than the rolling crises and debacles of the Joe Biden presidency, a contrast that was one of the underrated cases for Trump’s restoration.
President Donald Trump prepares to board Air Force One at Maryland on Sunday as he heads to the Middle East. Credit: AP
Now, with the provisional deal to end the war in the Gaza Strip, the pattern of Trump 1.0 is reasserting itself. As a domestic leader, the president is powerful but unpopular, with a scant legislative agenda and an increasingly vendetta-driven public image. But on the world stage, he is currently much more successful (allowing, yes, for strong scepticism about the administration’s China strategy).
If peace in Ukraine remains elusive, Trump has induced Europe to bear more of the burden without yielding to the Russians, as many critics feared. The Iranian nuclear program and terror networks have been hammered without major blowback. And now, there is the possibility of a real breakthrough in Israel and Palestine, an achievement that’s clearly the result of the White House’s strong-arming diplomatic efforts.
Loading
All of which raises a question: What if Trump’s domestic policy was more like his foreign policy? Yes, presidents stymied at home often find it easier to manoeuvre overseas; that pattern is hardly unique to Trump. But there are still a few keys to his success on the world stage that, if applied at home, might make his domestic efforts more popular.
First, float above ideology. Trump’s first-term foreign policy team was staffed by traditional Republican hawks; his second has been divided between hawks and would-be realists, who have often feuded viciously with one another.
But in both periods, Trump himself has moved easily between different orientations – sometimes behaving like a conventional hawk, sometimes like a realist or a dove, going hyper-Zionist one moment and putting extra pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu the next, and generally refusing to let any single ideological camp rule his agenda.
On key domestic issues, by contrast, Trump has never quite shaken free of the pre-existing GOP consensus, which is why his populist presidency has repeatedly delivered unpopular tax-and-spending legislation, overweighted to the interests of corporations and the rich. Meanwhile, various potential projects that might break this mould, from infrastructure and industrial policy to family policy, have been disappointing or stillborn.
