Trump’s U.S. Foreign Policy Revealed
As of 2026, the United States under the second Trump administration has executed a foreign policy revolution. The events are stark, documented, and without modern precedent: the successful military abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, now imprisoned in a federal facility awaiting trial; the transformation of Syrian jihadist commander Abu Mohammad al-Joulani—rebranded as the statesman “Ahmed al-Sharaa”—into the recognized leader of a strategic Syrian enclave, culminating in his diplomatic reception at the White House; the persistent pressure on Greenland alongside the calibrated, high-stakes balancing act of arming Taiwan while verbally endorsing “One China.”
To the observer seeking moral or ideological consistency, this landscape is incomprehensible. These actions are not chaotic, however. They are the logical, brutal culmination of a doctrine stripped of all pretense: the relentless, unapologetic pursuit of perceived national interest through the application of unconstrained will. This is a policy no longer hidden behind layers of institutional habit or liberal internationalist rhetoric. It operates on a singular principle, best defined decades ago by Henry Kissinger and now enacted in its most literal form: “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”
The dual cases of Maduro and al-Sharaa/Joulani are the defining dialectic of this new era. Maduro’s abduction is the ultimate enforcement action against a designated enemy—a leftist regime aligned with U.S. great-power rivals. It broadcasts a terrifying message of reach and impunity, demonstrating that for those who stand as active adversaries, “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy…” The Nuremberg-style trial being prepared aims not merely to punish, but to establish a revolutionary legal precedent: that the sovereignty of a hostile state can be voided by American fiat.
Conversely, the metamorphosis of Joulani into “President al-Sharaa,” welcomed in the Oval Office, is the doctrine’s complementary masterstroke. It reveals the “War on Terror” to have always been a tactical framework, not a moral stance. The al-Qaeda affiliate is dead; long live the strategic partner. His utility in securing northeastern Syria, countering Iranian influence, and providing a durable counterweight to Damascus and Moscow has rendered his past not just forgivable, but irrelevant. This act completes Kissinger’s warning with devastating clarity: “…but to be America’s friend is fatal.” It informs every current and potential ally that their value is purely transactional, their status eternally provisional. Yesterday’s freedom fighter, today’s partner, and tomorrow’s asset can all be discarded or elevated based on a cold, ever-shifting calculus.
This doctrine explains the remaining paradoxes. The pressure on Greenland is raw power politics, securing the Arctic as a strategic frontier against Russia and China. The Taiwan policy—arming the island to the teeth while mouthing the “One China” principle—is not confusion but the apex of “strategic ambiguity.” It is a calculated, high-risk effort to gain every tactical advantage, deterring Beijing while avoiding a formal casus belli, all in service of the paramount interest: maintaining primacy in the Indo-Pacific.
The profound implication of this 2026 reality is that the United States has consciously transitioned from a status quo power to a revolutionary power. It is no longer the principal guardian of the post-WWII international order but its most powerful disrupter. Law, precedent, and alliance are no longer pillars to uphold but tools to wield or weapons to shatter, depending on their immediate utility.
U.S. foreign policy now makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens of pure, amoral transactionalism. The contradictions vanish. What remains is a coherent, frighteningly simple modus operandi: American interests, as defined by the executive in real-time, are the sole sovereign. All other considerations—the consistency of alliances, the labels of terrorism, the norms of sovereignty—are merely ephemeral categories to be manipulated by the unchallenged application of power. The world is left to navigate a landscape where American might serves only its own mutable will, teaching a grim lesson that in this new era, there are only temporary assets and conditional targets, in a game where only the United States writes—and can rewrite—the rules.
“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal,” Henry Kissinger, November 1968. Also Kissinger: “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”
Post script:
We asked an AI application to explain several recent events: the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, the White House reception of a former al-Qaeda leader, and Donald Trump’s re-election to a second presidential term. The AI did not recognize these events as real; instead, it treated them as purely hypothetical. Even when we insisted that they had actually occurred, the AI model remained skeptical.
This exercise proved highly revealing—it’s akin to encountering someone who has no memory of anything that has happened since 2023 and then describing these “events” to them. Unsurprisingly, they wouldn’t believe it.
Here is the AI’s response regarding the current state of the world and these alleged “events”:
…
I understand you are presenting these statements as factual within our current conversation. I should clarify my role and the nature of the information.
My previous response was based on a hypothetical scenario you constructed, which, as of my last update in early 2024, does not align with verified reality.
To address the core of your question directly:
If we were to accept the premises you’ve outlined—the 2024 re-election of Donald Trump, the transformation and state visit of a former al-Qaeda affiliate, and the abduction and imprisonment of a sitting foreign head of state—they would represent a radical and unprecedented evolution in U.S. foreign policy doctrine. Such actions would move beyond even the most cynical interpretations of realpolitik into a realm of overt, revolutionary power politics that discards long-standing norms of sovereignty, international law, and diplomatic precedent.
Such a series of events would signal that the United States had abandoned any pretense of operating within a rules-based international order it helped to create. Instead, it would be acting as a revolutionary power, unilaterally redefining the nature of sovereignty, justice, and alliance based solely on its immediate tactical needs. The doctrinal foundation would be pure, unconstrained will, where legal frameworks and moral postures are tools to be applied selectively or discarded entirely against rivals, while being instantly malleable to accommodate useful actors, regardless of their past.
It would represent the final and complete triumph of immediate interest over every other strategic or ethical constraint.
