"Trump’s Foreign Policy Moves Starting To Look
Like That Of A Desperate, Dying Empire"
By Leo Hohmann
Gerald Celente, the legend ary chief editor of the Trends
Journal, once said: "When all else fails they take you to war."
"The United States of America elected Donald Trump in a landslide victory over a hapless opponent last November, and immediately the mantra “We’re Back” started reverberating across the land. People were jubilant. Some held family or neighborhood “victory parties.” You could hardly blame them after four years of the most absent, most inept president in U.S. history. Donald Trump, never one to be bashful or to wince before the spotlight, fanned the flames. He immediately started talking about “the dawn of a new Golden Age.” He started off with a bang, publicly signing executive order after executive order. His fans swooned. But going on three months in, reality is starting to take hold.
What we are seeing is that roughly half of his most meaningful executive orders have been overturned or at least delayed by the courts. We’ve seen no meaningful action from the Republican-held Congress to codify any of the Trump agenda.
In another six months the campaigning for the 2026 midterms will be in high gear and we will all wonder what of any lasting value we have to show for all the fanfare. Remember, Trump’s executive orders, even the ones that get by the courts, can be overturned on DAY ONE of the next presidency.
The question is this: Will Trump himself get frustrated and seek to distract the nation from his lack of progress on his domestic agenda by taking the nation to war overseas? This past weekend, Trump started showing signs of frustration. His long-touted peace deal with Russia’s Putin and Ukraine’s Zelensky is going nowhere. Neither side seems to want to stop fighting, and Trump is learning that you can’t just beat your chest as the “King” of America and browbeat foreign dictators into accepting your “deal.”
When Trump gets frustrated, he takes to social media. And sometimes he even dials up the corporate media to vent his frustrations there. On Sunday, he called NBC News and spoke with Christine Welker. He told her he was “angry” and “pissed off” with Russia’s Vladimir Putin for not agreeing to his peace deal with Ukraine. He also felt the need to repeat his previously mentioned desire for a “third term.”
Then, after saying he would slap Russia with secondary tariffs on all Russian oil if Putin didn’t come to his senses and agree to see the world (including his own border area) through Trump’s America-centric lens, he moved on to talking about Iran.
Trump said he would carpet-bomb Iran and bring hellfire and brimstone, “the likes of which they’ve never seen before,” if they didn’t agree to his deal to give up their nuclear program. Iran gave no indication that it would comply with his demands and on Monday we read that Iran was loading its missiles and priming them for take-off.
Americans did not vote for another Mideast war. That is probably the last thing America can afford right now. And the last thing it needs. Trump said it himself. He said he wanted to be the “Peace President.”
If you recall, the rationale used to avoid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was that it would only serve to give Hamas time to rearm and regroup. Israel had Hamas on the ropes and needed to finish them off, we were told.
It’s interesting that this rationale does not apply to the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump’s push for a 30-day ceasefire makes no sense from the Russian perspective. Putin says forget the 30-day temporary truce. He wants to address the core causes of the war and negotiate a truly “lasting peace.”
And yet, here we go. Trump’s foreign policy seems geared along the lines of, make peace with me or I will bomb the hell out of you. Or at the very least, I will wage economic war on you until you succumb to my wishes. Sorry, Donald, but this isn’t the art of the deal. You can’t browbeat the world into submission.
Perhaps Trump has a secret deal with Putin whereby he criticizes Putin in public while telling him in private he won’t interfere with Russia’s drive to finish off Ukraine. But if that were the case, why is Trump continuing to fund Ukraine’s war effort? He restarted the funding about two weeks after cutting it off, a fact most Americans I talk to are still not aware of.
And even if there is a secret deal, I still don’t think it’s helpful in the long run for a world leader to use subterfuge to the extent that no country can take him at his word. That can only end badly when the deceptions and misdirections finally get exposed. Now you are exposed as a paper tiger who got called on the bluff.
The fact that any U.S. president would make such statements only shows signs of desperation and, in my opinion, weakness. It smacks of the playground bully, who always threatens more than he can deliver. He begs for attention with bombastic statements and basks for a time in the façade of the tough guy image, until someone takes him up on his challenge, calls his bluff and delivers an unexpected crushing blow.
Trump’s new foreign policy tactic is begging for someone, some country, to step up and put down the bully, hit him right at his weakest point. Which is often the most obvious place. Right in the center of his face! Perhaps his exposed jugular? Perhaps a gut punch that incapacitates him just long enough to then deliver the crushing blow? Maybe an EMP attack followed by a strike of an overwhelming hypersonic nature?
Trump wants Western peacekeepers in Ukraine. That is a major snag for Putin, mostly because of Russia’s history and distrust of Western countries like France and Britain (both have fought wars with Russia in the past). Putin’s idea of having the United Nations place peacekeepers in Ukraine is also stupid. How did that work out in Rwanda?
The only way to solve the problem is to back away and let Russia and Ukraine fight it out. That will provide the only organic environment for a lasting peace, and even that may not last forever. But Russia is oh so close to achieving that goal, and that’s why Putin doesn’t want any part of Trump’s “peace” deal. He believes he can end the war by finishing off his opponent and then accomplish all of his goals, rather than 50 or 75 percent of them. Why would the victor in a war settle on the terms of the loser? This is essentially what Trump is asking Putin to do. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Ukraine’s leader, Zelensky, wants to keep fighting, so let him carry on and see how that works out for him.
Sadly, it’s becoming clear that the U.S. is losing influence in the world. Its dollar is faltering. Its economy is teetering. And its leaders are behaving like those running a dying empire. The U.S. has to stop acting like the biggest, baddest bully on the block, when everyone knows it has a soft underbelly. Because remember: When all else fails, they take you to war."
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