The lack of any significant U.S. response to the revelation that Russia has offered money to the Taliban for killing U.S. troops shines yet another ugly spotlight on the foreign policy of U.S. President Donald Trump—or, more precisely, the utter lack of one. As the presidential election season heats up, Trump’s latest failure should remind American voters that his administration has failed on the most important global threats—not least the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. All these and other foreign-policy failures should be just as much at the center of the debate as the crush of domestic policy concerns.
Many months after the Russian bounties first became known to the White House, and weeks after they became public, Trump still has taken no action and expressed no empathy for soldiers or their families, claiming that this issue, too, is just a hoax cooked up by his enemies. On this issue as on so many others, his foreign policy mainly consists of a series of marginally coherent tweets with no discernible objective or strategy. Indeed, after three and a half years in office, Trump has developed no foreign policy at all. What we do see are haphazard assertions, “maximum pressure” campaigns, boundless admiration for and obsequious pandering to authoritarian leaders, disparaging of democratic allies, and so-called trade deals that cost thousands of American jobs and lack any strategic objective.
