Trump's Foreign Policy Reshapes Global Alliances, Eroding US Trust

A week or two back I shared a plane ride down from Scotland with a group of Americans who had obviously been golfing. Since one was sporting a MAGA baseball cap, it seemed a fair guess that they had been playing on Donald Trump’s course up there. They were a cheerful, ebulliently vocal party, and I am glad they had a nice time.

But their body language gave no hint of sensitivity to the fact that we are living in a world in which their great country is no longer liked or — much more important — trusted, thanks to the policies and conduct of their president. Indeed, a host of nations are doing their utmost to remake themselves in light of this new reality. Many polls show China, of all places, is deemed more predictable and thus a more serviceable partner than America. A head-spinning range of international alliances is in flux in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

A senior military friend who returned last week from the Gulf tells me that, however discreet most regional leaders are in public, privately they seethe at the clumsiness of American strategy-making and implementation, and above all about the failure to protect them adequately from Iran and from the consequences of US-Israeli military actions.

A torrent of careless or outright reckless words pours forth from Washington, most recently Trump’s announcement that he will support a Saudi civil nuclear and uranium-enrichment program. This promise was later qualified by tweet, as is often the president’s way. As of now, though, nobody has any idea whether the US really will fulfil such an irresponsible pledge, one with huge potential consequences.

Similarly, after decades in which support for Taiwan’s independence has been a given of US foreign policy, today nobody would bet money one way or the other on Trump’s likely response to Chinese aggression.

A new book by Eyck Freymann, Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China, highlights the increased tempo in Beijing’s saber-rattling, including December’s offshore military exercise Justice Mission 2025 and the searches of vessels passing by Taiwan. Freymann argues that the US should push back against such “grey zone” intimidatory tactics, but there is no sign of its willingness to do so, any more than there is the will to check Beijing’s unlawful expansionism in the South China Sea.

It is striking to contrast the postures of Europe and Asia toward the Trump administration. The Europeans are increasingly vocal in their responses to the president’s insults and tariffs, highlighted this week by France’s criticisms at the United Nations of his human-rights failures, which prompted an American walkout. Yet the Europeans, for all their high talk about independent security, remain unwilling to cut welfare programs to pay the big money needed for more defense.

In Asia, meanwhile, countries that privately deplore Trump are more emollient. Witness, for instance, the promised South Korean and Japanese investments in the US. The view is that only America can offer a credible military bulwark against China. The region’s democracies dismiss as bluster the Trump-defying rhetoric of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Yet so nervous are they that South Korea is thinking hard about creating its own nuclear deterrent, a prospect unimaginable a decade ago.

Across the Middle East, too, loyalties are churning, stoked in part by Trump. For years Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Emirati President Mohamed bin Zayed worked closely together. The first signs of disharmony were a divergence of economic strategies, and support for opposing sides in the Sudan and Yemeni civil wars.

Then in September 2025 Israel conducted an air strike in Qatar, killing five Hamas members who had met to discuss a US proposal to end the Gaza war. This was an outrageous breach of the sovereignty of a nation that is part of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The Americans, however, declined to censure Israel. The region saw this as Trump licensing Benjamin Netanyahu to act as he chose, at whatever cost to stability and international law.

Within weeks Saudi Arabia signed a defense pact with Pakistan, a declared enemy of Israel, and now Pakistan deploys 13,000 troops and a squadron of fighters on Saudi soil. MBS is exploring closer relations with Turkey and Egypt. There is speculation that a new regional coalition is in the making, over which Washington cannot expect to exercise much control.

There is a mismatch across the Middle East between governments’ policies and their citizens’ opinions about Israeli conduct toward the Palestinians and in the Gulf. Ordinary people recoil from Netanyahu’s perceived excesses. Yet most Arab governments do or do not do business with the Israelis solely in accordance with their own interests. The UAE cooperates closely. Egypt collaborates on energy issues.

The UAE’s leadership believes that, whatever the US does or does not do hereafter in the Middle East, Israel will remain a dominant military force. Thus Abu Dhabi does not indulge the luxury of hating the Israelis. Its rulers are, as always, pragmatists. They anticipate that Trump’s US may well try to distance itself from the region when the shooting stops, because the president has learned the hard way that there is nothing there likely to enhance his own luster. And they reckon Israeli firepower remains the best anchor for a long-term coalition to contain Iran.

The extraordinary range of confused interests in play was further illustrated this week, when for the first time Saudi fighters joined US aircraft in strikes against Iranian proxies in Iraq.

Elsewhere in the world, many of the same disruptive forces have been unleashed, albeit with less immediately scary implications. In Latin America, Trump allies have won elections in Peru, Chile and Colombia, but nations that once saw the US as their shield are pursuing alternative arrangements, notably with China. Beijing displays no interest in assuming the traditional US role as a guarantor of stability. It seeks only influence, above all economic, together with the power that its cash and presence yields.

There are many contradictions about Washington’s Latin-American policies and their consequences. Argentina’s President Javier Milei is Trump’s best friend on the continent. The White House’s $20 billion rescue package last year probably saved his country’s economy. Yet Milei recently described the Chinese as “fabulous” partners. Many ordinary Latin Americans, especially Brazilians, bitterly resent heavy-handed US interventions. The outcome of the Trump team’s forthcoming trade talks with Mexico will be critical in determining future relations between the two nations.

The pervasive theme worldwide is bewilderment about what the US will do next. This is scarcely avoidable when the president himself makes the weightiest foreign policy on casual whim. Deterrence of your enemies and rivals can be an effective strategy. Appeasement also has its merits. But neither works unless behind them is consistency of purpose and a belief among friends and foes alike in the credibility of promises and threats. Both are today absent.