Is Trump’s Ambition Outrunning His Grasp?

In 1972, the late folk singer-songwriter and Chicago native Steve Goodman recorded Lincoln Park Pirates about a notorious car-towing service in Chicago, often accused of breaking the law. In the song, the owner is not satisfied with dragging away automobiles but also wants to tow the boats in the city’s marinas and planes on local runways. It’s an apt symbol for what we see from the President.

Although Trump’s lust for power has long been evident, we now have it from the source. One of the driving forces and more consistent molders of Administration policy, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, recently lectured CNN that “power” is the only force in world affairs that has ever counted. Trump himself subsequently told the New York Times that the only restraint on his power was his “own morality.” (Since Trump has always been weak on demonstrating any moral framework, what precisely that constraint might be is not clear.) But is this recklessly unchecked ambition – feeding illegal and unconstitutional actions — equal to mastering the forces it sets in motion? Evidence suggests the answer is no, and that endangers the country.

There is a pattern to this autocratic exercise of power. Trump loves the splashy move, leaving it until afterwards to figure out next steps toward often poorly-defined goals. While the Administration would claim that such actions serve its “vision” of dominating the Western Hemisphere and inspiring fear and “respect” in the rest of the world, it fails to understand that this vision is actually an illusion. It seeks to imitate the big-power, exclusive spheres-of-influence rivalries of the nineteenth century, ignoring the reality of a simultaneously interconnected, interdependent, but dangerous 21^st-century world.

Most people would recognize the inherent pitfalls of such superficiality and not conduct their own lives this way. Trump and his people insist that they are making the United States safer, more secure, and more prosperous, but these claims lose more credibility with each passing week.

Most Presidents would seek to limit the number of international crises demanding their attention at any one time. Trump, despite assuring his supporters that he would avoid foreign entanglements, has intervened in diverse flashpoints and created problems where none existed.

Trump was happy to take a victory lap after the spring cease-fire and partial Israeli pull-back in Gaza, but his claims about bringing peace were tragically risible. His elaborate peace plan is equally far-fetched. Not only has none of the disciplined hard work been done, which conceivably could breathe some life into it – starting with creating effective arrangements to bring real security to Gaza – but Trump has ceded the key role in determining what comes next to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has little interest in serious compromise and none in an eventual Palestinian state, however delineated.

The June bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities set back the country’s progress toward a weapons capability but did not destroy the effort. (Whether Iran actually intends to build a bomb is in dispute.) Meanwhile, the ability to evaluate any remaining threat has been reduced, as Iran no longer allows in International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. Should the U.S. nevertheless discover an unexpectedly resurgent program, we have no indication that the Administration has any thought beyond resorting to using force in a similar way again.

The dramatic snatching of Venezuelan President Maduro was an impressive display of military prowess but does very little to further progress toward Trump’s stated objective of securing the country’s oil reserves for the U.S. and demanding obeisance to U.S. wishes. Only after proclaiming that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela did Trump, promising riches, convene major U.S. oil companies to urge them to get involved. Most, predictably, were reluctant to commit vast sums over many years in order to restore profitability to the country’s dilapidated infrastructure, particularly under uncertain political conditions. Moreover, Trump might in fact have complicated progress on that second point, having quickly sidelined the democratic opposition victor in the last presidential election, in favor of preserving Maduro’s government.

Trump and, particularly, Secretary of State Rubio, very hopefully expect that the Cuban Communist government will fall soon. But there is no policy in sight to deal with the aftermath. Whom would the Administration install in power? Cuban security forces have ensured, over many years, that there is no organized opposition. Or would Trump proclaim that we will “run” that country, too? Does the Administration plan to devote huge sums to repair a shattered economy? Local conditions are now reportedly so dire that an end to Communist emigration restrictions could easily produce new crowds of people seeking a better life in the U.S., presumably an undesirable effect from the Administration’s point of view. Does the Administration expect Cuban Americans to go back to the island in significant numbers to help rebuild?

Trump has also not forgotten his demands for the Panama Canal, based on the distortion of a long-running local commercial dispute into a hypothetical Chinese threat to international shipping.

Trump’s dogged insistence that the U.S. must have Greenland (someone else’s territory where we already have basing rights) has shaken the foundations of NATO, a cornerstone of U.S. security for decades. Moreover, Denmark has made very clear that it is happy to work with the U.S. and NATO partners to improve the Alliance’s defensive capabilities in the region. Greenland has been equally clear that it is willing to negotiate arrangements jointly to develop important natural resources. But the Administration considers these views merely unwelcome resistance.

A U.S. missile attack in northwestern Nigeria was allegedly meant to protect Christians victimized by a terrorist group (an offshoot of a more dangerous group, centered in the country’s northeast). Reportedly, however, a quarter of the missiles did not detonate, and several were found hundreds of miles away. U.S. officials admitted that they had had no intelligence of their own to verify intended targets; such information had come solely from the Nigerian government.

Russia’s war on Ukraine at times has consumed Trump and at others seemed to bore him. Trump would like to see this settled and claim personal credit, but without doing the necessary hard work of pressuring Putin to desist.

Trump has not shied away from threatening possible military action in an Iran convulsed by anti-government protests, but what that could achieve, and how it would fit into any broader approach to the possible end of the Islamic Republic is undiscernible.

The Administration’s push-pull approach to China reveals an inability to decide whether China is an adversary or a partner. Administration policy swings back and forth between aggressive bluster and efforts to seek accommodation, each tactic undercutting the other.

Not to be left off this list is the totally unnecessary and worsening fight he has picked with Canada, which, he seems to feel, is, like Greenland, a better bet for U.S. security if it is in American hands. The intense resentment this has created right next door, and the huge losses incurred by U.S. exporters and U.S. tourism-related businesses, do not seem to have made an impression.

Foreign affairs analysts, reasonably enough, keep trying to discover policy rationales for Trump’s ambitions. In a recent “New Yorker” article, however, Dexter Filkins wrote that a former National Security staffer put it this way: “With Trump, you have to resist the temptation to intellectualize what he is doing. They’re emotional responses, flying all over the place.” That is no way to run a children’s play group, much less the most powerful country in the world.

Tom Wolfson is a former senior U.S. diplomat who has lived and worked in six foreign countries, occasionally multiple times. His work representing the U.S. has included assignments at the United Nations, in the U.S. Congress, and with an international democracy-building organization. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 360 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.