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FREDONIA PROJECT SITREP 24: U.S. POLICY DEVELOPMENTS (27 Jan – 16 Apr 2026)

DATE-TIME GROUP: 04160800ZAPRIL26

FROM: EMBASSY OF FREDONIA, WASHINGTON, D.C.

TO: MFA NAGADOCHES

CLASSIFICATION: CONEOFSILENCE // FREDONIAN EYES ONLY

SUBJECT: “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL YEAR” – TRUMP’S SECOND‑TERM DOMESTIC AGENDA, TARIFFS, AND THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE

SUMMARY:

IN ACCORDANCE WITH MFA DIRECTIVE 1826-APRIL-1, THIS EMBASSY HAS INITIATED A REGULAR SERIES OF ANALYTICAL DISPATCHES REGARDING THE INTERNAL DYNAMICS OF THE UNITED STATES. THE SERIES, DESIGNATED “THE FREDONIA PROJECT,” WILL BE CIRCULATED UNDER STANDARD SITREP PROTOCOL. UNAUTHORIZED PUBLICATION HAS BEEN OBSERVED VIA A THIRD-PARTY ENTITY KNOWN AS “THE STEADY STATE.” PRESUMED LEAK. NO ACTION REQUIRED.

From February 2026 through March 2026, Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by a mix of legislative pushes, executive actions, policy shifts, and highly choreographed rhetoric designed to solidify last year’s trend towards authoritarianism in the form of centralized, personalized presidential power The White House frames this period as one of “historic progress,” claiming Trump has made “more progress in three weeks than they made in four years,” restored American “respect,” and delivered “record‑low” border encounters. From the outside, it looks more like a broad stress test on the US system: a deliberate effort to weaken the administrative state, use migration and crime as political organizing tools, weaponize tariffs and energy policy, and redefine the relationship between the presidency, federal agencies, and the law.

The Trump administration has issued a sweeping deregulation order requiring federal agencies to identify and roll back regulations and enforcement actions beyond explicit statutory authority. This is a systematic campaign to install Project 2025-ish plans to put the civil service under presidential control and trash any Obama‑ or Biden‑era rules. This order includes an expanding gray zone, under which enforcement depends less on an interpretation of statutes and more on White House preferences. (Ambassador comment: As with everything Trump, from the 90,000 square foot ballroom to Epic Fury, the president seeks to make the civil service of the United States reflect Trumpian values and goals. Given the history of failure of everything Trump – from real estate to casinos to steaks to a university to wine, should this new civil service triumph, it will be all form and little substance, providing few, if any, of the services the civil service is supposed to provide in support citizens of the United States.)

Immigration policy sits at the center of the Administration’s agenda. The actions that support that agenda include large‑scale deportations, tightened asylum access, and pressure on states to restrict licenses and IDs for undocumented residents. The White House routinely claims “millions” of removals and “self‑deportations,” negative net migration in 2025, and record‑low border encounters, while touting thousands of arrests and a sharp drop in fentanyl trafficking. (Ambassador comment: These numbers are complete nonsense; unsurprising given the weak link between Trump and Reality. It seems likely that the number of actions that support Trump’s policy agenda has political power within the Trump ecosystem, even as the definitions of these actions are contested. Additionally, and still unsurprisingly, the unbelievable numbers of these activities bolster Trump’s narrative, which criminalizes immigration, making extraordinary enforcement appear completely rational.)

Law‑and‑order politics extends beyond immigration. Under the “Save America Act” label, the Administration has advanced measures it describes as strengthening tools against violent and drug‑related crime and tightening election procedures, including litigation to gain access to state voter rolls. This bundle of policies ties criminal justice and immigration enforcement together, and nudges the federal government deeper into the mechanics of election administration, a function regulated at the state level. (Ambassador comment: The continuing attempts by Trump to unconstitutionally put a Federal thumb on the elections’ scales are clearly continuing apace. We assume this will continue either until the elections or until the courts rule against it. It is clearly unconstitutional, and even this Supreme Court should recognize that. Could, but may not.) Trump also created a new initiative for government efficiency, colloquially branded as a Department for Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” with a prominent advisory role for Elon Musk. Officially, DOGE was tasked with rooting out “waste, fraud, and abuse” across federal programs and has been credited by the Administration with more than 200 billion dollars in projected savings. In fact, DOGE functioned as an instrument for reshaping the state from the inside: targeting disfavored programs, rewarding priorities aligned with presidential politics, and inviting an unusually close relationship between a politically allied billionaire and federal resource allocation. (Ambassador Comment: In the time since DOGE was created, the actual savings have proven far less substantial than DOGE and Trump claimed in February, March, April, and on and on. Through April 2025, DOGE has claimed that it saved 52.8 billion dollars; the actual amount saved is, at this point is likely far less. According to Politico, the savings were about 1.4 billion, nothing like the amount Trump, Musk, and their allies have claimed. Finally, it should be stressed that not only did the cuts not trim a ton of fat, but the federal government will likely have to hire contractors at a higher pay rate than the Federal employees Trump and company removed. The accomplishments of the Trump-Musk alliance seem to disappear when light focuses upon them.)

Perhaps the easiest thread to track as it runs through this period is Trump’s campaign against what he calls the “deep state” or “administrative state.” He now openly promises to “destroy the deep state,” “fire the unelected tyrants” in Washington, and replace “rogue bureaucrats” with “patriots.” These statements track closely with external planning documents such as Project 2025 that call for mass personnel changes, ideological screening of civil servants, and expanded presidential control over agencies traditionally considered semi‑independent. Combined with the deregulatory order, DOGE’s activities, and ongoing attacks on inspectors general and independent watchdogs, Trump’s stated plans signal an ambition not just to win elections and pass laws, but to fundamentally remake the relationship between the presidency, the bureaucracy, and the rule of law. (Ambassador Comment: As noted above, it seems likely that if the U.S. government ever replaces people and capabilities Musk shredded, the cost of the government will increase by millions of dollars. And, so, another version of Trump economics fails spectacularly; quelle surprise. And the set of inglorious failures to date keeps getting longer.)

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 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.

April 14, 2026/by siena

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🎙️ Sentinel Podcast – Protecting Liberty in the Age of Surveillance

In the latest episode of the Sentinel, American University Adjunct professor and Scholar‑in‑Residence, Alex Joel, joins host Peter Mina to unpack how democracies can fight real threats without becoming one themselves, exploring the post‑9/11 “connect the dots” mindset, the Privacy Act’s enduring role, and how data, protest, and transparency collide.

Watch and listen to new Sentinel episodes each Tuesday. Subscribe and review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Guest Info: Alex Joel is a Scholar‑in‑Residence and Adjunct Professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, where he leads the Privacy Across Borders initiative and focuses on the intersection of national security, technology, privacy, and civil liberties. He previously served as the longtime Chief of the Office of Civil Liberties, Privacy and Transparency at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, acting as the Intelligence Community’s Civil Liberties Protection Officer and later its Chief Transparency Officer after earlier service as an attorney at the CIA.

View the episode transcript.

April 14, 2026/by siena

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The Art of No Deal

A one-day negotiation, a “final offer,” and no follow-up plan—this wasn’t serious diplomacy; it was a setup for failure with dangerous consequences.

Given the inexperience, inflexibility, and overconfidence the US team brought to Islamabad for talks with Iran on April 11, it was not surprising that nothing was achieved. Heavy-handed attempts at coercion and brinksmanship were bound once again to fail. For Vice President J.D. Vance to say he gave Iran Washington’s “final and best offer” at the outset suggests a serious misreading of how such negotiations work. The Trump Administration, which touts its deal-making skills, was out of its depth. One also cannot help but wonder if it is just going through the motions or setting Vance up to be the fall guy.

Reaching meaningful, lasting agreements is hard and takes time. Every successful negotiation involving foreign adversaries has lasted weeks, months, or years. The 1968-1973 Vietnam Paris Peace process, for example, took nearly five years. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump tore up during his first term was the culmination of a 20-month negotiation. Ending talks in Islamabad after just one 21-hour session was diplomatic malpractice.

Sending Vance to Islamabad to lead talks with Iran ostensibly demonstrated gravitas. It certainly was a step up from the real-estate mogul-led team previously deployed. While Vance has no more experience in Middle East affairs or nuclear technology than diplomatic neophytes Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, at least he is accountable to the public. In previous talks with Iran, Witkoff and Kushner failed to understand Iran’s offers, the technical realities of its nuclear program, or the status of its weaponization efforts. Their misinforming President Trump that Tehran was not negotiating seriously encouraged him to begin his disastrous war.

Unlike those previous engagements, Vance brought along a “technical team,” which included Vance’s National Security Adviser, Andrew Baker, and Michael Vance (no relation), special adviser to the Vice President for Asian affairs, both political appointees. The White House said “a full suite of experts” was in Islamabad or supporting the team from Washington. One would hope the team included career officials well-versed in Iran matters, nuclear non-proliferation and sanctions. But such expertise has become increasingly rare in the federal government after purges initiated by DOGE and continued under Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Those who remain in place are understandably leery of stepping out of line and offering advice that might contradict the positions of senior officials.

Vance’s short press event after emerging from the failed 21-hour talks indicated he does not have a handle on how diplomacy works. Success requires finding common ground. Experienced negotiators seek to understand the other side’s motivations and concerns and to explore alternatives to skirt roadblocks. For Vance to say that “Iran would not accept our terms” reflects a “my way or the highway” attitude. Framing it that way ensures failure.

Successful negotiations also depend on building trust. Whatever trust the United States had built in negotiating the 2015 nuclear deal was shattered when President Trump abandoned the deal in 2018. He deepened Iran’s distrust last June and again in February when he launched strikes while supposedly negotiating a replacement.

A key US goal is to deny Iran the ability to produce nuclear weapons. This requires durable limits on uranium enrichment and on enriched uranium stockpiles. For decades, Iran’s own red line has been to preserve what it regards as a right to this technology. This need not be a deal breaker. As one of us recently assessed, various technical means could preserve the non-proliferation goal without crossing either side’s red line on enrichment. Alternatively, since Iran is currently not enriching, thanks to last June’s attacks, the status quo could be extended for some years, leaving the future status and the issue of a right to enrichment ambiguous or for future talks.

A top priority could be to verifiably eliminate Iran’s stockpile of near-weapon-grade uranium. This requires Iran’s cooperation and international inspections; there is no plausible military option to seize or destroy the canisters of highly enriched uranium buried underground. And a key to Iran’s continued cooperation is that it remains in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which prohibits it from obtaining nuclear weapons. US attacks could backfire if they spur Iran to withdraw from the treaty and permanently remove its nuclear program from international constraints and inspections, making the problem even more intractable.

Whether there will be future talks is unclear. Normally, when negotiations stall, momentum can still be preserved by the expediency of scheduling another round. Vance made no mention of this. While Iran has hinted at interest in continuing to meet, Trump is doubling down on military tools, announcing a complete blockade of Iranian shipping, with more bullying and bluster aimed at allies and adversaries alike. The optics of his being at an Ultimate Fighting Championship event in Miami rather than monitoring the talks from the White House Situation Room show how little regard he had for the diplomatic effort.

Trump is delusional if he really believes that Iran “will come back and… give us everything we want.” After six weeks of strategic disaster overshadowing tactical successes, he needs to ditch his “Art of the Deal” hard-ball approach and engage in genuine deal-making. Serious diplomacy offers the only off-ramp to his ill-conceived war.

Mark Fitzpatrick is a retired US diplomat who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Non-Proliferation. As an Associate Fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, he has engaged in many track II meetings with Iranian counterparts. He is a member of The Steady State

Mark Goodman is a senior scientist who retired from the State Department in 2025 after a thirty-year civil service career, working extensively on international nuclear policy. Dr. Goodman is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He is a member of The Steady State

April 14, 2026/by siena

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Trump Unleashed: Leadership Patterns and Implications in the Second Term

PDF VERSION AVAILABLE HERE

We assess that Donald Trump’s second presidential term exhibits increasingly personalized, dominance-oriented leadership, shaped by strong partisan control, expanded executive authority, and a staff culture emphasizing loyalty over moderation. His governing style prioritizes image, legacy, and symbolic strength over institutional process, contributing to policy volatility and making long-term forecasting difficult, even as he sometimes recalibrates when faced with sustained political, economic, or strategic resistance.

Less Restrained Second Term

We assess that Trump is less constrained in his second term than in his first, due to greater ideological consolidation within the Republican Party, legal developments expanding presidential immunity, and a White House environment that rewards fealty and sidelines moderating voices. The absence of future electoral pressures, combined with accumulated grievances from his first term and post-presidency period, further reduces self-restraint and incentivizes aggressive use of executive tools. Trump has publicly downplayed external checks, suggesting his primary constraint is his own judgment, reflecting a personalized understanding of presidential authority rather than one rooted in constitutional limits.

Cult of Personality and Image Politics

Trump’s leadership is anchored in a personality cult centered on ego, self-importance, and image management, where personal brand and public office are deeply intertwined. He embraces stylized, mythologizing portrayals of himself, including heroic, pop-cultural, and religious imagery, as tools to project singular authority and justify an exceptional role outside normal democratic expectations. Political psychology research on personality-centered movements aligns with this pattern, in which loyalty to the leader becomes central to supporters’ political identity and rhetoric emphasizes his invulnerability and unique status above ordinary accountability.

We assess that Trump increasingly blurs the line between the presidency and his private brand, with a strong focus on visible markers of power such as naming rights, prominent buildings, and large symbolic projects that foreground his personal image. His worldview appears heavily shaped by entertainment media and nostalgic mid-twentieth-century imagery, prioritizing the appearance of strength over functional effectiveness and rewarding followers who mimic his style as demonstrations of fealty. With low confidence, we judge that age-related decline is more likely to intensify negative impulses than to moderate them, given the increasingly disruptive trajectory of his rhetoric and behavior over the past decade.

Transactional Governance

We assess that transactionalism remains a core dimension of Trump’s leadership, with individuals, institutions, and foreign states evaluated primarily in terms of deals, leverage, and personal or political gain rather than values, norms, or collective goods. Government processes, rule of law, and democracy itself tend to be treated as instruments to be exploited for advantage rather than independent constraints embodying shared societal standards. This pattern is particularly visible in foreign policy, where he seeks high-profile deals in arenas such as the Middle East and Eastern Europe without consistent regard for durability, underlying causes, or long-term strategic balance.

Transactional logic also extends to relationships with elites and donors, where large financial contributions or strategic investments have been closely linked in reporting to access and favorable policy outcomes. Trump tends to operate through exchange relationships, whether financial, political, or loyalty-based, rather than through institutionalized policy frameworks, and he often devalues motives tied to sacrifice, ideology, or public service that do not align with his deal-making worldview.

Mafia Style Leadership and Bullying

We assess that Trump routinely employs dominance-based leadership patterns that parallel protection rackets and organized crime models, emphasizing loyalty enforcement, intimidation, and selective reward and punishment. He maintains personal reward networks, keeps long memories of perceived betrayal, and uses public targeting, humiliation, and reputational attacks as tools to discipline subordinates and adversaries. Policy moves, including unilateral tariff threats and coercive bargaining with allies, often resemble protection schemes aimed at extracting concessions or public capitulation rather than deriving from coherent economic or strategic frameworks.

Bullying appears as a distinct, recurring strategy, frequently aimed at weaker or more vulnerable targets while avoiding equal-risk confrontations with peers or stronger opponents. Trump integrates bullying into governance by using visible attacks to signal the costs of dissent and shape the risk calculations of surrounding actors, consistent with research on bullying as a mechanism of social control. He favors family members and long-time business associates for sensitive roles, reinforcing a quasi-clan structure and reducing reliance on professional, norm-bound civil servants whom he often views with suspicion.

Bigotry and Retrograde Social Hierarchy

We assess with moderate confidence that Trump holds instinctive, if not fully worked-out ideological, preferences aligned with a nostalgic mid-twentieth-century social hierarchy privileging white, male, and traditional gender and sexual norms. From his early promotion of false claims about Barack Obama’s citizenship to his stance on the Central Park Five, patterns of racialized grievance and bigotry have been recurrent features of his public life. These instincts often inform policy preferences when not overridden by transactional or tactical considerations, contributing to exclusionary, punitive approaches toward immigrants, racial and religious minorities, and other vulnerable groups.

Trump’s Make America Great Again framing amplifies boomer-era nostalgia and resistance to social changes since the 1950s, reinforcing a worldview that sees many post–civil rights advances as threats rather than progress. In his second term, these instincts appear increasingly institutionalized through aligned appointees and policy entrepreneurs who share his views and possess the expertise to implement harsh measures, making bigotry not just a personal failing but a driver of state policy.

Real Estate Developer Worldview

We assess that Trump’s long career in real estate strongly shapes his conception of power as acquisition, branding, and ownership, with a focus on tangible assets, physical infrastructure, and territorial control. He places outsized emphasis on naming rights, large projects, and branded programs, treating them as essential to legacy and recognition, and has pursued renaming or imprinting his brand on major public sites and government initiatives. Reported comments that historical figures failed by not putting their names on property reflect this deeply ingrained branding logic.

Internationally, his mindset aligns with an imperial frame in which powerful states acquire territory and dominate others, as reflected in musings about annexing Greenland or incorporating Canada as an additional state. He treats ownership rather than treaties or alliances as the ultimate guarantee of control and has expressed admiration for historical imperial projects while downplaying or ignoring associated exploitation and violence. This outlook encourages zero-sum, asset-focused thinking in both domestic and foreign policy.

Inconsistent Decision Making

We assess that Trump lacks a stable, institutionalized decision-making framework beyond shifting perceptions of personal self-interest, grievance, and symbolic gain. He relies heavily on instinct and the influence of the last person in the room, producing frequent reversals and inconsistent rationales for major actions, including the use of military force against Iran and other adversaries. In his first term, more professional staff sometimes slowed or reshaped his impulses; in his second term, a more loyal and ideologically aligned entourage appears to amplify rather than constrain them.

Policy is often announced via social media or abrupt executive actions with limited interagency coordination, contributing to chaos and unpredictable implementation. This volatility empowers sycophantic advisers who can frame their preferred policies as ego-affirming or grievance-satisfying, thereby channeling his impulsivity into more extreme or coherent ideological projects. Such dynamics complicate forecasting, as outcomes depend less on structured processes than on the interplay of mood, flattery, and perceived personal stakes.

Implications

We assess that Trump tends not to compromise unless confronted with an equal or greater demonstration of strength, leverage, or clear personal costs, especially in the absence of internal institutional constraints. He is simultaneously risk averse when facing credible opposition and risk acceptant when imposing costs on weaker actors, leading to bellicose rhetoric followed by tactical retreats that he then rhetorically reframes as victories. External actors, including foreign governments, markets, and domestic institutions, have at times successfully constrained him by imposing clear economic or strategic consequences, as seen when market sell-offs or coordinated resistance forced partial reversals of aggressive tariff or sanction announcements.

Other players experiment with combinations of accommodation and resistance, often beginning with ego-stroking gestures but ultimately needing coordinated pushback to alter his course. Attempts to appease him without meaningful counter leverage tend to invite further demands, while clear, unified resistance can sometimes generate tactical retreats, even as he escalates grievance narratives for his base.

Uncertainty and Forecast Limits

We assess that Trump’s personality will continue to play an outsized role in United States policy, but personality-based forecasting remains inherently difficult and uncertain. With moderate confidence, we judge that salient traits such as ego, bullying, and grievance sensitivity are likely to intensify as domestic and international resistance grows, given his aversion to acknowledging error or accepting defeat. We cannot reliably predict how aging will interact with these dimensions; with low confidence, we assess that advancing age in a less constrained second term environment is more likely to exacerbate existing patterns than to mellow them.

Corruption and Conflicts of Interest

We assess that Trump’s transactional orientation, refusal to fully separate from his business interests, and willingness to leverage public office for private gain create significant corruption risks and conflicts of interest. External reporting indicates that he and his family have profited substantially during his second term through ventures closely linked to his political position, including a financial and crypto start-up in which foreign, state-linked investors acquired major stakes while later receiving favorable policy outcomes.

In January, a reporter for the New Yorker magazine estimated that President Trump and his family have made approximately $4 billion during his first year of his second term by leveraging his office. Particularly through the family’s linkages with financial start up World Liberty Financial: his three sons are cofounders with Trump himself listed as co-founder emeritus. Four days before President Trump’s second inauguration, the UAE national security advisor and brother of the UAE President invested $500 million for a 49% stake in the company. Roughly five months later the UAE was able to negotiate administration approval to purchase powerful A.I. chips that the U.S. had previously declined to approve for export to that country. The Administration denied any connection.

Trump’s administration has significantly weakened the government’s anti-corruption infrastructure. In January 2025, he fired at least 17 inspector generals. In February 2025, he ordered the DoJ to pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In May and June of that year, DoJ issued revised FCPA guidance to emphasize cases that impact U.S. competitiveness and national security. At the same time press reports indicated that the administration sharply reduced the number of attorneys at the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section from over 30 attorneys to around 5 and suspended its ability to review potential cases against members of Congress and other public officials to prevent politically motivated prosecutions.

Institutionally, his administration has weakened anti-corruption safeguards by firing inspectors general, narrowing enforcement of foreign bribery statutes, and reducing the capacity of the Justice Department’s public integrity functions, thereby undermining oversight. Civil and criminal cases alleging fraudulent financial practices in his business empire, including judicial findings of deliberate overvaluation of assets to secure better loan terms, reinforce concerns about his ethical fitness for high office and the compatibility of his leadership style with rule-of-law governance.

April 13, 2026/by siena

Substack

Voting Out the Autocrat

Trump Showers Public Love on Orban in His Hour of… | Go Local Prov

“We have got to get Viktor Orbán reelected… what the United States and Hungary together represent… is the defense of Western civilization.” — JD Vance

Exporting Illiberalism

When a sitting American vice president flies to Hungary not to conduct diplomacy, but to campaign for a foreign strongman, it is not subtle. It is a signal. The endorsement of Viktor Orbán by Donald Trump’s political movement is not about Hungary. It is about importing a model.

And that model is clear: hollow out democratic institutions, consolidate power, weaponize grievance, and call it “Western civilization.” In recent days, Vance didn’t just praise Orbán, he echoed his worldview, attacking the European Union, defending nationalist policies, and urging Hungarian voters to keep Orbán in power. The message wasn’t coded. It was an explicit alignment.

The Orbán Model

Orbán has spent over a decade building what he calls an “illiberal state.” In practice, that has meant consolidating power at every level. Independent media outlets have been bought up, shuttered, or brought under government-friendly control. Election laws have been rewritten to favor the ruling party. Courts have been weakened. Civil society organizations have been stigmatized and constrained. And universities, especially those seen as ideologically inconvenient, have been pushed out or brought to heel. I had the pleasure of speaking and participating in a variety of events at the Central European University before Orban ran it out of town. That was a warning shot to every institution that independence would not be tolerated.

Orbán’s rhetoric has sadly matched his actions. His government has trafficked in anti-immigrant fear, openly racialized narratives about preserving Hungarian identity, and messaging that critics across Europe have repeatedly described as flirting with antisemitic tropes. This is politics rooted in division, defining “the people” narrowly, and casting everyone else as a threat.

Meanwhile, corruption has flourished. Orbán’s inner circle has grown extraordinarily wealthy, even as many Hungarians face stagnant wages, strained public services, and declining economic mobility. This is the system Vance is calling “successful.”

A Glimpse of Intent

The Trump parallels are not subtle. They are the point.

Like Orbán, Donald Trump has attacked independent media as illegitimate. Like Orbán, he has sought to undermine courts, politicize law enforcement, and purge institutions of those seen as insufficiently loyal. His worldview, like Orbán’s, frames politics as an existential struggle in which normal democratic constraints are obstacles to be overcome.

What Orbán represents is the end-state of that approach. Not chaos, but control. Not the collapse of democracy, but its transformation into something managed, where elections still occur, but the playing field is so tilted that outcomes are rarely in doubt. That’s why admiration matters. It’s not rhetorical. It’s aspirational.

Loyalty Over Liberty

At its core, the Orbán model replaces pluralism with loyalty. Institutions are no longer valued for their independence or expertise, but for their alignment with the ruling ideology. Universities must conform. The media must reinforce. Courts must validate.

Sound familiar?

This is the same instinct driving efforts in the United States to purge the civil service, intimidate journalists, and reshape education around political priorities. It is governance by loyalty over competence because loyalty is easier to control.

The result in Hungary has not been renewal. It has been stagnation. Despite the rhetoric of strength and sovereignty, the average Hungarian is no better. Public services have eroded. Economic gains have been uneven. And the country’s international standing has suffered as it drifts away from democratic allies and toward more authoritarian partners.

Transactional Power, No Memory

Trump’s foreign policy reflects the same instinct: transactionalism without continuity, pressure without strategy, and engagement without institutional memory.

In Iran, U.S. attacks have failed to alter the underlying structure of power. The regime remains intact, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps even more central to its survival architecture than before. Repression continues, dissent is crushed, and long-standing strategic behaviors (regional proxy activity and nuclear ambition) remain embedded in state policy.

In Venezuela, similarly, sanctions and pressure have not produced democratic restoration. Instead, the same governing coalition remains dominant, elections will remain constrained, opposition figures harassed or imprisoned, and political competition tightly managed.

In both cases, the pattern is the same: attack, declare progress, move on, while the underlying systems adapt and endure. That is not a strategy. It is drift, with the predictable result that problems are not resolved, only deferred. In both countries, the leadership survives. The system persists. And ordinary citizens bear the consequences.

A Test of Limits—And a Verdict

Sunday, Hungarian voters delivered a result that many observers had considered increasingly uncertain: Viktor Orbán conceded defeat after an unexpectedly decisive electoral loss.

That fact matters for two reasons. First, it demonstrates that even systems designed for durability have limits. Even heavily managed political environments can produce outcomes that their architects cannot control. And even long-entrenched leaders can be forced, by the electorate, to accept defeat.

Second, Orbán conceded, in contrast to a more troubling pattern in contemporary politics: the normalization of refusal to accept electoral outcomes when they are unfavorable. In the United States, that norm has already been tested in ways that continue to shape political behavior and institutional trust. That divergence should not be ignored.

For years, Orbán has been treated in certain American political circles as a kind of proof of concept: that a leader can reshape institutions, consolidate authority, and maintain electoral legitimacy simultaneously. His defeat complicates that narrative. It suggests that even after sustained institutional capture, electoral accountability can reassert itself when public tolerance for stagnation, corruption, and democratic constraint reaches its limit.

That is not a Hungarian lesson. It is a democratic one. And it is a reminder that political systems are not static, that control and permanence are not the same thing, and that legitimacy, once eroded, is difficult to indefinitely sustain through institutional engineering alone.

The United States will face its own tests soon enough, this November and again in 2028. The question is not whether illiberal models can be admired or studied. The question is whether they can be replicated or resisted when pressure is applied at home. Hungary has now offered its answer. The United States must answer similarly.

Bruce Berton served as a U.S. diplomat for over three decades, ultimately rising to the senior ranks of the Foreign Service, including two years as Ambassador and Head of Mission at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is a Pacific Northwest native and a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of over 390 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.

April 13, 2026/by siena

Substack

Unfit to Command

A lifetime of leadership experience leads to a stark conclusion: Donald Trump’s lack of competence and empathy is not just a personal flaw—it is a national security risk, now dangerously exposed in a war with Iran.

Tragically, Donald Trump is incapable of providing effective leadership for our Armed Forces or the nation, and has proven so repeatedly. The still expanding war of choice with Iran makes this statement even more pressing and alarming. I have published, spoken on, and taught leadership principles for over four decades. There are two primary components of good leadership: competence and caring. America’s once and again chief executive is a clear failure on both counts. His unilateral, disastrous decision to go to war with Iran provides illumination.

You have heard it before, but it bears repetition. This Oval Office occupant exhibits all the behaviors of a malignant narcissist. Narcissists like this lack empathy. Empathy is a key character trait of all effective leaders. Despite voluminous discussion of Trump’s shortcomings, rarely is his lack of empathy, the ability to genuinely care about the fate of those beyond himself and his immediate family, highlighted as a causal factor in his leadership deficiency. We all know that quality, effective leadership matters; soldiers know and depend on this factor better than most. Effective leaders inspire us to become the best version of ourselves. A truly caring leader would have considered and planned for the circumstances and consequences of the actions he was directing the military to undertake. And, he would have prepared and mobilized the nation to support those actions while explaining their urgency. He did neither.

When it comes to competence, history’s judgement will be harsh. This Commander-in-Chief may be the least capable of performing national security functions of any that ever sat behind the desk. Effective leadership in this context is about making wise and informed decisions, acting with integrity, bolstering the nation’s (rather than personal) well-being, accepting responsibility, and possessing the character to bear burdens for others, easing them when possible. This White House occupant renounces responsibility like the mongoose recoils from the cobra’s strike. His straight-from-the-hip and go-to position appears to be to lie, dissemble, and blame others. He plays the role of victim constantly and with undisguised relish.

Regarding the war of choice against Iran, his leadership mistakes are egregious. Trump chose a wholly unqualified self-promoter with repugnant views and past behavior to lead his self-styled Department of “War.” He refused to seek Congressional counsel or approval prior to engaging in hostilities, preferring the advice of his son-in-law and business cronies. He embraced the long disproven notion that air-power alone could compel surrender, an idea surely not promoted by senior military advisers. He shunned collaboration, insulting our NATO allies – calling them cowards – and endangered the Gulf Cooperation Council nations.

As the battle was joined, he insisted that the war was already won in the midst of a clearly continuing and escalating conflict while leaving many American citizens stranded in the region, for lack of evacuation planning. Moreover, he failed to anticipate what everyone in the US Intelligence Community surely knew: that Iran would respond by threatening the Strait of Hormuz, effectively shutting down 20% of the globe’s oil distribution, and driving up the cost of gas at the pump. Finally, but hardly least, he appears to be preparing for a ground assault option that could result in significant American military casualties. The list of missteps goes on and grows longer daily.

It is a well-established truth that competent and caring leaders earn their peoples’ respect and loyalty. I have studied leadership throughout my adult life, learning at the feet of exceptional senior sergeants and officers in the US Army’s Special Forces. I know this subject through academics as well, but more importantly, a half-century of deep professional experience. Mr. Trump is not equal to the challenge of leading our nation. Regrettably, he lacks both required components of effective leadership: competence and caring. Both components are bolstered and accentuated by striving to be a good person. This chief executive failed that test a long time ago.

Robert Bruce Adolph , a qualified Military Strategist, is a retired senior US Army Special Forces soldier. He holds graduate degrees in both National Security Studies & International Affairs and was formally trained as a counterintelligence special agent. Robert also taught university level courses in American Government, US History, and World Politics. Following his retirement from the active military, he joined the UN, subsequently seeing service in Sierra Leone, Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Indonesia and more, culminating in the role of Chief of the Middle East and North Africa at UN Headquarters in New York. He is a member of The Steady State.

April 13, 2026/by siena

Substack

The Weekly: Sowing the Storm

Photo illustration of storm clouds gathering over the White House

Welcome to expert analysis from former senior national security leaders—spanning intelligence, diplomacy, the military, and the law. Catch up on the week’s critical insights or dive deep into the issues defining our moment.

If you feel like the guardrails are thinning, you’re not imagining it. This week’s digest exposes the widening gap between executive rhetoric and national security reality—highlighting how broken windows in global diplomacy and a “see no evil” approach at the ODNI are leaving the door wide open for autocracy.

The Essentials

The Mission

“The integrity of our legal system depends on the principle that no one is above the law, including government attorneys,” said Steven Cash, Executive Director of The Steady State, and an attorney. “This proposed rule would create a mechanism for shielding Department of Justice attorneys from independent professional accountability. It is inconsistent with federal statute, and it is inconsistent with the basic expectations of a constitutional democracy.” —The Steady State this week objected to a proposed DoJ rule that undermines independent attorney oversight.

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Sleepwalking Into Danger

At a moment demanding clarity, competence, and global leadership, America is instead choosing fragmentation, retreat, and strategic blindness.

The global power perspective over the next several years promises to be more fragmented and therefore less predictable. There are several more power centers now, fewer strong alliances to inhibit errant behavior of individual nations, and new trade blocs like BRICS are emerging. Looking over the next four to five years, the state of the national security of the United States can reasonably be considered perilous, perhaps more foreboding than at any time since 1940.

Not since the advent of WWII have legitimate existential threats reached out for the American throat. At the outset of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US was ill-prepared for a major war, but against the background of darkening European skies in the late 1930s, we had made significant progress in strengthening our defensive capability. Large and small wars in the ensuing post-WWII war years, such as Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq twice, and Afghanistan, among others, based on our perception at the time of worrisome and unacceptable external situations that upset the world order. But none posed a direct threat to the nation’s territorial integrity.

War on Iran falls into that category. An ongoing and unresolved conflict, it is true that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon and long-range missile delivery is indeed a threat. But it is mid- to long-term and one that our intelligence apparatus and that of our erstwhile allies are in a position to monitor and take more preventative military action if needed. Iran is still under the control of an evil and cruel regime, an open sore for the Gulf and the Middle East at large, but it presents no immediate threat to the safety of the US. I, for one, do not lose sleep at night because of Iran.

On the subject of sleep, it is the mental decline and moral deficit of the President and the tribe of praetorians who surround him, not to mention the absence of strong, principled wise men and women to be found anywhere in his orbit, that are the cause of my sleepless nights. That, and growing concerns that there might well be existential threats awaiting a poorly prepared and withdrawing United States.

President Trump’s December 2025 National Security Strategy makes plain his ill-concealed animosity toward Europe and NATO. Beyond that, there is a striking indifference emerging post-Iran war for the eternally volatile Middle East, a very troubling disregard for Eurasia (think Russia and Ukraine), a near total abandonment of Africa, and a deference to China as the uncontested hegemon of that vast, economic, military, and strategic powerhouse of Asia. The Cold War is behind us, but multiple cultural and political conflicts are still alive, and new tactical and strategic groupings are emerging. They will constitute new tensions for a new era.

Russia may win or ultimately lose its battle for Ukraine, but it will not go silently into the night. It will continue to be a strategic challenge and meddle in the irrepressible irredentism that has been its signature one way or another since 1917. China is carefully calibrated by its government, familiar with long-term planning and values stability. It is perhaps nominally less of a threat compared to Russia, which can be volatile and difficult to predict. Both are and must remain key intelligence targets.

Only a fool, though, would write off China and the festering, always angry, nuclear-armed North Korea as long-term strategic threats to the US. They could pose threats to friendly nations with whom we have important security and key economic technology agreements, like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and several Southeast Asian countries.

Few scenarios offer the terrors of another land war in Asia. This administration’s dismissal of thousands of hard-working and dedicated professional men and women who have traditionally collected, sorted, analyzed, and prioritized foreign events is damning. Our skilled diplomatic pursuit and broad understanding of Chinese policies and motivations, and other countries around the world, are badly weakened. We suffer a massive hole now where knowledge, experience and soft power once built a series of critically important, quietly effective, and under-appreciated national defenses.

To intentionally, willfully, turn away from the benefits of what used to be richly informed and sound policy formulation, predicated much of the time on the hard realities of China and Russia, for a short-sighted recasting of global dangers, is the functional equivalent of self-blinding.

In a world that grows more dangerous, such failure could be costly, not just to the former American balancing and leadership role in the world but to a great nation that today seems to be flirting with irrelevance and is every day on edge.

Had the hi-tech weaponry spent in Iran gone instead to Ukraine, it could have spelled the difference between Ukraine’s struggle for survival and victory; Russia has been beset with heavy losses for years now, its economy scraping by. It is not doing well in Ukraine. The failure of the Trump administration to predict a resurgence of lucrative Russian oil movements that would breathe new life into Moscow’s lone and finite fossil fuel economy was apparently not factored into its war plans, strengthening this troublesome player when that is one of the last things we want.

Had there been no Iran, even with renewed help for Ukraine, we would have saved for unknowable future needs a great number of those very expensive offensive and defensive weapons that take years and billions to build. Were we to be confronted with an existential threat from, say, the most likely quarter, a China/Taiwan conflict, or an unlikely but not to be ruled out suddenly resurgent Russian militarism, the United States would be less prepared than at any point in recent history.

Following his service in CIA Mr. Piekney was the DCI’s representative to the Secretary of State’s Accountability Review Board investigating a terrorist attack on a U.S. installation in Saudi Arabia; was appointed as the Director of Studies at a CIA then DNI sponsored think tank during which he lead several highly classified Intelligence Community-wide studies involving nuclear weapons in the subcontinent and countering terrorism in the United States; he headed the Human Intelligence section of the George W. Bush Presidential Commission on The Intelligence Capabilities of The United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD Commission); and consulted for international clients on defense and national security issues. Mr. Piekney received the CIA’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA’s Intelligence Commendation Medal, and the State Department’s Superior Honor Award. He was also awarded the rank of Distinguished Officer of the Senior Intelligence Services. He is a member of The Steady State.

April 12, 2026/by siena

Substack

A Kremlin Talking Point Becomes an American Accusation

Labeling democratic protest a ‘Color Revolution’ doesn’t protect America—it imports a narrative designed to weaken it.

If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you may have seen accusations about organizations fomenting a “color revolution” in the United States, and being amplified by conspiracy theorist influencers to their followers. That term, “color revolution,” is thrown around like a negative, as though it describes something violent, undemocratic, or fundamentally treasonous.

Let’s be clear: it’s not, and it doesn’t. And the fact that so many Americans are now repeating this accusation shows more about our current discourse than it does about understanding its origins.

So, let’s take a second to talk about what the “Color Revolutions” actually were.

Between 2000 and 2005, citizens in several post-Soviet bloc states took to the streets to protest stolen elections and corrupt authoritarian governments. In Serbia, hundreds of thousands marched after Slobodan Milošević tried to falsify election results. In Georgia, the Rose Revolution peacefully ousted Eduard Shevardnadze after fraudulent parliamentary elections. In Ukraine, the Orange Revolution mobilized millions when Viktor Yanukovych’s allies rigged a presidential vote. In Kyrgyzstan, the Tulip Revolution followed the same pattern.

These movements shared some common features: they were largely nonviolent, they were in large part triggered by election fraud, and they sought to replace corrupt regimes with democratic governance. Citizens organized, they marched, they demanded that their votes be counted. No militias. No insurrections. Masses of citizens standing in public squares holding signs, insisting on the right to choose their own leaders.

Here’s what most people repeating the “Color Revolution” as a smear don’t seem to know: the idea that these movements are sinister, violent – or in some way illegitimate – is a Russian talking point.

Vladimir Putin has been explicit about this, and has had a particular obsession with Color Revolutions for years: in November 2014, he declared that Russia must prevent any color revolutions on Russian soil, calling them “tragic” and “destabilizing.” Russia has long blamed pro-democracy global organizations, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and NGOs like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the International Republican Institute (IRI) as being fronts for a vast U.S.-led western conspiracy to generate color revolutions in the former Soviet states. In 2022, he repeated the claim, asserting that Western elites had used color revolutions as tools of manipulation around the world. Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, formally classified color revolutions as a form of “warfare” — not as popular democratic uprisings but as manufactured threats from abroad – orchestrated to achieve regime change.

Russia’s Defense Ministry even introduced a course at its General Staff Academy specifically designed to develop countermeasures against color revolutions — studying information warfare, cultural policy, and techniques to neutralize civil society organizations. The Kremlin views citizens peacefully demanding free elections as an existential threat, not because those citizens are violent, but because democratic accountability is incompatible with Putin’s dictatorship. When a movement in Georgia or Ukraine succeeds in replacing a corrupt, Moscow-aligned regime with a democratic government, Russia loses a loyal client state. That’s the real threat. Not violence. Not chaos. Democracy is the threat.

Even the term ‘Color Revolution‘ is a tell. Originating as a shorthand for pro-democracy protest movements in the former Soviet sphere, it is not a term that had been used to describe Western political movements before 2019, when Kremlin-backed RT began publishing op-eds applying it to U.S. politics. The term had no background in our domestic political lexicon before then. Now used predominantly by Eastern authoritarians as a propagandistic boogeyman, its adoption and use by American far-right online influencers is a clear signal that the messaging can be traced to its genesis at the Kremlin. Considering the 2024 federal indictment that revealed Russian state media had funneled nearly $10 million to prominent far-right online pundits through a Tennessee-based media company, it strains credibility that the sudden introduction of a long-held authoritarian talking point just came up organically in American political discourse.

The pattern tracks with the Kremlin’s strategy, going back decades. In 2020, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee — led at the time by Republicans, notably now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio — concluded that Russia’s operations against the United States sought, and continues to seek, to undermine the integrity of elections and American confidence in democracy itself. The weaponization of ‘Color Revolution’ rhetoric is simply the latest iteration of a long-standing Russian strategy.

So when American influencers accuse their fellow citizens of plotting a“treasonous” “Color Revolution”, they need to understand whose vocabulary they’re borrowing. They are making Vladimir Putin’s argument for him, and are adopting a framework invented by an authoritarian government to discredit the very concept of citizens holding their leaders accountable. And those attempting to inject a dictator’s definition of protest into our vocabulary would be wise to remember that the United States is a client to none but our own citizens and constitution.

If history teaches anything, it’s this: when people lose the ability to speak, write, and be heard within the system, that’s when real tyranny has arrived. If advocating for free elections, accountability, and basic rights makes us “Color Revolutionaries,” then we’ll wear that label eagerly and proudly — because our colors are red, white, and blue. They always have been. They always will be.

Ken Syring served as Deputy Chief of Staff at U.S. Customs and Border Protection and is a former San Francisco police officer and forensic investigator. He is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Mongolia, 2006–2008). His research on mitigating authoritarian traits through national service has been published in the National Civic Review, and his work on countering extremism in law enforcement presented at the Cambridge Disinformation Summit. He is a member of The Steady State.

April 11, 2026/by siena

Substack

Trump: Big Talker, Pitiful Leader – What Has He Achieved?

The Economist, March 21, 2026: “Operation Blind Fury”

Donald Trump’s campaign against Iran has cost lives, cash, and credibility, achieved almost nothing strategic, deepened global chaos and mistrust, and exposed a presidency that reflexively prefers spectacle over a sober plan.

During five weeks of war with Iran, the President of the United States and his acolytes have showered us with words, often contradictory or nonsensical, to persuade us not to trust our eyes and our judgment that his war is not going well. According to polls, this tactic is backfiring, with Congressional Democrats finally finding their footing in opposition, and even normally noisy loyalists voicing doubt and criticism. Meanwhile, Trump’s bombastic threats to create even more havoc, worries of a world thrown into economic chaos, and galloping gasoline prices here at home have swept us up in an increasingly anxious wave.

It’s worth taking a moment to remember how little information we had to go on in the days leading up to the February 28 Israeli-American attack. In a February 25 Steady State post, I listed some of the pertinent questions to ask about U.S. intentions. Rereading this list, it is shocking, but not surprising, how many of these questions remain unanswered or have been obscured by the Administration’s confusing and often absurd rhetoric.

Here are some excerpts.

“Once again (after the Venezuela operation), the President of the United States is contemplating the use of American military might overseas and has prepared an enormous force for attack, this time on Iran. And yet once again, despite the seriousness of doing so, he has not consulted Congress, explained to the American people why such a step might be in the American national interest, or made any effort to solicit support from either. These facts alone demonstrate Presidential malpractice and endanger Americans – at home, living and working in the Middle East, and in uniform – as well as citizens of the region.

“It is perhaps understandable that Trump and his people see a particular opportunity to break the regime’s grip on the country. Trump’s record demonstrates that he favors brief, splashy actions to achieve his objectives, with the hard work of planning to deal with the consequences saved for later. The idea seems to be, in typical Trumpian fashion, to cow the Iranians into submitting to American demands to abandon uranium enrichment, send any remaining stocks overseas, abandon its missile programs, and cut off all support to its proxies in the region.

“Does Trump think that air power and missile attacks will frighten the Iranians into “capitulation”? Does he think that force will be the last straw that breaks a weakened regime’s back? Does he think that air power alone can eliminate both the clerics and the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (which itself possesses great political, military, and economic power)? If so, whom, if anyone, does he foresee capable of assuming power in Iran? What kind of Iran emerges from such turmoil?

“Crucially, how long does Trump think force would continue to be necessary in order to bring about any of these still undefined objectives? What does Trump think the risks to the U.S. and to American lives (including Americans already in the region, or forces in combat) of what is likely to be an open-ended effort might be? Has anyone planned how to minimize or counter those risks? In short, what is the goal? And what is the price likely to be?”

To Trump’s great frustration and even puzzlement, the Iranians did not cave in. (At various times, his threats have also included a promise never to “permit” Iran to have a nuclear weapon and to destroy the Iranian regime to allow the country’s popular opposition to seize power.) That left him with only two tools: negotiation and the use of force. How serious the U.S. negotiation effort was can be debated, but the U.S. side, while making its maximum demands public, never had a good grasp of what Iran might have been persuaded to do. How serious Iran was, we do not know, but it persuasively argued that it was merely being handed an ultimatum, rather than any prospect of compromise. That the February 28 attack was launched while the Iranians, the Omani mediators, and others still expected the talks to continue merely hardened Iran’s suspicions. Trump again has been frustrated and puzzled that despite enormous physical damage to Iran, and the loss of hundreds of its senior officials, using force has not worked either.

So what has Trump achieved, after billions of dollars, thirteen American deaths, hundreds more wounded, a number of destroyed American aircraft, nearly 2000 dead Iranians, damage in friendly regional states (including civilian deaths in Israel, the other attacker), and shipping in one of the world’s most crucial waterways brought to a halt with no near-term prospect for an end to the fighting?

Shockingly, but also not surprisingly, very little. Iran was not close to developing a nuclear weapon and is now presumably farther away, but there is absolutely no reason to suppose that its successor leaders, in their rage and isolation, will be willing to give up any such aspiration. Iran retains its stocks of enriched uranium, which are presumably mostly still buried after last June’s Israeli-American raids, but they are beyond U.S. grasp unless it is willing to undertake a very risky and probably foolhardy mission to retrieve them. There is probably little left of the Iranian capacity for further enrichment, but without outside monitoring, it would not be hard for Iran to rebuild such a capability. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ grip on the country remains in place. While Iran’s missile and drone stocks have been badly depleted, it can still wreak painful damage on its targets. And there is no reason to suppose – except possibly that Iran might physically find it harder to do, now that its willingness to support proxy forces in the area has decreased. Trump’s erstwhile promise given to brave Iranians on the streets – “Help is on the way” – evaporated weeks ago.

American allies have only become more mistrustful of the United States. The U.S. military has moved personnel away from vulnerable bases, hoping to make them safer by housing them in local offices and hotels. While this motive may be laudable, it is hard to distinguish this action from using civilians as human shields, a war crime and something the U.S. has always regarded as repugnant. Trump has only mentioned shifting timelines and expiring deadlines to indicate how long hostilities might last. And he has never leveled with the American people about what price – in money and lives – he intends that we should continue to pay.

Before February 28, the Strait of Hormuz was open, and there was no threat to its closure. Through U.S. blundering, the Strait is closed; reopening it has evolved into a principal war aim. Yet even that goal remains elusive and would be difficult and dangerous to accomplish. We now hear news of possible new negotiations and exchanges of demands; given, however, the even wider conceptual gulf than before between the antagonists and other pertinent obstacles, it is unlikely that any such efforts will produce much in the short term. It is always conceivable that the Iranians could decide to sue for peace, or Trump could pick a moment to declare victory and walk away, but there is good reason to be skeptical here as well.

It is hard to know whether Trump and his circle of yes-men have grasped the obvious seriousness and enormous costs of their strategic blundering. But every time Trump opens his mouth to crow about American greatness, he provides instead more proof of how he has weakened the United States.

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 400 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.

April 11, 2026/by siena

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