Ezra Klein

Our executive producer is Claire Gordon.

The show's production team also includes Marie Cassione, Roland Hu, Kristen Lin, Emmett Kelbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King, and Jan Kobel.

Original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker.

Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta.

The director of New York Times Pending Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.

Over the past month, there are two dominant stories in American foreign policy.

One, of course, is the war with Iran.

The other is the much anticipated summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping of China.

And I think if you look closely at both of these stories,

you see that our foreign policy has entered into a period of absolute and complete incoherence.

Donald Trump said that the point of the war with Iran was to end the threat of the Iranian regime and to forever end their capability to get nuclear weapons.

Now, if you look at what is being considered, it appears that neither policy is going to be achieved.

So what are we doing there?

What are we trying to achieve there now?

And if you look at President Trump's entire time in politics, he's been committed to nothing so much as changing America's relationship with China.

Containing China, making sure we have power in that relationship or we begin to detach from it.

But if you look at our policy now towards China and you look at that summit with China, are either of those things happening?

Are we, in fact, moving in the opposite direction?

There is much I disagree with in Donald Trump's foreign policy, but at the moment, there's just a reality that it's not clear what it is.

It's not clear what he is trying to achieve or what he is simply settling for or reacting to.