The Emergent Trump Doctrine
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Why has coverage of Gaza and Ukraine decreased in Trump’s second term?
One thing that's been on my mind is we've not been covering Israel and Gaza or Ukraine and Russia nearly as much as we did in 2023 and 2024, but frankly, as much as I think we should be. And there's been two reasons for that. One has just been that Donald Trump's second administration has felt in many ways like a domestic emergency, and it has pulled much more of our focus here. But the other is that often when we're covering these conflicts, what we're really covering, implicitly or explicitly, is the American position on them. How are we going to use our might, our money, our weaponry, our leverage to bring them to some kind of close or settlement? And early in Trump's second administration, where he was basically filled me with despair.
He seemed to have little interest in Gaza except for potentially building hotels there. Beyond that, he seemed perfectly happy to let Israel annex whatever it wanted. On Ukraine, he was at odds with Zelensky, and his main interest seemed to be his relationship with Vladimir Putin. But things have been changing a bit. Other parts of his America First foreign policy have been coming into more focus. So what is Donald Trump's foreign policy? What at this point can we actually say about it? How has it been evolving over the course of his still young second term? To help me think that through, I wanted to bring Emma Ashford back on the show. Emma is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center. She is the author of the forthcoming book, First Among Equals.
And she's a foreign policy analyst who is more of a realist. She's in fundamental ways more sympathetic to some of the motivating impulses of Trump's foreign policy, even if she doesn't always agree with how it's carried out. So I thought she'd be a good person to help me steel man what they are doing and think through whether or not it's working or has a real chance of working. One thing we don't get to that much in this conversation is that what is happening on the ground and in the politics in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Israel has really changed over the past couple of months. And we're going to have some more episodes that get into that soon. As always, my email, ezraklineshow at nytimes.com.
Emma Ashford, welcome back to the show.
Thanks so much for having me back.
So how would you at this point describe Donald Trump's foreign policy?
If you want a one-word phrase or a two-word phrase, America first is about as good as any. It actually describes a lot of what he's been doing, privileging U.S. interests. But I mean, I think in sort of a slightly longer form, the Trump administration's foreign policy has been this sort of interesting blend of realpolitik, kind of Nixon-style reshaping U.S. foreign policy with a lot of Trumpian idiosyncrasies, right-wing culture war stuff. So it's definitely a blend of different themes.
U.S. interests defined how?
That's also a good question. I mean, I do think, you know, I'm sort of wrapping that up in the phrase Trumpian idiosyncrasies, which is a polite way of saying things like Donald Trump likes people who give him gifts, including foreign leaders.
See, that doesn't feel like a U.S. interest to me, whether or not Donald Trump gets a plane.
Yeah, exactly. It really doesn't. At the same time, a lot of what the administration is doing is actually geared around, I think, U.S. interests in an actual national interest sense. Now, in a very conservative way of interpreting those, right, protecting the border would be one example. But, you know, burden sharing or burden shifting to European allies, right? Donald Trump doesn't get anything personally out of that. That is a policy that is being driven much more by the perception of those in the administration of what they think of as U.S. interests. So they very much value U.S. sovereignty. They want to think about American interests in terms of, you know, the people, the prosperity and the security of the people that live inside the United States and maybe to a certain extent Americans abroad.
but not necessarily U.S.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why has coverage of Gaza and Ukraine decreased in Trump’s second term?
0:26–9:09
2
What are the main factions shaping Trump’s foreign‑policy team?
9:09–17:33
3
How does the administration balance support for Israel with concerns over the Gaza humanitarian crisis?
17:33–27:32
4
What is Trump’s strategy for achieving a nuclear deal with Iran?
27:32–36:35
5
How are tariffs and the China policy reflecting Trump’s broader foreign‑policy goals?
36:35–46:13
6
What would a successful outcome of Trump’s foreign policy look like?
46:13–56:15
7
What does failure look like for Trump’s foreign‑policy agenda?
56:15–1:04:02
8
Which books does Emma Ashford recommend for understanding U.S. foreign policy?
1:04:02–1:04:08