Trump is too lazy, ill-disciplined, and venal to be the ‘thinker’ or strategist realist and China-first hawks keep trying to make him out to be. This post is the longer and pre-edited version of an essay I just wrote for Foreign Policy magazine.

In fact, I am amazed anyone thinks Trump has the discipline to do this. Are you not watching the same Trump – erratic, confused, chaotic – the rest of us are? Trump is far more likely to simply sell US foreign policy to the highest bidder if he becomes president. He loves money and adulation. The Chinese and the Russians are more than happy to throw that at him to get him to bend on their interests.

We keep hearing that Trump will prioritize China and Taiwan over Europe and Ukraine, but listen to what he says about Taiwan and China. He doesn’t sound a realist at all. He dislikes Taiwan for protectionist and free-riding reasons, and he clearly admires Xi Jinping’s autocracy.

The best predictor for Trump’s second term is what he did in the first term, and that was a confused mess. He dislikes Ukraine – and will surrender it to Russia – because Zelenskyy wouldn’t help him cheat in the 2020, not because of a strategic re-prioritization toward Asia.

Maybe realists will get their wished-for realignment or re-prioritization out of Trump’s staff. Perhaps Elbridge Colby will push that through. But it’s hard to imagine a major foreign policy realignment without POTUS’ consent, if not participation. And Trump just isn’t focused enough. Worse, Trump has a tendency to staff himself with clowns. Your more likely to get incompetence out of a Trump second term than anything.

The full, unedited FP essay is below the jump.

When Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016, a wave of writing suggested that he was a realist. In this framing, Hillary Clinton was a neocon hawk who would start wars. Trump, by contrast, would balance American commitments with its resources. He would avoid foreign conflicts and quagmires. He would be less ideological in his approach to non-democratic states.

In 2024, this thinking has returned. Some realist voices are again suggesting Trump is one of them. Trump’s desire to end the war in Ukraine – even though he simply intends to let Russia win – is taken as evidence of this. So is the selection of JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate. Vance has famously said he does not care what happens to Ukraine. Conversely, he is a China hawk who seems to believe the US cannot support both Taiwan and Ukraine simultaneously.

The notion that American support for Taiwan and Ukraine is a trade-off is the most controversial position of the Trump realist position. Elbridge Colby, for example, has argued prominently that US support for Ukraine undercuts its ability to help Taiwan, and that Europe should be almost exclusively responsible for helping Ukraine (or not). These hope in Trump, however, are likely misplaced.

Trump Does Not Have a Hawkish Record on China

Trump’s first term is the most obvious data source from which to draw conclusions about a second possible term – and there is far more to suggest indiscipline, showboating, and influence-peddling than realism. Realism suggests a clear-eyed, bloodless calculation of national interest, jettisoning ideological predilections and narrow factional interests. That does not characterize the first Trump administration.

On China – a focus on which is to justify Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine – Trump was undisciplined and sloppy. Yes, he turned against China in 2020, but that was more to deflect blame for covid than any realist or strategic reappraisal of Sino-US relations. Trump massively botched the US response to corona, so covid suddenly became the ‘kung flu’ in an openly racist bid to change the subject.

Trump also undercut any ostensible focus on China by picking unnecessary fights with US regional partners. US-South Korea and US-Australia relations, for example, sank to their lowest point in years as Trump picked fights with their leaders because he wanted a pay-off for the US alliance guarantees. Realism values allies as a means to share burdens, project power, and generate global coalitions, and China containment specifically requires regional basing. Trump does not seem to grasp that at all. When Trump backed off his Japan criticism, the turning point was apparently former Prime Minister’ Abe Shinzo’s relentless flattery, including giving Trump a gold-plated golf club, not any strategic reevaluation by Trump or his team. Such frippery is exactly the opposite of the cold calculation we associate with realism.

Trump also sank the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and all but dropped earlier US language about a pivot or re-balance to Asia. Were China a threat Trump took seriously, then building a tighter trade area among US Asian partners would be a smart move – to pool local allied economic power and build patterns of administrative coordination among those partners. Indeed, that was the rationale behind TPP and the pivot when proposed by the Barack Obama administration. Trump did not see that either; he is obsessed with tariffs, even against allies, which obviously violates realist tenants about allied power accumulation and coordination against shared threats.

Finally, Trump’s admiration for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s autocracy was blatant, and Trump is once again praising Xi as his ‘friend’. Trump has spoken approvingly of China’s crackdowns in Tiananmen Square, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong. He solicited Chinese help in the 2020 election, and China happily channeled money to Trump’s family and his properties during his presidency. The core political difference between the US and China – what sets them at loggerheads over China’s role in East Asia – is regime type. Yet Trump admires China’s dictatorship and its corruption. He clearly craves authoritarian powers at home and is happy to take China’s money. It stretches credulity to suggest Trump will lead a US shift, much less an Indo-Pacific coalition, against a power he admires. China will probably just throw money at him if he is re-elected.

Trump’s First Term Does Not Suggest Realism

Little else in Trump’s first term suggests greater discipline, much less a thoughtful, realist weighing of priorities:

North Korea

Trump’s most important first term foreign policy venture was the attempted denuclearization of North Korea. Unsurprisingly, it was amateurish, sloppy, and unplanned, and it failed. There is a realist argument for reaching out to Pyongyang. America’s long-standing policy of containment and deterrence has not changed North Korea or prevented its nuclearization. North Korea is now a direct nuclear threat to the US mainland. A realistic foreign policy would accept that as an unchangeable fact and react to it. Perhaps a bold move by a risk-taking statesman could break the logjam and reset decades of tension. This is certainly how ‘art of the deal’ Trump sees himself and what a realist might envision.

But this is not what Trump did. If realism suggests diplomacy as a pragmatic way to build compromises and reduce the likelihood of war, Trump failed, almost risibly. He did not prepare for his meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He simply walked off the plane and thought his tough guy shtick would somehow bowl Kim over. Trump did not lead an inter-agency process to iron out differences among his staff and agencies ahead of time, in order to build acceptable proposals which could be floated at the summits in bargaining. He did not approach the North Koreans with any kind of measured, realistic deal which could appeal to both sides. Indeed, if Trump’s cotemporaneous National Security Advisor John Bolton is correct, Trump did not even read in preparation for the summits. Instead, Trump demanded the complete, verifiable, irreversible nuclear disarmament of North Korea in exchange for sanctions removal and then walked out of the Hanoi summit when Pyongyang predictably rejected this wildly unbalanced ‘deal.’ Talks collapsed, because Trump had not prepared and had no idea how to bargain on the issues when his first offer was rejected.

But Trump did get what he really wanted – lots and lots of publicity. His hugely hyped – and criminally under-prepared – first summit with Kim in Singapore brought a week of non-stop news coverage. His later trip to the demilitarized zone, which included briefly walking inside North Korea, brought another wave of coverage. Trump even demanded that he receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This is showboating, not strategy.

The Middle East

America’s long, troubled commitment to the Middle East has long been a realist target. America’s overseas commitments to Europe and East Asia have a widely-accepted security logic to them. But in the Middle East, almost everyone agrees that the US is over-extended, that it cannot bring democracy to the region, that its wars there were quagmires, and so on. If there is any one region from which realists and restrainers of almost every stripe agree that the US should withdraw, it is the Middle East.

Needless to say Trump did not do that. Yes, he did not start any US wars in the Middle East, but he did step up US drone strikes though, which generate enormous local resentment and feed Islamic fundamentalist groups with new recruits from those strikes’ survivors. Trump also did not have the realist, strategic toughness to withdraw from Afghanistan. Instead, he dumped that burden on his successor. And in Israel, Trump indulged the Christian millenarian and Islamophobic ideology of his evangelical voting base. He closely tied the US to Bejamin Netanyahu’s rightist Israeli coalition and its rejection of any autonomy for the Palestinians. Giving over foreign policy to a fanatical, factional domestic interest is precisely the opposite of strategic, realist foreign policy.

The Realist Case for Taiwan over Ukraine is Not That Great

The big issue in the realist case for Trump/Vance is that they will put Taiwan explicitly ahead of Ukraine in ruthless prioritization of American interests. As Andrew Byers and Randall Schweller write, “Trump understand the limits of American power.” The United States cannot reasonably hope to fight Russia and China simultaneously, much a coordinated ‘axis’ of them with rogues like Iran and North Korea. This notion is particularly connected with Vance, who has explicated advocated abandoning Ukraine.

While the generic notion that all states, including great powers, face limits is obviously correct, there are substantial problems with this framing under Trump. First, and most obviously, Trump himself does not think this way. Trump’s ‘policy positions’ emerge on the fly as he speaks. He is lazy. He is not capable of the strategic thinking realists want to attribute to him; one need only listen to his campaign speeches this year to see this. He routinely lies, makes up stories, and speaks in indecipherable word-salads. When Trump has spoken on Taiwan, he makes it fairly clear that he sees it as just another free-riding ally who owes the US protection money. Trump’s obvious personal admiration for Xi’s dictatorship hardly suggests he would commit the US to conflict which could escalate to a major war.

Second, the prioritization of Taiwan over Ukraine misses the obvious precursor that the Middle East, in turn, is less valuable than Ukraine. Realists agree that Europe is more important than the Middle East. So before the US abandons Ukraine, it should first retrench from the Middle East, and then re-evaluate its ratio of commitments to resources. But instead, Trump will almost certainly deepen US involvement in the Middle East because of the ideological fixations of his Christianist base. If realism really wants to unburden the US of expensive, unnecessary commitments, it should focus its energy on getting the US out of the Persian Gulf and more distant from Netanyahu.

Third, it stretches psychological credulity to suggest the US will ruthlessly abandon a struggling nascent democracy under threat by a fascist imperialist, but then abruptly fight for another new democracy under threat by an ever more powerful fascist imperialist. Realists would have us calculate national interest this way, but Trump or Vance are hardly this objective or bloodless. Trump is venal, and his China decisions will likely be influenced by his financial interests, as, for example, in his flip-flop on banning Tik-Tok, and his intense dislike of ‘cheap-skate’ US allies. And Vance seems to prefer Taiwan to Ukraine in part because of Christian nationalist commitments at home. Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) movement has increasingly looked to Christian authoritarians abroad – such as Victor Orban of Hungary and Vladmir Putin in Russia – as models to emulate, or as allies against the real, woke enemy at home.

Fourth, the strategic case for elevating Taiwan over Ukraine is far more mixed than Vance and Trumpian realists suggest:

First, China is much more powerful than Russia. So, a conflict with it would be far more destructive. The Ukraine war has been locally contained and not nuclearly escalated. That seems less likely in an open, Sino-US war. It is an odd ‘realist’ recommendation that the US take a provocative line against a stronger power, which includes the risk of great power war, but not push its preferences on a weaker opponent where US involvement is a low-risk proxy war.

Second, the US commitment to Ukraine is much less costly than a parallel commitment to Taiwan. The US is not fighting directly to defend Ukraine. It would have to do so to defend Taiwan. Taiwan defense would require the US project enormous force over a huge distance of open water at great expense, plus there would be combat losses of major US platforms like ships and aircraft. By contrast, US aid to Ukraine is mostly money and mid-sized ground-based platforms, totally around $175 billion over 2.5 years. This is small and easily manageable because of NATO’s propinquity. US annual national security spending is approximately $1 trillion dollars annually; US annual economic production is approximately $25 trillion. Notions that US aid to Ukraine – at least at the moment – is an unsustainable overstretch, or that it is another ‘forever war,’ are simply not correct.

Third, the trade-off between Ukraine and Taiwan is less acute when detailed out. In Ukraine, the US is using intelligence assets and coordination relationships with NATO allies which have long been in place. To not use them on Ukraine’s behalf would not free them up for a China scenario, because local NATO services are not easily fungible to far-off East Asia – and vice versa. The US is also sending Ukraine weapons for ground warfare, most critically artillery shells, whereas in Taiwan, US assistance would be mostly at sea and in the air. The US is not going to engage the Chinese army in ground conflict, just as it does not need US aircraft carriers to help Ukraine. As a specific example of a trade-off, Vance has suggested the US lacks the artillery shell production capacity to meet both national defense and Ukraine’s needs. But that implies abandoning Ukraine today for an unidentifiable, but apparently imminent US ground war tomorrow. Unless Vance and Trump realists can identify this looming ground war, the obvious answer to their concerns is to first expand US defense industrial capacity and only abandon Ukraine if there is no other choice.

Trump is Vain, Venal, and Lazy – That is Not Realist Statesmanship

Realist hopes for Trump and Vance turn on psychological discipline both men lack and respond to trade-offs less acute than they admit. Trump is lazy, unread, venal, easily bought, susceptible to autocrats’ flattery, captive to the ideological fixations of his domestic coalition, ignorant of US strategic interests, and dismissive of alliances which amplify US power. Vance is ostensibly more clear-eyed, but he is a foreign policy neophyte. He has been a senator for less than two years, before which he was a financier and author whose interests were local. Vance’ foreign policy profile derives almost entirely from his vociferous opposition to Ukraine aid

On Ukraine, both oppose aid for non-strategic reasoning realists should reject. Trump resents Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not helping him steal the 2020 election, while Vance appears to share MAGA’s pro-Putinism for domestic ideological reasons. On Taiwan, Trump has been no less narrow and venal in his commentary than on other allies. He remains obsessed with autocrats’ ‘friendship’ and allies ‘ripping us off.’ Perhaps Vance will be more disciplined. Perhaps he genuinely seeks to lead a major anti-Chinese turn in US foreign policy, with all the policy, inter-agency, and public-opinion building work at home, and alliance- and coalition-building abroad, which that implies. But to date he has given no indication of such programmatic thinking on foreign policy.

Nor are the Taiwan/Ukraine trade-offs as acute as realist critics of President Joseph Biden would suggest. US GDP outweighs Russia and China combined. That imbalance is even greater if one includes US allies. The fiscal space to reorient US defense spending is there. If Vance and Trump were truly serious about confronting China, they would not be proposing yet another massive Republican tax cut, for example. Nor are the opportunity costs of military and intelligence assets as acute as Vance and others suggest, if only because the Taiwan and Ukraine theater configurations are so different. The traditional liberal internationalism Harris and Biden represent is far more likely to build a durable global coalition against Chinese and Russian revisionism than the venal caprice masquerading as strategy which Trump would bring back to the White House.