The second Trump administration has been far more disruptive, damaging, and dangerous than most observers—including me—expected, and the tragically inept war with Iran is driving that point home in spades. As a result, every country in the world is having to figure out how to deal with an increasingly rogue United States. Ask yourself: If you led Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Denmark, Australia, etc., what would you do?
Here’s why this is a hard problem. The United States is still very powerful, even if it is now pursuing policies—misguided mercantilism, mindless attacks on science and academia, overt hostility to immigrants of all sorts, doubling down on fossil fuel dependence, wasteful military spending, chronic deficits, etc.—that will weaken it over time. For the moment, however, other states still have to worry that U.S. power could be used to harm them either intentionally or inadvertently.
Second, as I have argued at length elsewhere, the United States is now acting like a predatory hegemon, exploiting positions of leverage built up over decades to exploit allies and adversaries alike. This zero-sum approach to nearly all relations with others includes a deep hostility toward most international institutions and norms, deliberately erratic behavior, and a tendency to treat other foreign leaders with ill-disguised contempt while expecting demeaning acts of submission and fealty from most of them. As the fallout from the war in Iran spreads throughout the region and around the world, it underscores that the administration either didn’t understand how its actions would affect other states or simply didn’t care.
Which brings me to the third problem: U.S. foreign policy is now in the hands of a remarkably incompetent set of officials, from the president on down. International influence depends on many things, but one of the key ingredients is other states’ belief that the people they have to deal with are smart, well-informed, and generally know what they are doing. At this point, does anyone in the higher echelons of the Trump administration merit that description? Not that I can see. Conducting foreign policy is a difficult business, and no government gets everything right, but this administration commits own goals on a weekly basis while insisting that it is infallible.
To make matters worse, some of these features are not going to be easy to correct after Trump leaves office, even if he is replaced by someone with very different views. The institutional capacity of the U.S. foreign-policy machinery is being hollowed out as experienced civil servants retire or are dismissed (include some senior military officers) and are either not replaced or superseded by Trumpian loyalists.
And because the U.S. body politic remains deeply polarized, other states must also worry that the pendulum will simply swing back and forth between extremes. Americans elected Trump not once but twice and could elect someone similar again. Given that reality, how can any country trust any commitment that Washington might make today, or under a Democratic president?
The bottom line is that the rest of the world is going to be dealing with a powerful, probably predatory, and highly erratic United States for at least three more years and probably longer. If that is the case, then what should other countries do, bearing in mind that the United States is not the only dangerous predator out there (and for some states, more immediate dangers lie closer to home).
To repeat my question: If you ran another country’s foreign policy, what would you do?
Here are the main options that I see.
Throughout history, the classic way to deal with powerful and dangerous states is to balance against them, either through one’s own efforts or in partnership with others (or both). One sees this tendency in Russia and China’s “no-limits partnership,” the support that North Korea provided Russia in Ukraine, the network of proxies that Iran backed around the Middle East, and in the intelligence support that Russia is reportedly giving Iran.
A variation that some states are likely to adopt is “soft balancing,” the conscious coordination of diplomatic action to thwart a powerful state’s aims. A classic illustration was the coordinated French, German, and Russian decision to oppose the 2002 U.N. Security Council resolution that would have authorized the U.S. attack on Iraq; although it failed to convince the Bush administration not to go to war, it exposed U.S. (and British) isolation and increased the political cost that each ultimately paid.
The European response to Trump’s threats to take Greenland from Denmark is another obvious example—a coordinated diplomatic response intended to keep a powerful state from undertaking an unwanted action—although it had a military element as well. Soft balancing appears to be what Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had in mind in January when he called for the world’s middle powers to come together and create mutually beneficial relations that don’t depend on cooperation from an unreliable and predatory United States.
The Trump administration is betting that both hard and soft efforts to balance U.S. power will be weak, erratic, and not very consequential. They could be right, because many countries remain understandably reluctant to take costly actions to counter U.S. power, and even efforts at “soft balancing” face big collective action problems. Those obstacles are not insurmountable, however, especially if accommodating the United States just leads to fresh demands or other countries come to see close partnerships with the United States as more of a liability than an asset.
And let’s not forget another form of balancing: Some states that either worry that the United States might attack them or fear that it is no longer a reliable protector will be tempted to enhance their security by acquiring nuclear deterrents of their own. Concerns about U.S. reliability have led France to propose extending its own deterrent more broadly in Europe, and countries such as South Korea and Japan are once again contemplating the need for a deterrent of their own. The war with Iran—and the elimination of several relatively cautious Iranian leaders—will only strengthen the hands of those who believe that their biggest error was not to imitate North Korea and make an active sprint for the bomb while they had the chance.
Although most realist scholars maintain that “bandwagoning” with a powerful predatory state is risky and therefore rare, some states will see this as their best option. Especially weak and vulnerable states may conclude that they have no choice but to align with the United States and hope for the best, and countries that want to use U.S. support to advance their own revisionist aims will be happy to jump on the bandwagon.
Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the smaller Persian Gulf states are obvious examples of this sort of opportunistic behavior. This category also includes right-wing leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Argentina’s Javier Milei, France’s Marine Le Pen, or Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who see Trump as a prestigious and charismatic figure who shares their own distaste for liberal democracy and many global norms. It should surprise no one that each of these leaders—including Trump—have openly backed Orban’s struggling reelection effort in Hungary.
Bandwagoning with an erratic and predatory United States is not without its own risks, however. For one thing, debacles such as the Iran war, the sluggish U.S. economy, and Trump’s underwater approval ratings are tarnishing the MAGA brand and could make a close association with the United States less beneficial to foreign populists.
Furthermore, most of these leaders’ popular support rests on portraying themselves as ardent nationalists, which is not consistent with long-term deference to a predatory foreign power. Such concerns may explain why Le Pen, de facto leader of France’s far-right National Rally, has distanced herself slightly from Trump in recent months.
States that choose to remain closely aligned with the United States and want to use U.S/ power to advance their own aims will redouble their efforts to steer U.S. foreign policy in the directions that they favor.
Netanyahu and some key organizations in the Israel lobby helped convince Trump to start the latest war, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is reportedly pushing Trump to bring in ground troops. It is a safe bet that Israel and the Gulf states will continue to lobby the White House and Congress to keep arms flowing, and one can also expect more blatant forms of influence-peddling (new business deals for Jared Kushner or the Trump Organization?) to continue so long as Trump is in office. But the war in Iran is a risk for these states, too: The more that it is seen as a war being fought on behalf of others, the greater the risk of a backlash if the war turns out badly.
When you are dealing with an unreliable partner, the smart thing to do is to reduce your dependence on them, even if doing so is somewhat costly. This tendency has been apparent ever since Trump’s announcement of reciprocal tariffs in April 2025, after which U.S. trading partners worked overtime to reduce their dependence on the U.S. market by forging free trade deals with each other. Canada has reduced tensions with China and negotiated new trade pacts with Indonesia and India, and the European Union has done the same with India and Mercosur.
As any parent knows, sometimes very weak actors can get their way by stubbornly refusing to go along with a demand, in the hope that the stronger party will lack either the will or the patience to enforce compliance. The United States’ NATO allies balked when Trump demanded that they help open the Strait of Hormuz, for example, because they were not consulted before the war, have little reason to rescue Trump from his own mistakes, and probably hope that the debacle will teach Washington a much-needed lesson.
Alternatively, states can pretend to comply with a demand, but then drag their feet, announce unexpected complications, make it harder to verify compliance, and generally kick as much dust in the air as possible. The appeal of this strategy is obvious: It avoids an open confrontation with Washington but also avoids the full costs of complying.
Other states have used this tactic against the United States in the past: NATO countries repeatedly pledged to increase their defense spending yet managed to fall short each time, or Israel promised to dismantle some settlements but did so as slowly as possible and built new ones to replace them in the meantime. The Trump administration is reportedly trying to determine whether China fulfilled the economic promises that it made during Trump’s first term. (I’ll bet it didn’t.)
It’s a big, busy, and complicated world, and even a very powerful country such as the United States cannot keep track of everything that other states might have agreed to do in the past and determine whether they are living up to their pledges.
Hard power is still the primary currency of world politics, but powerful states also benefit when they are seen as mostly virtuous, reasonably honest and reliable, and trying to make the world better at least some of the time. This quality is what my late colleague Joseph Nye termed “soft power”: States gained influence when others saw them as appealing and for the most part benevolent.
It follows that the United States’ opponents will go to great lengths to tarnish its image by portraying it as selfish, aggressive, dangerous, and a model to be rejected rather than admired and emulated. A corollary to this strategy—which China has followed for some time—is to stay out of the way and let the United States keep stumbling. As Napoleon Bonaparte allegedly said, never interrupt an enemy when it is making a mistake.
And boy, is the Trump administration making this easier! Bragging about blowing up boats in the Caribbean merely on grounds of suspicion, helping to assassinate foreign leaders, mistreating immigrants and tourists, imposing travel bans on more than a dozen countries, ordering financial sanctions on foreign officials for the unpardonable sin of criticizing the president, boasting that power is all that matters, imposing tariff rates that bounce up and down like a gerbil on meth, launching a war with consequences for the entire world economy with no clear idea of where it would lead—the list goes on and on.
As the United States’ image shifts from that of a well-intentioned if sometimes mistaken global power to one that is uncaring, cruel, reflexively dishonest, and out only for itself, even leaders who want to do business with Washington will be wary of getting too close.
The various strategies for opposing the United States are mutually reinforcing. The more states begin to balance—either in hard or soft form—the easier it becomes for others to distance themselves as well. The more that the United States’ role in the world is seen not as broadly benevolent but as actively harmful, the harder it will be for many states to stay on the United States’ side and the more foreign leaders will benefit from standing up to Washington. The more that states balk, the easier it is others to follow suit, because even a superpower cannot keep track of every country’s minor acts of defiance and punish all of them at once.
Here’s the main lesson that Americans should take from this array of possible responses to Washington’s present behavior. The great advantage of being a powerful country is that one has a substantial margin for error and many resources upon which to draw when dealing with problems. The disadvantage is that while some states look for ways to exploit U.S. power for their own benefit, others will find it worrisome and will look for ways to tame or constrain it.
For this reason, a far-sighted great power will use its power with restraint, adhere to widely held norms whenever possible, recognize that even close allies will have their own agendas, and work to fashion arrangements with others from which all parties benefit. Maintaining the mailed fist of hard power is valuable, but so is cloaking it in a velvet glove. The United States did this tolerably well for most of the past 75 years and benefited greatly, but its present leaders are rapidly tossing that wisdom overboard.
As I warned more than two decades ago, “if the United States ends up hastening the demise of its existing partnerships and giving rise to new arrangements whose purpose is to contain us, we will have only ourselves to blame.”
