There’s a strange notion going around that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign-policy picks reveal something about his likely approach to international affairs. Establishment types are reassured that hawkish nominees, like Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Rep. Mike Waltz as national security advisor, will ultimately counsel the right thing when it comes to staring down Russia and China. Restrainers, MAGAteers, and left-wingers draw comfort that former Reps. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, and Matt Gaetz, as attorney general, will shape a policy of retrenchment, persuading the president to withdraw resources from areas where no vital U.S. interests are at stake.
If you’re experiencing déjà vu, that sense is well-founded. For the same genre of think piece was everywhere in 2016 and after, as opinion writers projected their angst, hopes, and dreams into extrapolating meaning from Trump’s waves of appointments and firings. Mike Flynn, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, H.R. McMaster were the collective tea leaves at the bottom of the cup, read to reveal the future of U.S. foreign policy. The metaphor is apt, as these attempts generally had the same predictive prowess as tea leaves, fortune cookies, and palm reading. All operated on the premise that Trump was susceptible to advice. We should really know better by now.
There was no significant advisory influence on Trump’s last presidency, and it is unlikely that his second term will be any different. Occasionally, his instincts overlapped with his advisors—such as Tillerson on improving relations with Saudia Arabia or with National Security Advisor John Bolton on withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration. But these moments of unity were fleeting. If there is one common, mournful thread sewn through the memoirs of Trump’s first-term appointments, it is frustration at being treated disdainfully by a president who simply did not listen.
Tillerson lasted 13 months as secretary of state before Trump fired him in a social media post. The two clashed on North Korea, Russia, China, Iran, and the Paris climate agreement. After firing him, Trump posted on X, then known as Twitter, that Tillerson “didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell.” Tillerson allegedly described Trump as a “fucking moron.” And this was one of Trump’s more productive working relationships.
Trump could not forgive H.R. McMaster for suggesting that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Aghast at Trump’s imperviousness to advice that challenged his simplistic worldview, McMaster described Oval Office meetings as “exercises in competitive sycophancy” in a book published earlier this year.
“Trump was not following any international grand strategy, or even a consistent trajectory,” Bolton wrote in his 2020 book, “His thinking was like an archipelago of dots (like individual real estate deals) leaving the rest of us to discern—or create—policy.” It’s a sharp critique that overestimates Bolton’s capacity for creation, given that the only substantive thing on which they agreed was withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal. Trump responded by describing Bolton in a social media post as “a disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!”
So what of the Trump class of 2025? Might Rubio, Waltz, Gabbard, and Gaetz succeed in becoming Aristotle to Alexander the Great, where everyone else has failed? It’s no stretch to imagine Trump’s attack line against Bolton being used against Rubio after an acrimonious firing. Rubio subscribes to Madeleine Albright’s notion that the United States is an “indispensable nation” and has been a steadfast interventionist since his arrival in national politics. Trump lambasted those hawkish instincts when he crushed “little Marco” in his 2016 campaign. They agree on a more confrontational approach to Beijing, but substantively and temperamentally, they are as well matched as Trump and McMaster. Waltz falls into a similar category.
Gabbard, Gaetz, and Pete Hegseth (Trump’s pick for defense secretary) possess more Trumpian “America First” instincts than Rubio or Waltz. Gabbard has said generous things about Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past, and Gaetz and Hegseth want to wind down the war in Ukraine. Hegseth, who describes himself as a “recovering neocon,” is a culture warrior who will ban transgender people from serving in the military and gut diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. All of that is so far so good in Trump world. But beyond a shared hostility to China and support for slowly closing the taps that supply Ukraine, these relationships could blow up in any number of ways. Gabbard, Gaetz, and Hegseth are high-profile, headline-grabbing individuals, who will drain attention from the president. Trump prefers to stand alone on the stage, illuminated by a single spotlight.
No matter which individuals end up in the roles, Trump’s ultimate pick as national security advisor, secretary of defense, and secretary of state will be himself. There will be no éminence grise, no Dean Acheson or Henry Kissinger guiding his hand and restraining his worst instincts. Everything that transpired during his first term in office suggests this will be the case.
But this situation is hardly unique. Other U.S. presidents have also served as their own secretary of state. After a shaky start, involving a hugely volatile meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, President John F. Kennedy followed his judgment, declined dangerous advice, and demonstrated leadership during the Cuban missile crisis. President Ronald Reagan’s second-term conciliation toward Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev disappointed bellicose members of his administration and helped create conditions that allowed Gorbachev to end the Cold War. President Barack Obama’s administration was more focused on what it was not (President George W. Bush’s “war on terror”) than what it was for. But there is little doubt that Obama’s pragmatic voice was the dominant one in foreign policy. In memoirs and interviews, his former advisors have expressed more than enough frustration to back this up.
Trump’s operating style and personality attributes are far removed from those of Kennedy, Reagan, and Obama. His first-term shift from lambasting Kim Jong Il as “rocket man” to desperately seeking rapprochement with North Korea gestures at an aspect of his personality—the dealmaking part—that might potentially translate into something meaningful in foreign policy. Just as President Richard Nixon went to China, one cannot entirely discount the possibility that Trump might achieve a substantive breakthrough that takes all observers by surprise—such as a deal with Iran. For all his bluster, Trump appears to understand that war, particularly the type of conflict currently raging in economically sensitive locales, is bad for the U.S. economy.
But we should be careful not to draw comfort from even a fistful of grasped straws. Trump’s narrow transactional style, the absence of empathy, and his short-termism all make it hard to make the case that, even if he does have a longer-term vision for U.S. foreign policy, he has the patience or resilience to implement it.
Regardless of what comes next, we certainly need to reckon with Trump, not his unorthodox array of proposed appointments. Bolton recently remarked that Trump demands “fealty” and not “loyalty” from those who work for him. This useful distinction reminds us to remove our analytical gaze from the vassals and train it directly at the lord.