On the flight to Helsinki in 2018, as we prepared for one of the most consequential meetings of Donald Trump’s presidency—a summit with Vladimir Putin—I tried to brief the president on strategic arms control. These were issues that had consumed American statesmen for decades, the backbone of our nuclear deterrent posture. But I had to compete with a FIFA World Cup match on the television in his cabin aboard Air Force One.
That image captures, in miniature, the problem with Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy: a fixation on optics and spectacle over substance, and an indifference to the details that make the difference between strength and weakness in diplomacy.
Trump divides the world into two categories: winners and losers. He is a winner—he tells us so repeatedly—and therefore assumes that every interaction, every negotiation, will end with his triumph. This binary worldview leaves no space for nuance, preparation, or caution. But foreign policy is not a real estate deal in Manhattan. The stakes are higher, the players more ruthless, and the margin for error much smaller.
Vladimir Putin, trained in the KGB and schooled in decades of international intrigue, came to Helsinki armed with exhaustive preparation. Trump arrived with a television performer’s instinct for stagecraft but little else. Unsurprisingly, Putin walked away satisfied; Trump walked away unsettled.
The same dynamics were at play as the idea of a new US–Russia summit in Alaska emerged. Even before the meeting began, Putin had already scored a propaganda coup—an international pariah landing on American soil for photos with the president of the United States. Trump’s eagerness for spectacle outweighed strategic caution. He had, after all, once tried to host the Taliban at Camp David. Alaska, a former Russian territory, made for even stranger symbolism.
Trump has long believed that international relations boil down to personal chemistry between leaders. If he “gets along” with Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-Un, or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then in his mind America’s relations with Russia, China, North Korea, or Turkey are sound. This is dangerous nonsense. Nations pursue interests, not friendships.
His disdain for briefing books, intelligence assessments, and the advice of senior officials meant that he entered meetings not as the leader of the world’s most powerful democracy, but as a man convinced he could out-charm autocrats who had spent their lives manipulating weaker interlocutors. Predictably, they exploited this weakness at every turn.
No US president in recent history has been so consumed by optics. Trump wanted F-35s on the runway in Anchorage, photo ops with the “Beast” limousine, and headlines about his role as peacemaker. What he neglected was substance: the grind of sanctions enforcement, the slow building of alliances, the consistency of deterrence.
That is why, even now, he pursues the Nobel Peace Prize with such fervour. He believes that repeating a claim often enough—“I stopped six wars in six months”—can make it true. But repetition is not reality. Behind the curtain of Trump’s showmanship, America’s adversaries have advanced their agendas with alarming success.
Putin recognised the opportunity immediately. With every encounter, he tested Trump’s limits, confident that substance would give way to spectacle. Beijing too was watching closely, calculating whether an America so easily distracted in Europe would ever defend Taiwan.
Indeed, recent US-China manoeuvrings showed the danger of Trump’s transactional style. In pursuit of a “deal” with Xi Jinping, Trump softened Washington’s stance on Taiwan—allowing Taipei’s president fewer transit stops in the US and failing to finalise a trade pact with Taiwan. Analysts rightly observed that his view of Taiwan was more compatible with Beijing’s than any US president since the Second World War.
Other concessions followed: resuming sensitive technology exports by American firms to China, wavering on statutory requirements to force a TikTok divestiture, and showing reluctance to penalise Beijing’s large-scale purchase of Russian oil and gas. For Xi Jinping, locked in a “no limits” partnership with Putin, this was a strategic windfall. For America, it was the erosion of credibility in Asia at precisely the moment China was testing its neighbours from Taiwan to the Senkaku Islands to the South China Sea.
What unnerved me most was not simply Trump’s lack of preparation but his willingness to treat allies as expendable bargaining chips. He viewed NATO less as the foundation of transatlantic security than as a dues-collecting club. He saw India—one of America’s most natural strategic partners in countering China—as a “tariff king” rather than a bulwark of democratic strength in Asia.
His recent treatment of India is a case in point. New Delhi was singled out with some of the harshest tariff hikes, while Pakistan and Bangladesh received softer terms. This tilted the playing field in exactly the wrong direction, undermining Washington’s efforts to bind India more closely into the Quad alongside Japan and Australia. Instead of strengthening democratic coalitions in Asia, Trump risks pushing India closer to Moscow and Beijing.
That dynamic illustrates the corrosive effect of his approach. Allies grow distrustful, unsure if Washington will stand by them when pressure mounts. Adversaries grow emboldened, sensing they can outlast a president who measures success in headlines, not hard power.
Some argue that Trump’s unpredictability is a kind of strength—that keeping adversaries guessing is deterrence in itself. I disagree. Unpredictability without preparation is recklessness. It invites miscalculation. And in nuclear diplomacy, miscalculation can be catastrophic.
When a president prioritises being seen as a “winner” over actually strengthening America’s strategic position, the only true winners are America’s adversaries.
I do not doubt Trump’s political instincts or his ability to command a television audience. But national security is not a reality show. It requires seriousness, patience, and respect for facts that cannot be bent to willpower or stagecraft.
On that flight to Helsinki, I was reminded of a remark Lyndon Johnson once made: “When I’m talking, I’m not learning very much.” Donald Trump never grasped that truth. And in the silence created by his refusal to listen, men like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping found exactly the opening they wanted.
(The author is a former US national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations)
