Donald Trump is currently midway through his second term as US president. By most judgements he has been a disastrous and calamitous two-term president, overturning or ignoring decades or centuries of established laws, practices and norms of behaviour designed to protect people and advance civilisation, in pursuit of what he and his Republican Party call Making America Great Again (MAGA), surely the most deceitful slogan in history.
Trump’s endless international crimes – against the law, against morality, and against humanity – his climate change denial, and his hostile actions against other countries and other people, are also counter-productive in every way. They reflect his extraordinary lack of moral character and his apparent malignant narcissism. Much of his rhetoric is laced with venom, vengefulness, spite, hatred, selfishness, iconoclasm, racism of the crudest sort, misogyny, entitlement, impetuosity, thin-skinned intolerance, xenophobia, and delusions of grandeur.
This calamity deeply harms both the domestic US population and, because the USA is such a large and influential presence internationally, all other countries and their populations too.
The international record 2017-2021
During his first term, Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), the World Health Organization, and later 66 other United Nations international organisations. This shift signalled to the world that the US under President Trump would no longer participate in multilateral cooperation.
Afghanistan
In February 2020, the Trump administration negotiated in Doha a US-Taliban agreement setting a timetable for Nato/US withdrawal from Afghanistan. It required Taliban counter‑terror guarantees, which weren’t delivered. It was not a comprehensive peace deal. Neither the US’s allies in Afghanistan nor the Afghan government were involved in the negotiations.
The appalling outcome of this agreement was that the Taliban quickly took power and implemented their obscene fundamentalist religious agenda, leaving the population terrorised, destitute and oppressed, particularly women and children.
After a 20-year presence, and enormous efforts and expense by many countries, especially the US, Afghan society was left in a much worse situation. This was the horrendous outcome of Trump’s agreement, for which he has expressed no contrition.
Two attempts to impeach Trump were made by the House of Representatives: first, in 2019, on grounds of abuse of power, and second, in 2021, on grounds of insurrection. Both were defeated by Republicans in the Senate.
The international record 2025-2026
Much worse was to come in Trump’s second term, beginning in January 2025, marked by a dramatic intensification of his earlier tendencies.
The Heritage Foundation had produced a document called Project 2025, which identified the policies, programmes, and methods to be followed under Trump 2.0. The new Trump administration hit the ground running.
First came the illegal and unconstitutional defunding and effective closure of the USAID international programme supporting development, education, health, and agriculture in developing countries. USAID had been established by Congress in 1961 and only Congress could legally close it.
Oxfam claims that as a result, 23 million children will lose access to education. A study published in The Lancet, reported by CNN, estimated that preventable deaths as a result would be between 0.5 million and 1.6 million per year worldwide. According to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, cancelling USAID has “led to millions of unnecessary deaths, including millions of children”, saying the point was proven by studies, health models, and “field evidence of widespread death as a result of the cancellation”.
Next came threats against neighbouring countries.
Panama
Trump accused Panama of overcharging US ships and allowing excessive Chinese influence. Military planners were ordered to explore options for seizing the canal by force. “If shipping rates are not lowered, we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, quickly and without question.”
This was widely viewed as a foreign policy disaster. Treating a friendly nation in this overbearing way undermined US soft power and set a bad precedent for coercive diplomacy.
Greenland
Trump made several attempts to acquire the territory, despite the Greenland residents and the Danish government making it plain that Greenland did not wish to and would not become a state of the US. These proposals included buying it from Denmark, persuading or bribing the residents to join the US, and taking it over by military force. Trump’s actions humiliated a key Nato ally, which other Nato countries rushed to defend.
Mexico
The Trump administration was concerned about drugs (particularly fentanyl) entering the US. In early January 2026, President Trump signalled that the US would begin “hitting land” against drug cartels, asserting that cartels are “running Mexico”, and suggesting that military action could extend beyond maritime interdictions – not a good way to improve cooperation or defeat the drug trade.
Venezuela
After months of US military and diplomatic coercion against Venezuela over drug supplies, US forces began blowing up boats in the Caribbean that they thought might be carrying drugs. Then, in January 2026, they entered Caracas and apprehended President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who were flown to the US to face federal drugs charges, and began running the Venezuelan oil industry.
Maduro’s arrest was a foreign policy disaster because of its destabilising effects in South America, its infringement of Venezuelan sovereignty, and its disregard for international law.
Trump also freed the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted of drug trafficking, and committed billions to bail out Argentina’s president, Javier Milei.
Yemen
In March 2025, the US began an eight-week bombing campaign against Houthi militants in Yemen who had been attacking commercial ships in the region.
Despite the duration, intensity, and cost of the campaign, the US failed in destroying the Houthis’ missiles, drones, and launchers, much of which was situated underground.
In July 2025, the Houthis began once again their attacks, sinking two Liberian-flagged vessels.
Gaza
During 2025, Trump left Israel to determine its own actions in Gaza. He didn’t condemn the Israeli genocide, and he didn’t pressure Israel to stop bombing and allow the humanitarian aid into Gaza, which Israel had blocked.
Then Trump began promoting his plan for a ceasefire, and for humanitarian aid to be distributed inside Gaza by US private security companies, a system that contributed to many deaths. US ceasefire plans, including for the redevelopment of Gaza, were signed, and later organised under a Trump-chaired Board of Peace. Despite all this, the conflict continues.
Ukraine
Trump reversed President Biden’s policy of supporting Ukraine. In early 2025, Trump and Vice-President JD Vance publicly humiliated President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an Oval Office meeting. Trump then stopped the US supplying arms to Ukraine unless it paid for them. Then in August 2025, he welcomed President Putin with a red-carpet reception in Alaska, even though the International Criminal Court had issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest as a war criminal (Trump has placed sanctions on some ICC judges).
Trump then attempted to coerce Ukraine into a one-sided so-called peace deal (derived directly from what Putin had asked for) that rewarded Russia with extra Ukrainian territory and gave US and Russian businesses mineral exploitation rights.
Despite much trumpeting about peace, and frequent visits to Moscow by Trump’s emissaries Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, nothing of any benefit was achieved, Ukraine rejected the US plans and was left facing equipment shortages until European countries stepped up.
His Ukraine plans not providing Trump with the success on his terms that he craved, he turned his attention elsewhere.
Iran
Trump had claimed in 2025 that the US and Israeli bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites had obliterated them. Not so, apparently, because the US and Israel returned with another massive bombing campaign in February and March 2026, targeting the nuclear sites, the defensive military and missile sites, the Iranian navy, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps headquarters, government buildings, and many top military and political leaders, including leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was killed in the bombardment
The death toll in Iran is estimated at over 6,000 people, military and civilians, with many more injured, and many more in neighbouring countries across the region as Iran retaliated against US regional allies and US bases. Iran strategically closed the Strait of Hormuz, which has wreaked havoc on the global energy and mineral markets.
These US attacks have caused a major disruption in relations with European allies and Nato, significant supply disruptions, and price increases for global supplies, severely harming millions of people.
Threats and tariffs against allies (2025–2026)
Beyond these attacks, Trump’s continuing confrontations with many previously friendly countries damaged alliances and raised fears that the US might become a hostile actor towards its own partners. Trump’s actions have increased fear that the US might abandon Nato and even provoked anxiety that Europe might need to defend itself against America. Recognition that Trump’s US has become an imperialist actor, not a stabilising force has severely eroded Transatlantic trust – a key objective of Russian foreign policy.
Trump’s sweeping ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs were eventually struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2026, which ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) did not give the president the authority to impose broad import taxes without Congress’s consent. But the attempt strained relations with nearly all major trading partners, causing retaliatory tariffs from Europe, China, and Canada, supply-chain disruptions, and reduced US export competitiveness. Decades of mutually beneficial economic cooperation were destroyed, to the benefit of no one.
Interpretation
According to the Royal United Services Institute, Trump’s approach amounted to taking a“sledgehammer to the existing liberal international order”, abandoning decades of bipartisan consensus around alliances, rules, and norms.
The European Council on Foreign Relations documented how, during his first term, Trump dismantled the traditional inter-agency process, replacing it with competing factions vying for his favour. This “court politics” model produced incoherent policy, contradictory directives, rapidly shifting priorities, and decisions driven by personal loyalty rather than expertise.
Mary Trump (Substack, 29 June) put it this way:
“Donald is finally revealing, in increasingly obvious ways, exactly who he has always been: a profoundly weak man who mistakes bluster for strength and threats for leadership. He has never been the brilliant businessman, or master negotiator his supporters imagined him to be, or the dealmaker he spent decades pretending to be.”
Between 2016 and 2026, Donald Trump created a calamitous series of international disasters characterised by disregard for human life, disrespect for international law, disrespect for the sovereignty of other nations, threats, coercion (bullying), unpredictability, ever-changing unprincipled moves and explanations, and unilateralism. From threatening allies to launching high‑risk military operations, Trump has repeatedly destabilised international relationships, given succour to Putin, and weakened the global order the US had helped build.
Trump appears to revel in his authoritarian credentials. A new book reveals how Trump compared himself to Mao, Stalin, and Attila the Hun.
But there are many others culpable too, including those complicit in the judiciary, media, tech industries, commerce, Republican Party and Congress, who have encouraged or failed to restrain him.
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