Donald Trump returned to the White House promising to avoid new wars, reduce the U.S. role as the world's policeman, and develop 'America First,' a national agenda focused on closing borders, improving the economy, and prioritizing domestic issues. However, his second term is marked by a significant expansion abroad, a reconfiguration of the world order, bombing at least seven countries, and the breaking of traditional axes and alliances.
Far from retreating, Trump is using American power in a more aggressive, unilateral, and transactional manner. Simultaneous pressure on China, the EU, NATO, Cuba, or Iran reflects a non-isolationist worldview. Trump employs tariffs, sanctions, trade threats, diplomatic pressure, and the evident military superiority of his country, symbolized by the 2025 attacks on Iran or the capture of Maduro, both operations within his reach, as tools for ongoing negotiation, with the idea that power must be exercised visibly. If you have it and don't use it, you're a loser.
But this strategy is also testing the real limits of American hegemony. It can bomb Iran, but it hasn't toppled the regime. It can impose tariffs, but inflation eventually hits back. It can try to intimidate partners and rivals, but if threats lead to nothing, or there is constant backtracking, credibility diminishes. A world where you have abandoned, humiliated, and disrespected former friends is a very lonely and hostile world.
For obvious reasons, Iran is the main topic of international politics right now. This Thursday, both parties seemed to reach a technical understanding, but the president wants a few days to consider approving the Memorandum of Understanding that his negotiators have been fighting with Tehran for weeks. The agreement would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and remove the blockades of both navies, leaving the nuclear issue for later. The talks have been more than complicated and painful. Exchanges of calls, messages, and documents with missile and drone launches punctually interspersed. A tug of war in which neither side wants to give in or appear weak.
Trump has found himself caught in something he didn't expect. Assuming, after the summer bombings of 2025 but also the hundreds of drones and missiles launched against Israel a year earlier with minimal damage, that Iran was a paper giant, without control of its airspace or reaction capacity. The fact that in the early days of bombings his troops sank dozens of vessels only multiplied that confidence. However, it has not been the walk he expected or was told. Iran responded by hitting and even disabling dozens of U.S. bases and positions in the region, causing much deeper damage than imagined. And there has been no popular uprising.
The United States has the largest deployment in the region in two decades with billions of dollars spent that have not achieved what was sought and have also caused an unprecedented distortion in the oil or fertilizer market. Trump, probably aware of the negative image he projects, is now seeking to redirect the situation by trying to force all his Arab and Muslim partners in the region to mandatory join the Abraham Accords, formalizing relations with Israel. Something that, obviously, has not been well received.
On Wednesday, Trump unexpectedly threatened Oman, saying they either do what they should or they could be attacked. Shortly after, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent raised the possibility of sanctioning Muscat for considering developing with Iran a toll or environmental tax system for tankers in Hormuz.
It is yet another example of how the aspirations of Gulf countries to get along, preferably, with Washington are linked to their total submission and the arbitrary and unpredictable nature of the president, who demands total loyalty, million-dollar investments, and obedience. Trump's first months in 2025 were magnificent for the region's interests, in a language they understood very well: astronomical sums of money in investments (but also in injections for Trump's son-in-law's companies or his chief negotiator, or in Trump family crypto businesses, or in direct plane gifts to the president) in exchange for security, arms. Until the war broke out and they saw that anything could happen.
Trump alternates between praising and thanking Pakistan for its mediation and undermining agreements at the request of Netanyahu or putting his friends in an impossible position by demanding they reconcile with Israel while bombs continue to fall in Gaza or Lebanon. Saudi Arabia learned almost through the press about the impromptu idea of escorting ships in Hormuz and said it would not lend its airspace. A few weeks earlier, Trump incredibly offensively mocked in a speech at the home of Prince Bin Salman saying he was "kissing his ass." Similarly, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, or Qatar have seen how Iran (or Israel in the latter case) hit them with missiles without the U.S. being able to stop them, despite saying they would defend them. Not to mention Egypt and Jordan, whom he wanted to force to receive millions of displaced Palestinians while fantasizing about turning the Gaza Strip into a tourist riviera.
Cuba is the latest addition to the list. It's the novelty of the last quarter. Trump has seen a unique opportunity for something that has obsessed him since the 1970s. He never understood how a tiny, poor country stood up to the U.S. Now the situation is desperate, and he wants not only to compensate for the failure in Iran, but to go down in history as the president who changed Cuba's destiny, where so many before, especially Kennedy, failed.
With no fuel, the crisis on the islands is becoming unsustainable. Washington has sent the CIA chief, charged Raul Castro, and is trying to force the regime's fall, but not ruling out military intervention. Much like the operation that led to the capture of Maduro, Trump's favorite option since he is enthusiastic about Delcy Rodriguez, and his government is even instructing the prosecution to avoid conducting criminal investigations against her), or something much more serious. A risky bet that could lead to a humanitarian crisis, waves of migration, and destabilization.
Ukraine is the forgotten one of 2026. It was the global cause célèbre last year, in the early months of Trump's term, who had proudly promised to end the war in 24 hours. It was very easy, he said, boasting of his relationship and influence over Vladimir Putin. The world witnessed something unprecedented, a savage pressure not on the aggressor, but on the victim, with a trap that sought to humiliate and destroy Volodymyr Zelensky.
To the undisguised delight of Vice President JD Vance, Washington has minimized military aid to Kiev. Trump thought Ukraine did not have "the cards" to face Moscow and that without his total support, collapse was imminent, but he was also wrong about this. On Tuesday, Zelensky sent a long letter to President Trump and Congress requesting help to protect Ukraine from Russian ballistic attacks and asking for expanded access to Patriot PAC-3 interceptors: "Frankly, although we have achieved significant success in defense against all kinds of drones, Ukraine has not yet developed its own capacity to produce missile defense systems. When it comes to defending against ballistic missiles, we depend almost exclusively on the United States," pleaded the Ukrainian.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Hegseth sent this Thursday, Republican senators Tillis, Cramer, and Grassley joined almost all Democrats in urging the Pentagon to release $400 million in 2026 fiscal funds earmarked for Ukraine but unused. Trump has completely lost interest, and so has the American press, which bombards him with dozens of questions every day, but increasingly fewer about what is happening in Eastern Europe.
CHINA
Since Trump's return to the White House, the relationship with China has entered a phase of more open confrontation. Trump has resumed and expanded the logic of his first term: tariffs, technological restrictions (especially on chips), pressure on supply chains, and a discourse on civilizational rivalry. Washington now considers Beijing not only a commercial opponent but the only competitor capable of challenging US technological, military, and financial supremacy in the very short term. The dispute affects semiconductors, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, access to rare minerals, maritime control in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, geopolitical alliances, and of course, Taiwan.
However, the tension also reveals the limitations of that power: China is much less dependent on the United States today than a decade ago, has its own industrial capacity, and has accelerated its alternative alliances. Unlike the rest of the world, Beijing has not succumbed to Trump's threats and geopolitical games, especially regarding tariffs. Xi Jinping has not gone crazy like European leaders rushing to the White House to scratch for concessions. He has stood his ground. Trump, someone who only believes in brute power and deeply admires authoritarian leaders (Putin, Erdogan, Xi, etc.), in his own way, values, respects, and fears that. Hence his last trip to Beijing, where he encountered a lot of coldness and zero complicity. He even ended up leaving in the air military assistance or security and defense guarantees with Taiwan.
EUROPE / NATO
For decades, Trump has maintained a critical and purely transactional view of the Atlantic Alliance and the EU: he believes they were created almost to take advantage of Washington or "screw over" Americans. He argues that European partners are freeloaders, opportunists. Not only does he demand increased defense spending, buying American equipment, but also that they take on their own security while blindly aligning against China. Trump, who has been flirting with the idea of not honoring the central idea of NATO, collective defense, for a decade, speaks of the alliance less as a strategic community and more as a permanent negotiation on costs, contributions, and national benefits.
His threats to reduce security guarantees, impose new tariffs, or act unilaterally on trade and geopolitical issues are part of something broader that has been taking shape in Washington for decades, a pivot towards Asia. From this mix comes the announcement of troop reductions in Germany, the hint in Poland, or the threats to close bases in Spain and other countries. These are tectonic plates that are now moving at the pace of daily tweets and volatile whims.
CHINA AND CANADA
The first weeks of this government were marked by an inexplicable obsession with its neighbors to the north and south, and a brutal tariff barrage. Trump joked, or not, about annexing Canada and sending his army into Mexico, insulting their leaders repeatedly. In his second year, his priorities have shifted elsewhere.