Has Trump learnt from his mistakes? He must break free from Beltway dogma

The end result was Trump’s highly publicised quarrel with Angela Merkel, who patiently pointed out that war was utterly improbable in Europe, so that buying guns and ammunition would just be a waste of money. It goes without saying that elite opinion on both sides of the Atlantic backed the learned chancellor’s flawless logic, as against Trump’s boorish ranting. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we all now know that the President was right — and the policy elite wrong. A better Secretary of State could have advanced Trump’s policy much more effectively by activating Germany’s own military experts, bitterly aware of the sad state of their country’s military. They might also have lobbied the German press, setting the stage for a very different meeting with Merkel.

Beyond the question of appointments, the foreign policy challenges of his first term should have taught him two things. One: present the Europeans with ultimatums rather than just requests. Two: ignore State Department dogma on anything important. That second point is obvious enough after Trump’s first presidency. Consider, for instance, the plan Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner came up with to bring peace to the Middle East. Their idea was simple: they would ask their friends in Bahrain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to open diplomatic relations with Israel.

Coming from a young businessman with no Middle East policy credentials, Kushner’s proposals were immediately dismissed as childish by Tillerson and his minders at the State Department. As they patiently explained, no Arab state could possibly agree to open diplomatic relations with Israel until the Palestine problem was solved, and any attempt to pursue such an absurd project could only end in refusals that were humiliating both for Trump and his country. But in the end, almost all accepted Kushner’s proposal. Only Saudi Arabia delayed, and even Riyadh immediately allowed Israeli airliners headed east to overfly its vast territories, at huge savings in time and fuel.

Given all this, Trump 2.0 will undoubtedly be guided in his foreign policy by his own closest supporters — rather than by any specious bureaucratic dogmas. That certainly applies to the Ukraine war, which cannot end unless Putin agrees to end it. Diplomatically, Trump will start with a significant advantage: unlike Biden, he never insulted Putin, and this would allow Putin to accept a compromise peace without being criticised as weak. I expect intense action soon after Trump’s inauguration.

Not that conciliation can work with Iran. Knowing that his own Democratic party had a long tradition of military interventions, from Truman in Korea to LBJ in Vietnam, President Obama was determined to prevent war with Iran. His method was to embrace the Ayatollah’s regime, by offering it economic favours that greatly increased Tehran’s oil revenues. And this policy persisted even after it became obvious that the money was not being spent on the needs of Iran’s population, but was instead being funnelled to its nuclear programme and to proxy militias across the region.

When Trump assumed office in 2016, strict controls on Iran’s oil revenues sharply reduced the regime’s military expansion. But when Biden replaced Trump, Obama’s Iran policy was resumed; his exceptionally conciliatory Iran coordinator was back in action; and Tehran’s greatly increased oil revenues funded the multi-front war currently underway across the Middle East.

As it happens, one of Biden’s last moves was to send B-52 heavy bombers to the Middle East, in an attempt to deter any more Iranian ballistic missile attacks, fearing that Israel would react by destroying Iran’s export terminal on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. Though Trump will certainly act immediately to squeeze Iranian revenues, if that is not enough those B-52s might well come in handy, notwithstanding the fact that Trump is an instinctive anti-interventionist.

Nor has Trump only learned foreign policy lessons since leaving the White House in 2021. He is also much better prepared to deal with his own party. Never a Republican until he ran for president, Trump now appreciates that today’s GOP is very different from the old cliche of country clubs, free trade and low taxes. Apart from anything else, the Republican establishment has stopped resisting state power across the economy and society. By 2023, after all, there were some 22 million civil servants at all levels of government, and even that understates the number of Americans who now live off the state, funded by grants from all manner of NGOs.

Whenever the Democratic Party controls a bureaucracy — from counties to the federal government — it expands it by granting public money to “nonprofits” that promise to improve public education, promote renewable energy or help the poor, among other good things — while being Democratic Party operatives. These NGOs also pay generous salaries to their executives: long before Michelle Obama became a “centimillionaire” after her eight White House years, she received a handsome paycheck from a hospital nonprofit in Chicago.

That’s how the Democratic Party pays for its manpower. Under Trump 2.0, the President’s officials will work hard to ensure that the Republicans in the House and Senate are rigorous in their scrutiny of every part of the federal budget, resisting the temptation to swap favours with the Democrats at the taxpayer’s expense.

No less important, this second Trump presidency will finally grapple with the question of domestic manufacturing. Under Trump 1.0, after all, the Republicans continued to demand free trade with China, which Trump opposed, and now opposes even more, because it enriches America’s chief geopolitical antagonist. Combined with the likely slashing of red tape — a phenomenon that afflicts every industry from Hawaii to Maine — this could yet spark a domestic manufacturing boom. That is surely needed: while the Japanese are able to build cheap and attractive kei cars with engines under 660cc, US manufacturers are forced to sell cars that can safely be driven at high speeds, even to customers who simply want to go shopping nearby. Not that deregulation will be limited to the American automotive sector. The oil and gas industry will doubtless benefit even more, while the aviation sector urgently needs aggressive anti-monopoly action to break up the somnolent Boeing and uncreative Lockheed.

In the end, though, Americans ultimately elected Trump to stop illegal migration. I am therefore confident that, by inauguration day in January, the administration will have presented a robust plan for the border. For starters, the right of asylum will be limited to those who really need protection from political or racial persecution, and who account for less than 1% of those who entered the US under Biden. The practice of airlifting thousands of monocultural illegal immigrants to small towns — notably the 1,500 Mauritanians who abruptly arrived in Lockland, Ohio — will end immediately. Why? Because illegal immigrants will immediately be sent back across the border as soon as they arrive. This was done effectively enough under Trump 1.0, and much has been learned since.

Beyond the policy arena, meanwhile, many Americans might plausibly suggest that no amount of legislation can capture the real meaning of Trump’s victory: the country’s verdict on everything from political prosecutions and critical race theory to its biased media and the unashamed moral bankruptcy of its entertainment industry. What’s clear enough, at any rate, is that Americans crave something different, and as he enters the White House for the second time, Donald Trump can offer just that.

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Professor Edward Luttwak is a strategist and historian known for his works on grand strategy, geoeconomics, military history, and international relations.

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