After a flurry of activity — the president’s tariff threats and showdowns with Mexico and Canada, his expressions of interest in Greenland, the policy changes obtained by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s trips to Panama and El Salvador, the release of arrested Americans in Venezuela — it seemed clear that the focus of Donald Trump’s foreign policy would be the Western Hemisphere.

And then, just a few days later, as he welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the first head of government to visit the White House since Trump’s inauguration, Trump announced that the United States “will take over the Gaza Strip.”

This is obviously in tension with Trump’s and many Trump supporters’ opposition to U.S. military actions and “nation-building” in the Middle East, and while Greenland is arguably within the Western Hemisphere, Gaza clearly is not. Cleaning up and policing Gaza doesn’t sound like a way for Americans to avoid endless wars and violence, as Trump says he wants.

On the other hand, looking for outside-the-box solutions sometimes works. It had been gospel among Middle East specialists that Israel couldn’t achieve diplomatic relations with Arab nations without sanctioning the establishment of a Palestinian state first. But the Abraham Accords that Trump negotiated between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and with Bahrain in 2020 did exactly that.

As the Abraham Accords suggested, so Trump’s proposal that the U.S. “take over” Gaza jogs the mind and, as Fox News’s Brit Hume writes, moves people “away from the endless pursuit of a ‘two-state solution,’ which has proved such a dead end.” Maybe in some better direction, though no one, including Trump, seems to have an idea of exactly what.

In September 2016, the Pittsburgh-based reporter Salena Zito explained that while “the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” To them, he signals the kind of “make America great again” change he seeks, even where his proposals, as on Gaza, seem ludicrous on their face.

Almost 10 years later, economist Tyler Cowen advances a similar explanation. “I think of Trumpian policy,” he argues, “as elevating cultural policy above all else.” The cultures of the foreign policy establishment, of great corporations, of public schools, of public health and scientific research — none is in great shape.

So whenever “the policy or policy debate pushes culture in what you think is the right direction, just do it,” Cowen writes. Assume that “the cultural factors will, over some time horizon, surpass everything else in import.” Don’t worry about other constraints, whether it’s legal, whether it will persist.

Much of it probably will. Democrats and journalists hope the courts will put the kibosh on Trump’s initiatives. But at some point, this lawfare runs up against the first words of Article II of the Constitution: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

His orders to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs have the backing of the large majority of people of all ethnicities and hues who oppose racial quotas and preferences — and the text of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His termination of foreign aid programs that advance widely unpopular cultural stands, the hill Democrats are choosing to die on this week, are likely to stand as well.

His threats to impose huge tariffs on Canada and Mexico, while economically ruinous if put into effect, prompted promises of increased border surveillance. His instant and massive retaliation against Colombia’s refusal to accept deported immigrants resulted in immediate surrender there and a preemptive surrender by the Maduro government of Venezuela, whose legitimacy the United States and the European Parliament refuse to recognize.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, confirmed by only a 51-50 Senate vote, is reporting that Army recruitment has had its “best recruiting numbers” in a dozen years in the two months since Trump was elected. A change in the culture resulting from Trump’s abolition of DEI and Hegseth’s emphasis on the “warrior ethos”? Not clear, but sort of looks like it.

Whether Trump’s tactics and unorthodox policy initiatives will produce his promised peace in Ukraine and deter China from attacking Taiwan is far from certain. Clearly, some of Trump’s executive orders and policy directives are carefully vetted, while others — the Gaza acquisition? — are not.

If one of his audacious bluffs gets called, the resulting damage could prove horrifying: Think seriously about the wreckage those 25% tariffs would have inflicted on auto supply chains. On foreign policy, matters of war and peace, damage could be orders of magnitude worse.

After two weeks, Trump’s job approval is hovering around 50%, higher than at any point in his first term but still below that of all other incoming presidents since 1953. But the “vibes,” what John Maynard Keynes would have called “animal spirits,” of the nation seem to have shifted.

The death of Jimmy Carter last December reminded us that some of his policies — transportation deregulation and a defense buildup — helped produce the accomplishment and morale boost of the 1980s. But in his “malaise” speech — he never actually used the word — he admitted that the nation’s “vibes” were negative. They turned positive under his successor, Ronald Reagan, though he entered office with job approval not much above Trump’s, with positive material consequences for America and the world. Could something like that happen again?

COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM