The transactional world Donald Trump seeks would harm not help America
Ukraine, Gaza and China will all test his self-interested approach to diplomacy
It MAY BE a holdover from his failure as a casino mogul or a reflection of a might-is-right worldview. Or perhaps America’s president is simply feeling lucky. Whatever the reason, Donald Trump loves to describe geopolitics as a card game. Russian forces, he said of the war in Ukraine recently, have “taken a lot of territory, so they have the cards”. Soon afterwards Mr Trump suggested that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was refusing to accept the inevitable: “He has no cards.”
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This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline “Gangster’s paradise”
From the March 1st 2025 edition
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Donald Trump is a reckless president, but not yet a lawless one
He has yet to flatly defy a court order, which would initiate a constitutional crisis
America’s military supremacy is in jeopardy
To win future wars it needs new weapons, new suppliers and a new system of procurement
Online scams may already be as big a scourge as illegal drugs
And they are growing fast
Even in India, bureaucracy is being curtailed
Many small steps could make a big difference
Many governments talk about cutting regulation but few manage to
Yet radical deregulation is often a big boost to growth
Why Chinese AI has stunned the world
DeepSeek’s models are much cheaper and almost as good as American rivals