Lester Munson, Non-Resident Fellow, United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney
US President Donald Trump will visit Israel and Egypt this week to oversee the initial implementation of his Gaza peace agreement, which many hope will permanently end the two-year war in the strip.
Should the peace hold, the Gaza accord will be Trump’s greatest foreign policy achievement, even surpassing the Abraham Accords of his first term that normalised relations between Israel and several Arab countries.
Given the speed with which the Trump administration has helped to negotiate the ceasefire, it is an opportune moment to assess Trump’s frenetic foreign policy at the start of his second presidential term.
The “Trump Doctrine” – the unconventional, high-energy and fast-moving approach to world affairs now pursued by the United States – has had some significant achievements, most notably in Gaza. But are these breakthroughs sustainable, and can his foreign policy approach be effective with larger geostrategic challenges?
A leaner decision-making structure
One way the Trump administration’s approach is different from previous administrations – including Trump 1.0 – is in his leaner organisation, which is more capable of implementing quick action.
Trump has revamped the national security decision-making structure in surprising ways. His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, now serves concurrently as his national security adviser. Rubio has also reduced the staff of the National Security Council from around 350 to about 150, which is still larger than many of Trump’s predecessors before Barack Obama.
There have been some missteps. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Waltz, tried to accommodate his need for speedy decision-making by establishing group chats on the Signal app for the small group of agency heads and senior advisers who advise Trump. This rightfully caused concerns about the security of classified information – especially after Waltz mistakenly added a journalist to a chat group – and he was subsequently ousted.
With a much smaller staff now, Rubio is implementing a more sustainable method for the president to communicate with his top advisers, mostly through Rubio himself and Trump’s powerful chief of staff, Susie Wiles.
Rubio has also led a top-down revamp of the bureaucratic foreign policy structures. Dozens of offices were eliminated, and hundreds of career professionals were laid off. Numerous political appointments, including ambassadorships, remain unfilled.
Many bureaus are now headed not by Senate-confirmed assistant secretaries, but by career foreign and civil service “senior bureau officials”. This keeps the number of politically appointed policymakers rather small – mostly in Rubio’s direct orbit – while keeping professional “implementers” in key positions to execute policy.
A reliance on special envoys
To set the stage for his own deal-making, Trump also uses his longtime friend and multipurpose envoy, Steve Witkoff, for the highest-level conversations. Without any Senate confirmation, Witkoff has become Trump’s most trusted voice in Ukraine, Gaza and several other foreign policy negotiations.
Massad Boulos, another unconfirmed Trump envoy, conducts second-tier negotiations, mostly in Africa but also parts of the Middle East.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, played a key role in the recent Gaza accord as well. This has raised questions of conflicts of interest. However, Trump’s emphasis on deal-oriented businessmen in diplomatic roles is intentional.
The approach appears to be very welcome in some quarters, particularly in the Middle East, where conventional diplomacy was fraught with much historical baggage.
A ‘shock and awe’ approach
On top of all this, of course, is Trump’s style and showmanship.
His most controversial statements – for example, demanding US ownership of Greenland – may seem absurd and offensive at first. However, there are genuine national security concerns over China’s role in the Arctic and the possibility an independent Greenland might serve as a wedge in a critical region. From this standpoint, establishing some US control over Greenland’s foreign policy is an entirely rational proposition.
What is unique to Trump is the pace, breadth and intensity of his personal diplomacy.
Trump’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a case in point. While Trump embraces Netanyahu in public and green-lights all of Israel’s military actions, he’s willing to say no to the Israeli leader in private. For example, Trump intervened to prevent Israel from annexing the West Bank immediately before the Gaza breakthrough.
In addition, Trump’s personal charm offensive with Arab leaders in the region – his first major foreign trip after Pope Francis’ funeral was to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – established a coalition to pressure Hamas to say yes to the deal.
It is a “shock and awe” diplomatic approach: everything, everywhere, all at once. Previous agreements and norms (including those set by Trump himself) are downplayed or discarded in favour of action in the moment.
Is there a longer-term vision?
Of course, there are downsides to the Trump approach. The past cannot be ignored, especially in the Middle East. And many previous agreements and norms were there for a reason – they worked, and they helped stabilise otherwise chaotic situations. It very much remains to be seen whether Trump’s approach can lead to a long-term solution in Gaza. Many critics have pointed out the vagueness in his 20-point peace plan, which could cause it to fall apart at any moment.
It is not unusual for a second-term American president like Trump to focus on foreign policy, where Congress has a highly limited role and the president has wide latitude. But American presidents usually focus on achieving one big thing. Think Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran or George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq.
Today, in addition to the Gaza accord, Trump is pursuing separate diplomatic deals with all four major American adversaries: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
The logic of this is to put direct stress on the alliance of bad actors. Does Chinese leader Xi Jinping trust Russian President Vladimir Putin enough to resist Trump’s entreaties, and vice versa? How much are Russia and China worried about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un cutting a deal with Washington?
The true test of the Trump Doctrine will not be the success of the Gaza accord, but whether he can build on it to drive the West’s adversaries – mainly China and Russia – apart from each other and into weaker strategic positions.
Lester Munson receives funding from the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He is affiliated with BGR Group, a Washington DC governmental affairs firm and was previously Republican staff in the US Congress and in the George W. Bush administration.
