Column: Trump isn’t an isolationist. He’s a bully — and that’s hurting U.S. influence in the world

WASHINGTON — When President Trump announced last week that the United States will take over the war-blasted Gaza Strip, expel its Palestinian population and build a high-end beach resort, most of the reviews ranged from disbelief to outrage.

“The craziest and most destructive proposal any administration has ever made,” said Aaron David Miller, who advised both Democratic and Republican presidents on Middle East peacemaking. “Problematic,” allowed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), normally a reliable Trump cheerleader.

Optimists speculated that Trump was merely trying to prod wealthy Arab states to rebuild Gaza, but the president insisted he was serious.

That was only one of many disruptive moves in his first three weeks back at the helm of U.S. foreign policy.

Trump also announced that he intends to “take back” the Panama Canal and force Denmark, a U.S. ally, to sell him Greenland. He threatened two more friendly countries, Canada and Mexico, with punitive tariffs until a tanking stock market prompted him to reconsider. His spending czar, Elon Musk, abruptly halted most U.S. foreign aid, cutting millions of people off from life-saving medicines, at least temporarily.

During Trump’s first term, pundits often labeled him an “isolationist” because of his disdain for alliances and his self-declared opposition to military adventures.

But that tag doesn’t quite fit a president who claims he’s willing to send troops to Gaza, Greenland and the Panama Canal to secure desirable real estate.

A Rutgers University historian, Jennifer Mittelstadt, has suggested that Trump is more accurately categorized as a “sovereigntist,” a nearly forgotten label from the early 20th century.

Sovereigntists are allergic to foreign alliances and multilateral trade deals. They are zealous in protecting American borders against immigrants or invaders, but mostly indifferent to conflicts elsewhere. They also believe in the Monroe Doctrine, the idea that the United States is entitled to throw its weight around the Western Hemisphere.

Sounds a lot like Trump.

His foreign policy represents a historic break from the basic doctrine shared by presidents of both parties since World War II: the belief that American leadership is necessary to ensure world peace, stabilize the global economy and, when feasible, promote democracy and human rights.

To pursue those goals, earlier presidents built alliances in Europe and Asia that would serve the allies as well as the United States.

Trump doesn’t buy most of that.

His mantra is “America First.” In his view, other countries are mostly on their own. He has denounced traditional U.S. alliances, beginning with NATO, as scams by which foreigners take advantage of gullible Americans.

He’s often harder on allies than on adversaries. He appears to enjoy “punching down” as a show of dominance, pressuring less powerful countries like Denmark and Canada, both NATO members.

Meanwhile, he’s full of flattery for nuclear-armed adversaries like China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

He has no compunction about violating treaty commitments or ripping up trade agreements, even deals he negotiated himself. He says being unpredictable is an asset. It’s also a good way to convince other countries that he’s an unreliable friend.

The danger, U.S. and foreign diplomats say, is that some of those countries may decide to look for other allies to help protect their interests.

“Trump is giving goodies to China,” said Kishore Mahbubani, an Asia expert at the National University of Singapore. “He’s alienating so many countries, especially friends, so quickly [that] the Chinese may say, ‘Why can’t we have eight years of Trump?’”

Musk’s abrupt gutting of the U.S. foreign aid agency, USAID, is a gift to China as well.

Trump and Musk have derided foreign aid as needless charity to the poor — or, worse, as “corruption.” But foreign aid is rarely motivated by charity alone; it’s a tool superpowers employ in the competition for global influence.

China, whose regime has rarely been mistaken as a charitable institution, has poured billions of dollars of aid and investment into developing countries, seeking to extend its own power.

With USAID crippled, the Chinese can more easily expand their influence in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

And as Trump has weakened traditional U.S. security alliances, Xi has been building a military alliance of his own with Russia, North Korea and Iran — a group sometimes called the “Axis of Autocrats,” united mostly by their desire to counter American power.

If that axis holds together, it could be the most dangerous threat to U.S. security in a generation — and Trump seems to know that.

“The one thing you never want to happen … [is] Russia and China uniting,” he said in an interview with Tucker Carlson last year. “I’m going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that.”

But the president has never offered a strategy to make that happen. Right now, he appears more focused on downsizing the bureaucracy, launching trade wars, retaking the Panama Canal and acquiring real estate in Greenland and Gaza.

His new “sovereigntist” foreign policy might be cheaper in the short run. Foreign aid is less than 1% of federal spending, but it still comes to more than $68 billion.

He might somehow succeed in acquiring Greenland or building beach hotels in Gaza. But it will almost surely be a bad deal in the long run — because it will leave the United States with fewer friends and allies just when we might need them.