In Trump’s Second Term, Things Start to Fall Apart

By Elliott Abrams

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

 

Let’s not exaggerate: Yeats’s lines do not yet describe the Trump administration and its foreign policy. But the direction now, in the 17th month of his second term, is toward confusion and failure.

 

The achievements of the second term in foreign affairs are real. The attacks on Iran in June 2025, and now in 2026, decapitated the regime and greatly diminished Iran’s economy and its military power. Similarly bold are the decapitation of the regime in Venezuela and the squeeze on Cuba. But in Europe, where the Ukraine war continues, and in Asia, where Xi Jinping continues his threats against Taiwan, there are no achievements to list. In fact, relations with India, critical during the 21st century, have been damaged.

 

And President Trump seems poised to throw away the achievements he has made. In Venezuela, he seems completely comfortable with a Maduro regime without Maduro; every other thug and thief remains in place, hundreds of political prisoners continue to rot away, and Trump never utters the word “democracy” or imposes any political demands on Delcy Rodríguez. When will there be an election? In Cuba, which must lie close to Secretary Marco Rubio’s heart, the outcome is in doubt: Will negotiations with Raúl Castro’s grandson produce real change? Trump has the chance in the two and a half years that remain of his time in power to leave the Western Hemisphere without a single regime hostile to the United States for the first time since 1959 (assuming that if Cuba and Venezuela are liberated, Nicaragua will not survive as a lone Marxist redoubt). That would be a tremendous and historic achievement for Trump — but he seems unaware that it works only if decapitation is followed by freedom rather than more pliable cronies.

 

The graver national security problems lie outside this hemisphere. The loss of Taiwan to Communist China would be a historic disaster for the United States. It would turn U.S. allies in the region into fearful neutrals or Chinese vassals, because the failure to save Taiwan would show Asians that Chinese power was now irresistible. It would give China control of TSMC and its 70 percent of the global semiconductor foundry market. Yet during Trump’s most recent China visit, he apparently agreed not to proceed with $12 billion in arms sales to Taiwan and said this: “Looking at the situation, China is a very, very strong power, and Taiwan is a very small island. Taiwan is 59 miles away from mainland China, while the U.S. is 9,500 miles away.” Hardly reassuring — except to Xi. And subversive of our alliances with Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Singapore, which are the same distance away.

 

The situation regarding Europe is arguably worse. Trump’s susceptibility to Vladimir Putin’s “arguments” over Ukraine and his coldness to Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky cannot be explained in terms of U.S. national security interests. Trump long ago began winning his battle for more military spending by NATO allies, but he has reacted not with a victory lap but with churlishness. His treatment of our NATO allies would be incomprehensible to previous Republican presidents, including Eisenhower and Reagan. One of the most committed NATO allies, Denmark, has been threatened with the use of military force over Greenland, even as just about every stated goal regarding Greenland is obviously achievable through negotiations. As to Ukraine, even without firm U.S. support, it is holding its own; with that support, Russian adventurism would be dealt a near-mortal blow, and Putin would likely fall. Yet Trump is turning a possible historic victory against Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine into a crisis for the Western alliance. And no one can explain why.

 

There are two theories. In both the Xi and Putin cases, Trump may be adhering to his personal version of a “great man” or “great leader” version of history, where he will settle things face to face with his peers. There are many problems with such negotiations with murderous dictators. Very often those men do not keep their promises, breaking them at will in political systems where there is no parliament or press or opposition party to challenge that behavior. Moreover, there is simply no way of knowing how long the dictator or his policy will last. Xi seems secure today, but is Putin — with complaints about his costly and endless war in Ukraine growing while he is obviously unwilling to end it and unable to win it?

 

Or, Trump may be following what he thinks is “realpolitik,” and his statement above about China and Taiwan reinforces that conclusion. But this approach is not actually realistic, because it treats every country as a black box — an empty vessel with one man at the top. The Chinese people or Russian people simply do not exist in this approach — nor, as we will see in a moment, do Iranians. Only Xi, and Putin, and Delcy Rodríguez, and others like them do. That we may have common interests today with Russians who want to end the Ukraine war, or Venezuelans who want democracy, or Iranians who want a new, democratic, Western-style government does not seem to enter Trump’s mind or his policies. His kind of realism tells him to deal with those in power and forget about the populace. In the short run, that most often works. In the medium run, it sacrifices opportunities that can change world politics and undermines America’s claim to stand for democracy. Trump seems content to celebrate the 250^th anniversary of Americans’ demand for popular sovereignty by ignoring that demand by any other people.

 

In this corollary to his brand of realpolitik, Trump seems completely unaware of, even resistant to, the idea that freedom is a great asset for the United States. His relationships with tyrants are in general warmer than those with democratically elected leaders. He eschews U.S. support for democracy activists in dictatorships and has tried to gut the National Endowment for Democracy and democracy programs at the State Department, as well as U.S. broadcasting to the people of nations like China, Russia, and Iran. He has properly chided Europeans for abandoning elements of Western traditions and culture, but seems unaware that democratic government and respect for human rights are at the center of the Western political tradition he says he wants to save.

 

Style and language contribute to this picture. Anyone who thinks Eisenhower kept four-letter words out of his private vocabulary forgets his 32 years in the Army. But Trump seems to feel no responsibility to uphold standards of conduct either abroad or at home — as was demonstrated by his curses at Israel’s prime minister in a June conversation between them, or his astonishing Easter Sunday social media post that included F-bombing the American public about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. His view of how a national and a world leader should behave — or, better put, how the representative of the American people should behave — also affects the way other countries and other leaders react to him and to U.S. policy. Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” was a carefully calibrated ploy designed to make opponents unsure how far he would go — to look far more unpredictable than he was, even to look irrational. But some of Trump’s behavior and statements leave not only enemies, but friends and allies — and tens of millions of Americans — wondering whether policy is based on anything more than whim and ego.

 

So does the question of personnel. When he came to office in 2017, Trump surrounded himself primarily with experienced Republican officials and generals. There was, of course, a group of personal loyalists as well, and these groups cooperated sometimes and fought sometimes. Over four years, many of them got fed up and left the administration — some building careers on trashing or celebrating Trump in books or on TV. In this second term, the administration is staffed primarily by people who are personally loyal and often have few other virtues or qualifications. Perfect examples would be Trump’s two directors of national intelligence (DNI), former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard and home-builder Bill Pulte. Needless to say, some loyalists are also effective policymakers and bureaucrats, but that seems to be a happy accident rather than a qualification for office.

 

These days the personnel trend is downward, like the trend in Trump’s personal conduct. His own use of language and his family’s engagement in money-making schemes have changed in this term, and so has the way he explains (or fails to explain) his policies.

 

Iran is a case study of that downward trajectory. In his first term, Trump ordered the killing of Quds Force head Qasem Soleimani, and, in this term, ordered the bombing (along with Israel) of Iran’s nuclear sites and other targets. There was a clear policy: to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and to punish terrorism against Americans. But it’s apparent now, several months in, that policymaking is as sloppy as it appears from outside. The usual laborious interagency process (which is so easy to caricature, but serves to present and evaluate options and raise likely dangers) was apparently absent. The president listened to . . . whom? Some combination of foreign leaders, U.S. officials, and hangers-on at Mar-a-Lago, and it looks as if there was no point at which long-foreseen challenges such as Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz were truly understood and evaluated by the president.

 

Today, Trump is in a tight corner. He clearly does not wish to return to full-on conflict. Equally, he does not wish to agree to a deal that is reminiscent of Barack Obama’s JCPOA and will produce rounds of mockery from Democrats who remember how harshly he denounced that agreement. So the stalemate goes on, damaging every economy reliant on Gulf sources for petroleum products, including fertilizer as well as gasoline and diesel, and producing U.S. gasoline prices that threaten Republicans in November. Now, Trump has linked Lebanon to the Iran talks and tried to constrain Israeli attacks there because they may upset the Iran negotiations — linkage that is a huge Iranian victory. While negotiations between Lebanese government and Israeli officials in Washington insist on Lebanese sovereignty, Trump seems willing to ignore all that if he needs Hezbollah included to make an Iran deal. Most recently, he urged Israel not to respond when Iran shot 20 missiles at it, a request (or demand) that was doomed to failure and also very bad policy.

 

That policy is the product of a remarkable mixture of friends and officials: his old real estate friend Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as Iran negotiators; his old real estate friend Tom Barrack as ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria and Iraq; his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Lebanese-American businessman Massad Boulos, as a special envoy for the Middle East. The list goes on. And the intelligence coming in from all agencies (FBI, CIA, DIA, etc.) is supposed to be digested and presented to the president by the acting director of national intelligence, the home-building heir Bill Pulte, who has zero intelligence experience.

 

But that isn’t anarchy; the center does hold in the sense that the center is Donald Trump. Perhaps confusion or indiscipline is a better description than anarchy. Example: Most Republicans in the Senate support an extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as a key tool against terrorism (permitting warrantless collection of communications by terrorism suspects outside the United States), but that section is controversial. On June 5, seven Republicans joined all Democrats but one (Senator John Fetterman) in voting against proceeding to debate on the extension; the vote was 52–47 against. Several senators and cabinet members warned the president not to announce Pulte now for DNI because it would make the vote that much harder. Those warning him are said to include CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Yet he went ahead, refusing any delay — and no one can explain why.

 

Equally damaging to Trump’s own interests, and his party’s, was his vendetta against Senator John Cornyn of Texas, whom Trump opposed in the primary election because Cornyn had not endorsed him for reelection early enough. Cornyn was defeated. Problem: He was defeated by someone universally regarded as the weaker candidate in November. This makes it seem that personal retribution is more important to Trump than just about anything — including having a majority in the Senate that can pass legislation and lay the groundwork for the 2028 election.

 

The Cornyn episode, like the Section 702/Pulte issue, tells us a lot about Trump’s second term, which is now one-third over. The common thread is Trump’s indiscipline, his egotism, his reliance on a motley crew of advisers — who include some excellent ones, too, such as Ratcliffe at CIA and Marco Rubio at State and NSC, but who must work in an environment that’s more like a medieval court than a modern democratic government. No White House staff and no Cabinet is ever a meritocracy; there are always friends, relatives, donors, political supporters, and party stalwarts in the mix. But in the usual mix there are also many individuals of real competence whose loyalties go beyond early support of the president. There’s a lot less of that in Trump II.

 

The center is holding for now — yet things may fall apart. The loyalty of congressional Republicans is being tested by Trump’s solipsism, elevating personal fealty over party-building, and it will be tested more if Republicans lose the House and perhaps the Senate in November. The ability of Trump’s motley crew to implement and explain his policies will diminish in the second half of this term if competent officials begin to depart (as usually happens in second terms) and Trump cannot or will not find equally competent replacements. Americans’ faith in Trump will decline if he cannot bring the Iran conflict to a sensible conclusion and if he makes foreign policy errors that bury his very real achievements.

 

Second terms are almost always harder, and Donald Trump’s way of governing will exacerbate the troubles. He can turn that around, but hiring more unqualified loyalists and placing allegiance to himself above principle and competence will make that a lot harder. Donald Trump will remain at the center, but centrifugal forces are growing. The first 17 months of his second term bode poorly for success in the remaining two and a half years.