If you’re looking for a single-sentence summation of the change in America’s foreign policy under Donald Trump, you could do worse than what Trump said on Wednesday:“The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That’s the purpose of it. And they’ve done a good job of it. But now I’m president.”Trump seems to loathe America’s traditional European allies even as he warms relations with Russia. He’s threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico while softening his rhetoric on China. And he seems fixated on the idea of territorial expansion — whether it’s the Panama Canal, Greenland or even Gaza. There is a “Trump doctrine” emerging here. It’s one that could be glimpsed dimly in Trump’s first term but is exploding to the fore in his second. What will it mean for the world? What will it mean for the United States?Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” a columnist for The Washington Post and the author of the best-selling “Age of Revolutions.” He’s one of the clearest foreign policy thinkers around, and he doesn’t disappoint here. This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:“The Rise of Illiberal Democracy” by Fareed ZakariaBook Recommendations:The Jungle Grows Back by Robert KaganDiplomacy by Henry KissingerThe Wise Men by Walter Isaacson and Evan ThomasThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What is the Trump Doctrine and how has it changed US foreign policy?
So you can find our YouTube page by searching Ezra Klein Show on YouTube, or we will have a link to it in the show description. From New York Times Opinion, this is The Ezra Klein Show. What is the Donald Trump doctrine? What is Donald Trump's foreign policy?
I think the place to begin to try to untangle what we've actually seen here is to listen to the way Donald Trump and Vice President Vance speak about our allies.
I've had very good talks with Putin and I've had not such good talks with Ukraine. They don't have any cards, but they play it tough.
The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.
I mean, look, let's be honest. The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That's the purpose of it. And they've done a good job of it, but now I'm president.
Something is new here. The Trump doctrine that we've seen in the first month of this presidency is going to reshape the world much more fundamentally than Trump did in the four years of his first term. That's in part due to who is around him now. The end of being surrounded by the foreign policy establishment, and now it's J.D. Vance and Elon Musk.
I wanted to have a bigger picture conversation about what this Trump doctrine is and the way it's going to reshape the world. So I'm joined today by Fareed Zakaria, the host of GPS on CNN, a Washington Post columnist, and the author of the bestselling book, Age of Revolutions. As always, my email, ezraklineshow at nytimes.com. Fareed Zakaria, welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure, Ezra.
So to the extent you feel you can define it, what's the Trump Doctrine?
You know, the part of the problem with Trump is he's so mercurial. He's so idiosyncratic that just when you think you figured out the Trump doctrine, he goes and says something that kind of sounds like the opposite of the Trump doctrine. But I do think that there is one coherent worldview that Trump seems to espouse and has espoused for a long time.
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Chapter 2: Why does Trump favor certain international leaders over others?
Chapter 3: How does Trump's view on territorial expansion differ from modern norms?
Yeah, and I think NATO has essentially been eroded already. Because what is NATO? NATO is not the buildings, the treaty. NATO is something very simple. It is the question, will the United States of America come to the defense of a small European country if attacked by Russia? And I think that...
The events of the last few weeks have left, I can tell you, having talked to many Europeans, have left the Europeans in no doubt that if Lithuania were attacked tomorrow by Russia, there is almost no chance that Donald Trump would do everything it took to defend Lithuania. So that means they start asking themselves, you know, what is this new world we're living in?
So you're seeing, I mean, this is really historic, that the guy who's going to become the chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, has said the most urgent task for Europe now is to begin a step-by-step independence from the United States because the United States, or at least Donald Trump, have shown themselves to be indifferent to the fate of Europe.
That is, you know, seismic for what was really America's most important ally in Europe to say that our principal strategic task now is to find a strategy of independence away from the United States. And you're going to see other countries do variations of that. And in some cases, Those countries will be probably doing private kind of hedging in a way that they can't publicly admit to.
The one part I don't agree with you is I think there are countries that are going to do deals with America. Everyone is going to be wary of a long-term relationship. Because they realize that certainly in this new world, those don't mean that much.
I was in Australia last December, and I met with a senior official there who said to me, you know, we're very happy to be in this closer relationship with the United States. We're delighted that you're sharing your nuclear technology with us, you know, the nuclear subs deal that we made with them.
But the big question we wonder about is we have now put ourselves in a structurally confrontational role vis-a-vis our principal trading partner, China. We didn't have to do that. China is a long way away. We were happily trading with them. We hope to continue to do that. But it has completely changed the relationship we have with China. That's okay if you have our back.
But if in a few years you decide to cut a deal with China, we will have made a generational strategic error. And I think that is what's going to be in every country's mind, you know, about getting close to the United States in a long term. That's why I say these alliances took eight decades to build.
Let me take the other side of this. What are the chances that Trump is exactly what Europe needs right now? That Europe is a mess, that it has not invested nearly enough in its defense for decades, that it has been watching its productivity numbers functionally collapse, that in something J.D. Vance was saying, it is overregulated.
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Chapter 4: What impact does Trump's foreign policy have on NATO and Europe?
He's been much more aggressive in some ways with threats of tariffs towards Europe and Canada and Mexico. He's now begun talking about some kind of big deal with China where they would just buy more of our stuff, which is sort of like a deal he struck in the first term, even though they didn't end up buying the stuff.
But I would have told you that he actively wants a hostile relationship with China. And now he doesn't seem to actively want a hostile relationship with China. It was him who initially came up with, or at least people in his administration, with forcing the sell-off of TikTok. Now he's the savior of TikTok.
How do you describe where the Trump administration seems to be or seems to be moving on China?
Again, you know, with Trump, so much of it is personal. So the reason he seems to have moved on TikTok is because he realized that there was a large group of people supporting him on TikTok. TikTok was good for him. It was a good platform for him to get his message out. And it's possible sometimes with Trump that it's as simple as that. But I think that...
With China, you have always had this conflicting pressure. And you saw it in Trump 1, in 1.0. He was hostile to China in the campaign. He talked about massive tariffs against China. And he comes in and he invites Xi Jinping to Mar-a-Lago. And he's...
dazzled by that and his grandchildren sing Chinese songs to Xi Jinping and he talks about this beautiful chocolate cake he serves him he likes the idea that he is you know sitting with the second most powerful person in the world and they you know they have a relationship and they get on the whole Trump 1.0 on China was kind of a nothing because they put tariffs on
And somebody did a calculation that something like 95% of the value of the revenues collected for the tariffs went to subsidies to American farmers to compensate them for the loss. So we didn't even make any money off of it, which Trump often talks about with tariffs. This time around, I think he seems to be much less even rhetorically hostile toward China.
My inclination is to go where you're going. He wants to deal with China. He wants to have some kind of a better working relationship with China. I think to a large extent, that could be a good thing. And I think that one of the things I worry about in the new world we're going into, China is embarking on a massive military buildup.
China is probably going to quadruple the number of nuclear weapons it has in the next 10 years. And, you know, to a certain extent, I understand China's point of view, which is they're the second richest country in the world. Why should they not have an arsenal that's as big as Russia's? But it can be very destabilizing.
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Chapter 5: Could Trump's approach to Europe be beneficial in the long run?
Chapter 6: How does ideology play a role in Trump's foreign alliances?
Now you've had Trump come in for a month, and the whole world is reshuffling in response to what he says. You have negotiations happening with Moscow. You have mineral deals being signed with Ukraine. You have in Gaza, all of a sudden, for the insanity, in my view, of Trump's actual proposal, I am hearing more serious proposals from Ukraine
The Arab countries that I was before, Yair Lapid, one of the opposition leaders in Israel, had a reasonable, I thought, proposal of wiping out Egyptian foreign debt in return for Egypt taking over rebuilding and governance of Gaza for a period of time. The sense that the world is responding to American strength.
Did Democrats fumble this in their belief that a restrained America was a strong America that more did not need to be projected? Did they leave the opening for someone like Trump who said there's all this surplus power and the American public is going to respond to seeing someone come pick it up?
That the sense that the world should respond to America, that we should be feared by our friends and our enemies alike, right? had been dismissed. I've heard this from people involved in the Middle East conflict. Nobody feared Joe Biden.
Look, I think that there's no question the United States had enormous power. It sort of contradicts the central premise of the Trump-Vance domestic argument, which is that America has been hollowed out and ravaged over the last 30 years by the forces of globalization and liberalism.
In fact, the real story of the last 30 years is the United States has emerged dominant among the rich countries in the world. You know, we are the Eurozone.
And they seem to envy the political systems of countries that are in terrible shape. Right. Hungary, Russia, China, which is seeing its growth rates fall. They have a lot of envy of systems that you would not want to emulate.
China doesn't have a trade deficit. And look at China, right? That's not a country you'd want to emulate the economy of. So there is a kind of weird contradiction. But I agree with you. The United States has enormous power and you can use it.
Look, I don't think that it is a sign of strength to go around bullying smaller countries and forcing them to say things that are often rhetorical concessions, you know, get everyone to call it the Gulf of America. The Panamanians are a good example.
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