President Donald Trump is “redrawing the world map” with his foreign policy, driven by his “America first” stance, his anti-globalist position, his “like” for provoking America’s allies and his desire for “quick wins,” experts have told Newsweek.
The president’s administration has wasted no time in trying to change America’s relationship with the rest of the world.
He has repeatedly accused NATO of taking financial advantage of the U.S., illustrated best with leaked text messages from a private group chat for Trump officials in which Vice President J.D. Vance said “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” to which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth replied: “I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It’s PATHETIC.”
Trump has also been critical of how much money the U.S. is spending on the war in Ukraine, culminating in a heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February. A visit to the White House ended with the pair arguing with each other, Trump accusing Zelensky of “gambling with World War III,” telling him he was not acting “thankful” and calling him “disrepectful.”
The Trump administration has embraced peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin while launching a tariff war with its longtime ally Canada, along with almost every other country in the world, and it has begun a serious quest to take over Greenland.
“It’s been one of the most exciting starts to a new presidential term since Gorbachev ascended to the pinnacle of the Soviet system and kept the West on its toes as Russia underwent a revolutionary transformation,” research scholar Barry Scott Zellen, who specializes in geopolitics and international relations at the University of Connecticut told Newsweek.
“But the risks Gorbachev took in the end caused the Soviet system not to reform, but to collapse. Will we see the same?” he said.
Russia-Ukraine War
During his election campaign, Trump said he would end the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours and, while he was not able to achieve this, he has certainly shaken up the landscape with peace talks, with the deals discussed including ones that would grant Russia all the territory it has gained since 2014 and block Ukraine joining NATO.
This is a major departure from the previous administration—former President Joe Biden said that “Ukraine’s future lies at NATO” and was generally against leaving Russian-occupied territory in Russian hands.
“Recent efforts to negotiate a solution to the Russia-Ukraine war suggest that in the absence of achieving quick deliverables, the administration may shift to other issues, and to achieve quick wins, the administration is not deeply grappling with the causes of conflict or the preferences of the parties involved,” Feryal Cherif, associate professor of political science and international relations at the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, told Newsweek.
Trump’s foreign policy doctrine “centers on replacing a values-driven approach to international relations with one grounded in transactionalism,” Thomas Gift, a political scientist at the School of Public Policy at University College London (UCL), told Newsweek
“His core strategy is simple: threaten first, talk second,” he added.
Zellen praised Trump’s “bold” approach, calling the conflict in Ukraine a “never-ending war paid for by the American taxpayer, but where Americans felt no real connection.”
He also hailed Trump’s efforts to secure a minerals deal, which would see America granted some kind of access to Ukraine’s rare earth mineral deposits as a way to way to pay the country back for its military aid—Trump also argues that American workers on Ukrianian soil would act as a security assurance against Russia.
“This returns to the American taxpayer some of the funds that were spent in Ukraine under the Biden administration, bringing economic justice to the American heartland squeezed by reckless American military spending,” Zellen said.
Europe
Trump has stoked fears that America may leave NATO, or undermine the historicaly U.S.-led transatlantic alliance without pulling out completely, and there are ongoing worries that Washington will eventually withdraw troops from Europe.
He has repeatedly said that the U.S. would not defend NATO states unless they pay what he deems their fair share.
“If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them,” he said in March.
“All post- World War II presidents have wanted allies to do more to invest in their own defense. But Trump is unique in his beliefs that allies are bad for the United States,” James Goldgeier, a professor of international relations at American University, told Newsweek.
He went on to argue that this development in the U.S.-Europe relationship has forced Europe to recognize that “the United States is no longer playing its role as the guarantor of European security” and will have to “invest more in the capabilities they need to defend themselves.”
“The United States used to have a huge advantage over adversaries such as China and Russia because of the great network of alliances it has had in the post-World War II period that enhance American economic health and boost U.S. national security,” he said. “Donald Trump is frittering that away. Our allies will have to look out for themselves, and they will increasingly turn away from America.”
Similarly, Fen Hampson, the former Director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, told Newsweek that Trump has damaged America’s “soft power.”
“The U.S. is no longer trusted by its key allies to live up to its negotiated commitments in NATO or its trade agreements or supporting the values, principles and rules of the liberal international order,” he said.
“Trump likes to test and provoke America’s allies,” Zellen said, defending Trump’s demand for “Europeans to pay their fair share of their defense that was for so long subsidized on the back of the American worker and the taxes generated by his or her hard work.”
Canada
Trump floated the idea of making Canada America’s 51st state several times before Washington entered into a tit-for-tat trade war with new tariffs that have seen some American products banned in parts of Canada.
“I deal with every country, indirectly or directly. One of the nastiest countries to deal with is Canada,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News in March.
“Canada was meant to be the 51st state because we subsidize Canada by $200 billion a year,” he said, referencing an exaggerated estimate of the U.S. trade deficit with its northern neighbor, which the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office placed at $63.3 billion for 2024.
“Canadians have been angered by Trump’s comments about Canada being the 51st state and his disparaging remarks about former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as would the citizens of any sovereign nation,” Hampson said. “The immediate fallout has been felt in the Canadian election where the ballot question has been framed as ‘who is the best leader to stand up to Trump and defend Canadian interests and sovereignty.'”
“The longer term fallout is that Canadians will be looking to reduce their economic and security dependence on the United States while forging closer ties with Europe and our friends in the Asia-Pacific,” he added.
Greenland
Trump has also embarked on a major quest to take over Greenland, saying the U.S. needs the autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark “for national security and international security.”
Politicians in Greenland and Denmark have firmly rejected the idea, but the U.S. administration appears undeterred. America will “go as far as we have to go” to gain control of Greenland, Trump said previously. There has even been some talk of military action.
Gift, from UCL, said he believes Greenland is a “red herring for Trump, a useful distraction that he knows will generate outrage among Democrats.”
“For Trump, that’s part of his strategy—make as many provocative statements as possible so Democrats don’t know what to take literally, or where to focus their fire,” Gift said.
But Zellen, whose focus is Arctic geopolitics, said an American takeover of Greeland would create a “more robust and enduring security architecture for North America.”
“In one surge of new territorial expansion, we may thus find the formation of a new foundation for generations of stability to come,” he said.
“As an old Arctic hand, it was both surprising and heart-warming to see the Arctic feature so prominently and centrally in American policy,” Zellen added.
But Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, previously told Newsweek the idea of the U.S. taking over Greenland was a “pipe dream” arguing that “Greenlanders have almost unanimously…rejected the idea that they should in any shape or form be part of the USA” and adding that “Greenland is not a territory that lends itself to military takeover.”
Gad, a specialist in Arctic politics, warned that “any invasion of the Arctic archipelago is bound to turn into a search and rescue operation.”
He told Newsweek: “[Greenland] is a huge chunk of ice surrounded by a rocky strip of land interspersed with sharp mountains and deep, ice-filled forms. No two settlements connected by road, once landed, the invaders would go nowhere.”
Middle East
The Trump administration has also focussed its attention on the Middle East, pushing forward ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
Perhaps most significant is the president’s idea for America to “take over” the Gaza Strip.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too,” he said in February. “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and all of the other weapons on the site.”
Cherif, who specializes in the Middle East, said Washington’s heavy-handed approach in the region “may deliver some short-term policy successes, but a failure to engage meaningfully with the causes of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict suggests that resistance to Israeli policy is likely to continue.”
“Band-aid proposals to the Israel-Palestinian conflict provide only short-term relief,” she added.
Although Zellen has been largely supportive of Trump’s foreign policy moves, he signals a note of caution.
“As we see with Ukraine, a major world power (Russia) has changed the map of Europe and the price has been high in Ukrainian blood and American treasure. This may be just the beginning,” Zellen said.
“Next, Greenland may become part of America, for a second redrawing of the world map. And, if America wants to secure the Arctic and protect its own flanks, it may have to expand its new Arctic territory in Greenland to also include parts of Nunavut (including all of Canada’s Arctic archipelago that sits astride the Northwest Passage). This would be a third revision of the world map.”
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