Sometimes with a raised fist, other times with a thumbs-up, the President of the United States constantly likes to project an image of strength and self-confidence. The most powerful man in the most powerful country in the world conceives no other horizon than triumph, no other outcome than victory. For Donald Trump, there is nothing worse in this world than being a loser, a loser . And yet, with domestic popularity in free fall (only 33% of Americans approve of his administration) and serious failures internationally, his trajectory is taking precisely that course.
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Trump’s erratic and capricious foreign policy has led the U.S. to a paradoxical situation where self-inflicted failures outweigh successes. While his bet to update the Monroe Doctrine – naturally renamed as Donroe – to reinforce his dominance over the entire American continent seems to be working, at least in the short term, elsewhere in the world the hegemony of the world’s leading power is faltering.
The endless war in Iran has weakened the U.S. in other arenas and damaged its image
In Latin America, the great trump card Trump can present – who still boasts about the operation that led to Nicolás Maduro’s capture – is putting Venezuela under tutelage, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio playing the role of viceroy controlling the exploitation and commercialization – including revenues – of Venezuelan oil (democratizing the regime seems less of a priority). Along with control of Venezuela, to which Cuba may eventually be added, Trump has counted on a wave of electoral victories by the right and far right, from the Caribbean to Patagonia, which have consolidated his imprint and have already resulted in the formation of a large military coalition to combat drug cartels, involving 19 countries. Only the three big ones – Brazil, Canada, and Mexico – escape Washington’s control ambitions.
But outside the Western Hemisphere, everything else is slipping. In Europe, the transatlantic alliance is visibly weakening, while Washington – in a spectacular doctrinal turn – has stopped treating Russia as an adversary, without thereby managing to end the war in Ukraine. Recently, the U.S. government sent its NATO partners a questionnaire to assess not only European commitment to common defense but also their support for Washington’s foreign policy, with a view to reallocating its military resources on the continent (which, beyond their division into good and bad , will be reduced)
In Asia, theoretically the second major priority of U.S. foreign policy, the practice is far from what one might deduce from the National Security Strategy document approved less than a year ago. With the major trade showdown with China launched by the U.S. president in 2025 provisionally ending in a stalemate, the reality is that here too the U.S. is abandoning its historic allies – this very week it snubbed South Korea while showing complicity with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un – and has weakened its military deployment in the region due to its risky adventures elsewhere.
All this for what? To intervene in a region of the world, the Middle East, from which Trumpism formally seemed determined to disengage (“The days when the Middle East dominated American foreign policy (…) have fortunately ended,” read the new yet already outdated National Security Strategy document, approved in November 2025)
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The Middle East has become Trump’s true Achilles’ heel. A real black hole. The reckless and misguided armed intervention against Iran – dragged in by Israel – has become a military, economic, and geopolitical disaster. Turned into an endless war, it has weakened the image of the U.S. like no other, which appears as a powerless giant. To the point that everyone in the region, both enemies and allies, is standing up to him.
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The conflict with Iran, which has been dragging on for almost six months, threatens to become indefinitely entrenched, given the U.S.’s military inability to defeat the ayatollah regime, which far from surrendering to its – empty – threats, has doubled its demands to reopen Hormuz. It even demands economic reparations! Meanwhile, all the initial war objectives seem to be fading to focus primarily on reopening the strait, through which before the war passed 20% of the world’s production of oil and liquefied gas without any navigation restrictions. All that for this?
Not only enemies raise their voices against Trump, U.S. allies themselves also dare to oppose him. The first of them, co-responsible for the disaster, is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has rejected the U.S. president’s roadmap for Gaza. The Israeli premier reiterated his rejection this week to the special envoy, the son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The U.S. appears so weak today, both politically and militarily – short of missiles and anti-aircraft munitions, forced to move the last aircraft carrier it had patrolling the Pacific to the area – that its main Arab ally has sought other shelters. Thus, Saudi Arabia signed on the 7th with Turkey and Pakistan a tripartite defense pact that consolidates a new Sunni Islamic power axis, against the threat of Shia Iran.
It is no surprise that lately Trump’s raised fists and extended thumbs are increasingly mechanical, more listless. And his expression, more serious, more closed.
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