The Trump team's trip to Greenland is unwelcome. The islanders don't want to become an American colony. This is another example of using bullying instead of statecraft: https://www.reuters.com/world/united-states-is-putting-unacceptable-pressure-greenland-danish-pm-says-2025-03-25/
Donald Trump has now threatened to bomb Iran: “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before” https://apnews.com/article/iran-rejects-direct-negotiations-trump-letter-us-c414743a567c574b6f48f64a2e889f31 This doesn’t look like a wise form of negotiation.
Trump’s negotiations with Iran appear to be good news, but his credibility is low – given that he walked away from the JCPOA, which had been a carefully negotiated international agreement https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2025/04/08/trump-rebuffs-netanyahu-and-gambles-on-a-deal-with-iran
Trump bullies other countries because he feels superior to them – but he causes offence: “Polls show that the vast majority of Greenlanders want to become independent from Denmark but do not wish to become part of the US” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly1pjnpyjpo
Mark Carney won the Canadian election by promising to stand up to Trump. He is also “ready to take a leadership role” in advocating multilateralism – in direct opposition to Trump’s isolationism and aggression towards Canada https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/carney-aims-global-leadership-role-against-trump-after-canada-election-win-2025-04-29/
The popular backlash against Donald Trump has caused the defeat of another right-wing politician: this time in Australia, following the Canadian pattern of standing up against American aggression https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/count-under-way-australia-election-with-living-costs-trump-focus-2025-05-03/
Iran’s response to Witkoff’s red line: “Unrealistic expectations stop negotiations, enrichment in Iran is not something that can be stopped …I think he is completely at a distance from the reality of the negotiations” https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-envoy-witkoff-cites-us-red-line-with-iran-against-uranium-enrichment-2025-05-18/
Trump’s foreign policy is “to spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun. The military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime and any place” https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5317486-donald-trump-west-point-commencement-speech-golden-age/
Trump is characteristically talking big on Iran, which rejects his call to surrender. His confrontational approach is unlikely to work. The previous peace accord was reached by patient negotiation. He is grossly irresponsible https://apnews.com/article/trump-iran-nuclear-us-strike-israel-eeaad923bb2df019b05f31f2e11d486c
Trump and his MAGA base don’t value America’s soft power. Voice of America has been cut, and “Chinese state media is moving aggressively to fill the vacuum”. It is hard to see how Americans benefit https://www.axios.com/2025/07/17/trump-china-retreat-soft-power
The South China Morning Post reports on India-China relations: “deepening mutually beneficial cooperation ..and opposing unilateral bullying” after Trump’s latest tariffs https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3322471/china-india-talks-narendra-modi-praises-stable-predictable-constructive-ties