With President Trump meeting with heads of state in the Middle East this week, the Times Opinion senior international editor Krista Mahr sat down with the columnists Lydia Polgreen and Nick Kristof to talk about how the president is emboldening leaders of all kinds worldwide, and what relationships they’re most worried about.
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This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Krista Mahr: My name is Krista Mahr. I’m the senior international editor at Times Opinion.
One of the things my colleagues and I have been watching closely in the first four months of Trump’s second term is how world leaders are reacting to this new administration. I wanted to talk about this so-called Trump effect with Lydia Polgreen and Nick Kristof, columnists who have reported extensively on America’s relationship with the rest of the world.
Lydia, Nick, welcome.
Lydia Polgreen: Hi, Nick. Hi, Krista.
Nicholas Kristof: Good to be with you.
Mahr: So, from my perspective, it looks like there are a few different types of leadership that have emerged in response to Trump 2.0. There are the emboldened leaders like Vladimir Putin who are using Trump’s foreign policy to advance their own agendas.
And then there are the defiant leaders — leaders like Canada’s Mark Carney, who just won a recent election by promising to stand up to Trump. Then there are more opportunistic leaders; I’m thinking about Xi Jinping, who is really seizing this moment to strengthen China’s ties in parts of the world that are being negatively impacted by Trump’s policies or places that are just feeling very insecure about this moment.
So Nick, Lydia, does this taxonomy make sense to you? Does this so-called Trump effect line up with what you are seeing in your own reporting?
Polgreen: Well, one of the things that I’ve been thinking about is the sort of cause and effect: To what extent is Trump calling the tune or setting the tone? Or to what extent is Trump actually responding to events as they’re unfolding and the way that the world is reacting to those events?
I think it’s useful to actually think about Russia and Putin in that regard. In some ways, Putin was an outlier before Trump 2.0 in terms of his territorial adventurism, for example. The invasion of Ukraine and really the aspiration to seize the entirety of the country, that’s something Putin had done before Trump came back. The attempted annexations in the West Bank that you’re seeing from Netanyahu, and these other kinds of extraterritorial smash and grabs — I’ve actually been wondering if Trump, in some ways, has been emboldened either by the broad failure to stop or in the case of Israel, a kind of indifference to the moves that have been happening.
It’s probably a little bit of both, but I think that we’re living in a world that Trump is both shaping and also taking opportunity of himself.
Kristof: Yeah, I think that President Trump is fundamentally not particularly ideological. He’s a transactional bully, and the truth is that bullying sometimes does work. He has been able to, in some limited ways, advance American interests: threaten Panama, and Panama is going to cave and try to transfer management of one of the ports to American interests; you threaten Colombia, and it is going to take people returned from the U.S. And so, in very limited ways, a bully can accomplish things.
But I think more fundamentally, what we’ve seen is Trump really dismantling the entire post-World War II architecture and a system that had very much supported American interests. And by abandoning any kind of commitment to human rights, as Lydia suggested, I think, that has paved the way for Israel to behave more recklessly in the West Bank and in Gaza, for the United Arab Emirates to behave more recklessly in Sudan — not that it was particularly well-behaved before.
If the point of foreign policy is to make your country safer, then I think that Trump has, here and there, created some benefits, but overall we are less safe now. And by rewarding aggression in the case of Russia and Ukraine, I think, he’s created increased risk of the very worst thing happening, which would be a war in East Asia involving China.
Mahr: How does what’s happening now feel different than what happened during Trump’s first term to both of you?
Polgreen: To me, I think we’re seeing a much more fractured and dangerous world in which there is actually a tremendous amount of territorial adventurism happening, a sense that any actor can go out and try things. I think at the same time we’re also seeing a hugely diminished appetite from the Trump administration for using hard American strength. There was a remarkable report in The Times about the assault on the Houthis that essentially concluded that because they couldn’t achieve anything very quickly, and because it was costing about a billion dollars a month, Trump essentially decided to pull up stakes and say, “You know what, we’re just going to declare victory.”
So it’s a really fascinating mixed message and the message that you’re sending to the world is, “We’re going to bully. But if we can’t get what we want really quickly, then we’re actually just going to try and package whatever we can and salvage it as a ‘win,’ and then move on.”
Kristof: Trump’s first term, squared or maybe cubed — or maybe to the power of a googol. A couple of examples: In his first term, President Trump apparently raised the possibility of withdrawing from NATO, but he didn’t do it and NATO survived. And these days, in effect, NATO Article 5 — the essence of NATO — I think is realistically dead.
If Russia invaded Estonia tomorrow, the U.S. would not join other countries in intervening to protect Estonia. That kind of collective security, which has been the foundation of the international system since 1949, is, in practice, gone.
And likewise, if you think about trade: In his first term President Trump was often aggressive on tariffs and trade. This time he launched a trade war with China that he ended up backing down from because, from my point of view, he was losing; he didn’t understand China’s relative strength. So that’s one reason why I think we’re in a more dangerous situation — that he’s more aggressive. He’s got aides around him who instead of constraining him, empower him. But I should also say that Trump does have this deep aversion to being in wars and that is healthy considering his appetite for being impetuous and reckless.
Lydia mentioned his retreat from Yemen — sort of declaring victory and withdrawing. I at least count my blessings that Trump, for all his recklessness and lack of understanding about other countries, at least he does seem to want to avoid major wars.
Mahr: So let’s talk a little bit about the reaction to this place that we’re in globally. A lot of our listeners would be familiar with the kind of behavior like Netanyahu’s plans for the I.D.F. and Gaza, or Nick, as you’ve written about, the Gazafication of the West Bank, and of course Putin’s war of aggression. Can you each talk about other examples that people may be less familiar with that you are worried about in terms of leadership reacting in this way to the Trump administration?
Polgreen: I think we’re living in a world where leaders are doing whatever they can get away with, and those who criticize them could also find themselves in exactly the kind of situation that alleged gang members in El Salvador have found themselves in. So the standards are shifting in ways that I think are scary.
I can talk to one situation that has been, unfortunately, very much out of the headlines that I think is precisely the kind of thing that you’re talking about and is a place that both Nick and I have spent a fair amount of time, and that’s the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In eastern Congo there is a rebel group that is aligned with, and essentially controlled by, the government of Rwanda. They have essentially occupied a huge swath of Congolese territory. And there is, I think, real fear that what is one of the most protracted and deadliest conflicts in the world — this civil war that is really kind of a regional war in Congo — could lead to an even more catastrophic territorial war in which Rwanda essentially tries to take a huge chunk of this neighboring country.
But again, it’s interesting. In this case, it may be that Paul Kagame, the leader of Rwanda, is just as inspired by Netanyahu as he was by Trump. And I say that because Rwanda claims, and has long claimed, that it needs to have control over areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to protect its security, blaming it on the genocide that happened in Rwanda many years ago.
So it is interesting to see this kind of admixture of these different authoritarians leading aggressive rulers — like, who’s inspiring who? I think that what Trump does is create an environment where the country that I think thought of itself as the guarantor of the kind of the rules-based international order is now led by someone who is playing with exactly the kinds of tactics that the United States has always tried to keep at bay.
The catastrophic effects of huge territorial disputes on the African continent — for example, the humanitarian crises that already creates and could create — could they grow? It’s just mind-boggling.
Kristof: I would just add that I think the single scariest example where President Trump’s policy has empowered a foreign leader’s potential transgressions involves Xi Jinping in China. My biggest nightmare over the next 10 years would be a war in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea that involves the U.S. and China and potentially becomes a nuclear exchange.
And I think that’s unlikely but possible, and I think it is a little bit more likely now than it was a year ago. That’s because if you think about what constrains Xi Jinping, I think one has been that he looked at Russia and Ukraine and he saw that Russia was really hurt and it paid a real economic price. Now it is much less clear that Russia is paying a price for its aggression and indeed, that it may succeed.
Secondly, I think that it was pretty clear globally that the U.S. had a lot of soft power and would bring that to bear on China if it launched a quarantine or something like that around Taiwan. The U.S. just doesn’t care about soft power right now. So I think that makes it a little bit easier for China to behave badly.
And finally, the military equation. President Biden said four times that the U.S. would intervene on Taiwan’s side and I think that was a constraint. President Trump has been much more ambiguous about what would happen. He has been less focused on working with allies like Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Australia to form this alliance that would make China pay a price. So I don’t know what the odds are that there will be something terrible happening there, but I think they’re higher than they were before, and that is really scary.
Mahr: Nick, you had mentioned briefly the U.A.E. in Sudan. That’s a situation that I’d be interested in hearing you talk a little bit more about and how that’s intensified recently.
Kristof: Sure, so it’s generally thought that the world’s worst humanitarian crisis right now is in Sudan. And the civil war and what the U.S. — both under Biden and under Trump — has referred to as genocide in Sudan is being perpetrated in large part because the United Arab Emirates — our pals — are supporting one of the military branches there, which is engaged in particularly brutal attacks.
Countries are normally kind of embarrassed when they are supporting a genocide and indeed, the U.A.E. tried to hide its military transfers to the Rapid Support Forces, this militia. Then when President Trump was elected, I think the U.A.E. thought, “OK, the gloves are off now. It doesn’t really matter what we do, we’re not going to be called out.”
And indeed, the R.S.F., this faction, has elevated its campaign of murder and rape and basically destroyed Zamzam, one of the biggest camps for internally displaced people around the world.
In some ways, the Trump administration has created a permission structure where it is OK for other countries to bully to solve territorial disputes, to move in their interests. You also see this not only when armies behave badly, but I think we created a permission structure to ignore humanitarian concerns. When President Trump dismantled U.S.A.I.D., Britain responded with a 40 percent cut in aid; France followed with cuts as well. So we’re left with a world where the humanitarian needs are particularly great and where the response has been substantially diminished.
Mahr: Well, I’m glad you brought up the U.K. because I wanted to talk a little bit about what’s happening in that government in the context of a kind of opportunistic response to the Trump administration’s actions. Last week, Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer reached what the White House called a historic trade deal, and the announcement was full of theatrics including a televised call.
It really began back in late February when Starmer handed over an invitation from King Charles to Trump.
Audio clip of Keir Starmer: This is a letter from His Majesty the King. It’s an invitation for a second state visit. This is really special.
So I guess the question is: Is this a good way to deal with Trump? Is it politically risky for Starmer to take the approach that he has with the Trump administration?
Polgreen: It may be risky, but it’s also pretty pathetic that we essentially have world leaders treating the president of the United States like a toddler who needs to be placated with a shiny toy. The latest shiny toy, of course, being a $400 million plane that the government of Qatar is apparently donating — whatever that means — to the United States. So I think there’s something really sinister and frankly pathetic about this way of operating in the world.
It also becomes the cover for something potentially very dangerous because it means that the government of the United States, rather than thinking about its broad interests and peace and security in the world, is really catering to the venal and frankly childish desires of one very immature man.
Kristof: I once visited a museum in North Korea that was filled with gifts to the Kim dictators, and it was this incredible monument to the idea of a personality cult. I spent much of my career kind of mocking personality cults; they were funny. And then all of a sudden you see cabinet meetings in the U.S. that sound, frankly, a lot like North Korean cabinet meetings.
Audio clip of Pete Hegseth: Because of your leadership, sir, I believe we’re making the military great again.
Audio clip of Kelly Loeffler: I want to thank you for standing up to the Chinese Communist Party and fighting for our Main Streets, for our workers and for those that make things in America.
Audio clip of Pam Bondi: Your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country. Ever.
Audio clip of Pam Bondi: You were overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority.
Audio clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: I want to thank you for your vision, for your leadership, for giving me the 100 busiest days of my life — and most exciting and most rewarding.
Audio clip of Doug Burgum: Thank you for your leadership and thank you for everything you’re doing.
Audio clip of President Trump: Very good. Thank you. Marco?
But the politics have cut both ways because Mark Carney clearly benefited by standing up to Trump. And Trump seems to have respected that. And so I think it’s really hard for other leaders to figure out just what to do and how to handle Trump. But as with universities in America, I don’t think that simply caving and rolling over has been particularly effective.
Polgreen: It’s interesting because I think you can tell that Trump has not even grudging admiration for Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, for example. She has a pretty mixed record in terms of giving in on some things but talking tough on others. There’s another word for that, which is just diplomacy, where you agree on hard, unpopular things quietly, and then you trumpet the big successes. To me, this is one of the mysteries of Donald Trump because on one level it seems like he’s spending an awful lot of time on things that just don’t seem critical to American interest.
He cares a lot about the Kennedy Center, he cares a lot about the design of the Rose Garden and things that — given that we’re facing a world on fire — just seem so trivial. But then at the same time, I think what we’re witnessing this week with Trump in the Middle East — meeting with the leader of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the new interim president of Syria — there is this kind of off-the-cuff, shoot from the gut, we’re just going do it quality in saying something like, “I think we’re going to lift these sanctions on Syria.” I mean, that’s the kind of thing that is clearly necessary for Syria to have a chance to rebuild, and that a previous, perhaps more cautious and deliberative administration like the one that we just had, I think, would have been much more careful, and it would have taken a much longer time.
So whether or not you agree with the process by which Trump reaches that decision — and I think similarly we’ve seen what this kind of, call it vigorous action, can produce in terms of getting the last living dual U.S.–Israeli citizen hostage held by Hamas released. I think it remains to be seen if the Trump administration will in fact reach an agreement to end the slaughter in Gaza that somehow excludes the Israeli government that is perpetrating that slaughter.
But I think there is something — I guess I would just use the word vigorous — about the way that these events are unfolding. And when you compare them with the actions of the Biden administration, it’s hard not to think, “Wow, were some of these things possible if the administration had taken a tougher stance?”
Mahr: Being an American out in the world can feel different at different moments depending on what’s going on in our country and in other countries. You two are talking to people in different countries all the time. How does it feel to you today? And are there any conversations that have stuck with you in the course of your reporting or your lives that kind of reflect that feeling in this, this moment as an American?
Polgreen: It’s really fascinating, right? If you go as an American journalist to another country, particularly if it’s a developing country, a poorer country, I think there is a mix of fascination, perhaps even longing to someday go to the United States, and also maybe some resentment of American policy and the way that it plays out.
I have to say that for me, a lot of the encounters that I’ve had since Trump was re-elected really reflect a kind of diminishment of America’s role in the world and a diminishment of the perception of the importance of American actions. I’ve spent the better part of the last year writing about global migration. Historically, the United States was the most desirable destination for migrants everywhere. The most ambitious people in the world wanted to come to the United States because that’s where all of the opportunity was seen to be. And it’s just been very striking to see how quickly that has changed and how quickly people are thinking about different futures elsewhere.
And under the Trump administration, it’s not surprising that people would not want to come here, risk being kidnapped by ICE and disappeared to some sort of gulag in El Salvador. To me, there is this sort of prevailing feeling, this either irrelevance or indifference. And I think that really changes the valence of what it is to be an American walking through the world.
Kristof: There was an enormous unpopularity of Americans and it was kind of embarrassing to be an American back in the peak of the Iraq war. But I think one difference is that back then, Europeans or others would think that you might well be a — if they didn’t read my columns, at least — that you might actually be a supporter of the government then.
Now, support for President Trump is so class-based that in general, if somebody is educated, in the professions, in journalism, then there’s much more of an assumption that they’re a fellow sufferer. And it’s obviously not a perfect alignment, but I think it’s more true now than it was in past periods when there were unpopular American governments. So there’s more of a sense of, “We’re all in this mess together,” almost an assumption of that at international gatherings I’ve joined.
Mahr: So when do you think that this moment sort of ends? What will we need to see before this kind of Trump effect really loses its power across the globe and the world stops reacting to what the United States is doing right now?
Polgreen: The global system has been in trouble for a very long time. The United Nations Security Council has been an impediment to achieving any sort of lasting desirable global outcomes for a very long time now.
There has been a need to open up the global system to more countries having greater say in how these big international institutions are run. And the need for the U.S. to allow — and hopefully manage at least softly in its favor — that process, I think, has been with us for a long time. And there have been a variety of efforts, from the G20 to reforms of the World Bank and the I.M.F. and other things that would create a more inclusive global system, that would make the world less dependent on a handful of big jockeying powers. And multiple presidents are responsible for not investing in that effort. I sure as hell know that Donald Trump is not going to invest in it.
So the moment where there could have been a more natural, peaceful, elegant sharing of power in a way that would’ve preserved and protected American interests while reducing the burden on the United States to act as the world’s policeman, the guarantor of safety and all that kind of thing — that moment has passed. And I don’t think that moment will come again, because you’ll never have an America that sits atop the global order in quite the way that it did. So the question that I’m asking myself and to the kinds of people that I talk to is: What global order is likely to emerge in a post-Trump era given that we’ve missed that opportunity?
It’s too soon to say. I’m going be watching, not what China and what Russia do, but I’m going to be watching what Brazil does, what India does. How does Turkey operate in this new world? How strong is the E.U. as it responds? I think that this multipolarity offers opportunities, but it’s going to take a while for the United States to find a way to live easily within what that new world looks like.
Kristof: The question that I’ve talked to a lot of Europeans and others about is: Can we recover what we had before? Can we rebuild this? And I think the consensus is that we’re never going to be able to fully get back what we had, that it’s going to be decades before Canada trusts us again the way it once did. NATO will be hard to recover.
But, you know, I must say, I remember during the Iraq war how much hostility there was to the U.S., how it just seemed to be so difficult. And then President Obama did actually manage to restore a lot of that.
So I think the system has taken a real hit. I think it’ll take a long time to recover. We’re not going to recover fully, but I don’t think that it’s all over yet either.
Mahr: Lydia and Nick, this has been a totally fascinating conversation. I’m really grateful to you both for being here and taking the time to talk through all of this with us. Thank you very much for joining.
Kristof: Great to be with you.
Polgreen: Thanks so much, Krista.
Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001 and has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His new memoir is “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life.” @NickKristof
Lydia Polgreen is an Opinion columnist.
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