Hendrix's Eccentric Commentary

4/1/26

I posted the following as a reply to someone’s comment and I am impressed enough by my own brilliance that I am posting it here as well for anyone to read and argue with me about it.

Speaking slightly more seriously for a moment, I don’t think there is any sort of justification or grand strategy behind Trump’s actions. Based on everything I have read and heard there is no policy making process, no formulating of plans, no coordination of action. There is not even a consistent ideology — at best there are certain ideas that Trump feels more than thinks: tariffs are good, control fossil fuels, allies only take advantage of you, display strength, but there is no coherent world view. Beyond this, it is whatever idea Fox News or the last person who talks to him takes root and sometimes triggers Trump to action. I have described this as foreign policy by ad-hoccery, and every source agrees that there is no one around him to even suggest that it might be a bad idea, let alone say that he can’t legally do that.

There is, I think, a sort of coherent world view behind it, however, which is that America stays home and runs its neighborhood — the Western Hemisphere, the “Donroe Doctrine,” if you will. The rest of the world is on its own, which mean that Trump is quite fine with the other “Great Powers,” China and Russia, dominating their neck of the woods — this is a sort of nineteenth-century “spheres of influence” type of thinking.

In practical term, this means that Ukraine and Taiwan are on their own. Ukraine has the misfortune to be in Russia’s sphere, and Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and so on are in China’s. NATO can no longer rely on the US, and they are starting to realize this. I have said that if Ukraine, Taiwan, Poland, Japan, South Korea,and maybe the Baltic states haven’t already started their secret nuclear warhead programs they need to get cracking on them, right now. Sadly this is not just black humor but a realistic suggestion.

if you gather from all this that I think that Trump’s thinking and actions are catastrophically bad both for the United States and the world, you are quite correct.