ROGER PARTRIDGE: America First – or America Last? Trump’s Foreign Policy and the Paradox of American Power

Can a superpower bully its way to greatness? This essay – the second of two assessments of Trump’s second term published in Australia’s Quadrant magazine – examines whether America First is delivering American strength or quietly consuming it. The first essay examined how Trump has treated constitutional constraints at home. This one turns to the consequences abroad – where the stakes may be higher still.

Trump promised the Iranian people their hour of freedom had arrived. Ten days later, the dead Supreme Leader’s son sits in his father’s chair, the Revolutionary Guard is still fighting, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil spiked above $100 a barrel and seven Americans are dead. This is what liberation looks like when there is no plan for what follows the bombs. I have long favoured taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities. But not like this.

Consider what happened through the eyes of the movement that elected the President. The America First coalition was forged in revulsion at foreign entanglements. Trump himself called the Iraq War “a big, fat mistake.” He campaigned against regime change, against nation-building, against the arrogance of a Washington establishment that believed American military power could remake the Middle East. In 2011, Trump accused President Obama of planning to start a war with Iran because he had “absolutely no ability to negotiate” and saw conflict as his only path to re-election. Two years later, he warned that attacking Syria without congressional approval would be “a big mistake.” Yet he has now launched a regime-change war against a country of 93 million people, with nuclear material, in the most volatile region on earth, announcing he would be involved in selecting Iran’s next Supreme Leader.

In a month when the administration faced political turbulence at home – from the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling to disappointing jobs numbers – the eruption of war inevitably dominated the news cycle. Whether the timing was coincidence or calculation is beside the point. The strategic consequences are what matter.

But this essay is not about Iran, though I will return to it. It is about the foreign policy of a President who has spent a year treating constraints – domestic and international – as obstacles rather than assets. Last month, I examined how that instinct has eroded constitutional constraints at home. This month, I turn to Trump’s exercise of power abroad, where the consequences may prove even more dangerous. In March 2025, I warned in Quadrant that Trump was liquidating the assets that made American geopolitical power effective. This essay examines whether the President’s record vindicates that concern or counters it.

Power, properly understood

The America First narrative is built on a presumption about power – that it flows from dominance, from the willingness to act without apology or restraint. Intimidation is power. Unilateral action is strength. Constraints are weakness. It is an intuitive view. It is also incomplete. Real power is the ability to shape outcomes without having to threaten or coerce every time.

Since 1945, American power rested on something historically unusual: a dominant state that deliberately bound itself with rules, institutions and alliances – not out of weakness, but because self-restraint made its dominance more effective. This was not charity. It was leverage. Dwight Eisenhower called it enlightened self-interest. Arguing for American leadership of NATO in 1951, he made the case not on idealistic grounds but on hard strategic ones: American security depended on European stability, and European stability depended on American commitment. The costs of engagement were real. The costs of withdrawal would be greater. When Washington spoke, it spoke with the weight of a coalition. Adversaries faced not one nation, but a system. Every dollar spent on NATO bought more security than the same dollar spent on unilateral defence.

But the alliance system worked for a deeper reason than efficiency. Countries accepted American leadership not just out of fear but because America stood for something larger – a world where law trumped force, where prosperity came through cooperation, not conquest. America’s moral authority as champion of constitutional democracy gave it diplomatic influence far beyond its military reach.

Trump treats this inheritance as a burden. Alliances become protection rackets. Gratitude is demanded. Loyalty is transactional. Threats are deployed casually – against adversaries, but increasingly against allies as well. That might work for a poker player. It is disastrous for the guarantor of global security.

The destruction of alliance credibility

Trump’s second term opened not with diplomacy but with tariffs. Within days of his inauguration, he imposed sweeping levies on Canada and Mexico – the United States’ closest trading partners and treaty allies – and threatened the same treatment for the European Union. The message to every allied capital was unambiguous: no relationship was exempt, no history of cooperation a shield. Alliance destruction through the customs house had begun.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office. A year later, the war grinds on – and Putin has lost none of his leverage.

In February 2025, barely a month into his second term, Trump publicly berated President Zelensky in the Oval Office – demanding gratitude while a war of aggression raged. Six months later, having sought advice from Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, he met Putin in Anchorage. Putin dismissed his ceasefire proposal without ceremony. Trump returned empty-handed – then praised Putin’s “goodwill” without identifying a single Russian concession. By simply showing up, Trump gave Putin what months of pressure had denied him: the end of diplomatic isolation.

In January this year, Trump threatened Denmark – a founding NATO ally – with tariffs and refused to rule out military force to seize Greenland. Denmark’s defence committee chair responded: “You are the threat. Not them.” When Norway’s prime minister urged de-escalation, Trump’s reply was revealing: he no longer felt “an obligation to think purely of Peace” because Norway had failed to give him the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian government does not award the Nobel Prize. But the exchange laid bare the truth: American foreign policy is now hostage to one man’s grievances.

At Davos, Trump launched a “Board of Peace” – naming himself chairman for life, with veto power over all decisions and a billion-dollar entry fee. The membership list told its own story. Those who signed: Hungary, Belarus, Turkey, Saudi Arabia. Those who refused: France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway and New Zealand. Australia, to its credit or its embarrassment, is still reviewing the invitation. When Macron declined, Trump threatened 200 per cent tariffs on French wine. Putin offered to pay Russia’s fee from assets frozen by the West. Trump did not comment on the offer. For the first time since 1945, the United States was not proposing to lead a rules-based institution but to replace one with personal rule.

Trump’s defenders reply that he has ended decades of European free-riding, and they have a point. At The Hague summit, NATO allies agreed to reach 5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035. NATO’s Secretary General acknowledged at Davos that without Trump, “this would never have happened.” But Reagan’s alliances multiplied American power because allies trusted American leadership. Trump’s coercion produces spending designed to replace it. European governments now speak openly of “strategic autonomy.” In Asia, once-taboo debates about indigenous nuclear weapons have resurfaced in South Korea.

The unravelling of American credibility does not require a dramatic rupture. It requires only that commitments appear revocable. A superpower that must coerce its allies is already paying a premium for its leadership.

Iran: the reckoning

The world may be better off without Khamenei. He presided over a theocratic tyranny that sponsored proxy wars across the region, crushed domestic dissent with extraordinary violence, and drove Iran toward nuclear weapons. The protests that swept more than a hundred Iranian cities in January and February, and the regime’s savage response, demonstrated that this was a government ruling by terror, not consent. The strategic logic was not absurd: intelligence agencies identified a rare window – multiple senior leadership meetings occurring simultaneously – and Iran’s proxy network had already been degraded. If there was ever a moment to strike, this was it.

Nobody watching the operation can doubt American military dominance. The strikes were a display of intelligence, precision and reach that no other power on earth could replicate.

The early results seemed to confirm the neo-conservative instinct: swift decapitation, stunned adversaries, a people told their hour had come. For a moment, the liberation narrative held. It did not hold long. The IRGC has proved more resilient than Venezuela’s broken military. Rather than laying down its arms, it has launched a sustained counteroffensive against Gulf energy infrastructure and American positions across the region. Mojtaba Khamenei was elevated as Supreme Leader within days – the son of the man whose killing was supposed to end the theocracy, elevated precisely because his father’s family had been killed. The polls captured the deflation in real time: 59 per cent of Americans opposed the military action within the first week, and Trump’s approval on Iran – at 36 per cent – was worse than his numbers after the Soleimani strike in 2020. The sugar rush of the opening strikes had met the long hangover of an adversary that had not read the script.

In an earlier essay in this series, I explored the question of when force is legitimate. Iran is its first live test – and a harder one than Venezuela. The regime’s savage crackdown on protesters, with a death toll estimated in the thousands, pushed Iran closer to the threshold of just cause than Venezuela ever did. But Trump did not primarily make a humanitarian case. He made three cases simultaneously – self-defence, nuclear non-proliferation and regime change – shifting between them depending on the audience and the news cycle. He acted without congressional authorisation, without consulting allies and while diplomatic negotiations mediated by Oman were still underway. The shifting justifications and unilateral method undermine whatever legitimate case existed.

But the more critical issue for Americans is what follows. H.R. McMaster, who served as National Security Advisor in Trump’s first term, sees the range of outcomes running from a weakened theocracy that survives to outright civil war. Nearly two weeks into the conflict, with seven Americans dead and Gulf energy infrastructure ablaze, Trump described the operation to a House Republican conference as “a short-term excursion” and told CBS News it was “very complete, pretty much.” American and Israeli officials are more measured but not pessimistic: Central Command reports missile and drone volumes down by more than 80 per cent, and both governments speak of weeks, not months, to complete the operation. But the critical question is not whether the strike delivered tactical gains – it did – but whether those gains are durable enough to justify the costs now compounding against them.

Three historical analogies compete for what happens next. Trump’s supporters reach for Desert Storm – swift, decisive, over. The more honest comparison may be Suez: in 1956, Britain and France achieved every military objective and lost everything else, forced into humiliating retreat by consequences they had not anticipated. Trump may risk the same: a dominant power not knowing its limits, or choosing to ignore them, and discovering too late that winning the battle is not the same as controlling what follows.

But there is a third possibility, darker than Suez. Iran’s strategy is not to defeat the United States militarily – it cannot. It is to widen the conflict horizontally: hitting Gulf energy infrastructure, pressuring allied governments, driving oil prices into triple figures, multiplying the arenas of cost until Washington is forced to negotiate on Tehran’s terms. Every declared victory that proves premature, every “very complete, pretty much” that is followed by another Iranian strike, tightens the trap. Trump wants a hit-and-run. Iran is designing a Vietnam.

The economic cost of the Iran operation is mounting by the hour. Tankers have diverted from the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply ordinarily flows. Brent crude has broken $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022, up roughly 50 per cent since the strikes began. Gasoline is approaching $4 a gallon domestically. Structural damage to Gulf oil fields means the supply shock will outlast the shooting even if the Strait reopens tomorrow. Economists are warning of a fresh bout of 1970s-style stagflation – and the Federal Reserve, with core inflation already above its target for five consecutive years, has limited room to respond. Trump’s reply to questions about the oil spike was that it was “a very small price to pay.”

According to Ukrainian officials, in three days, the United States expended more Patriot missiles than Ukraine has received in total since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 – a fact not lost on Moscow, Beijing, Seoul or Taipei. The rapid consumption of these weapons is a reminder that American military dominance is formidable but not bottomless; industrial capacity to replenish stockpiles lags badly behind the rate at which modern warfare depletes them.

The strikes were sold as a blow against Iranian tyranny. Their most immediate strategic beneficiary may prove to be Vladimir Putin – and not merely because of weapons depletion. Russia is the world’s second-largest oil exporter, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent its revenues soaring. Within ten days of the bombs falling on Tehran, the Trump administration was weighing whether to ease sanctions on Russian oil – the principal economic lever the West has held against Putin’s war machine since 2022. Whether the full relaxation proceeds remains uncertain, but the fact that it is being contemplated – that the logic of the situation has pushed Washington toward rewarding the Kremlin as a consequence of striking Tehran – tells us something important about how interconnected these threads are. That is leverage transferred – away from America.

Having the strength to destroy is not the same as having the wisdom to build – or the patience to finish – what follows. Oil markets do not stabilise even if American troops leave; they stabilise when there is a functioning government capable of guaranteeing passage through the Strait.

The danger is not one thing. It is two: that America walks away and the world learns what that means – or that America finds it cannot.

Counting the cost

Iran is the most dramatic entry on the ledger. But the costs of Trump’s foreign policy began accumulating long before the bombs fell on Tehran.

Threats, humiliation and war are Trump’s diplomatic weapons. Tariffs are his economic complement – and one with a domestic price his supporters prefer not to count. He insists they are paid by foreigners, revive domestic industry and deliver growth without inflation. Growth has continued. His defenders take victory laps. But macro aggregates obscure incidence. The Kiel Institute analysed 25 million shipments and found Americans pay 96 per cent of tariff costs. The Yale Budget Lab puts the median household cost at $1,400 annually – a regressive tax that hits those who can least afford it hardest. Celebrating equity indices while dismissing cost-of-living pressures is not America First. It is selective accounting.

When the Supreme Court struck down his IEEPA tariffs in February, Trump signed replacements under different statutory authority within hours and resisted refunding the estimated $133 to $175 billion already collected. The tariffs, in one form or another, remain – and so do the costs.

The dollar’s reserve status is often treated as immutable. It is not. With public debt exceeding $36 trillion, a persistent increase of just 25 basis points in borrowing costs adds roughly $90 billion annually to debt-service payments. Stanford researchers found that European investors, who during the 2008 financial crisis willingly accepted lower returns for the safety of holding American debt, now demand higher returns to hold it – a reversal the scholars described as unprecedented. The willingness of the world to subsidise American borrowing is fading. A foreign policy sold as restoring sovereignty risks making Americans more dependent on the patience of bond markets.

The relationship between America First and Chinese power is less straightforward than it appears. Venezuela and Iran have imposed real costs on Beijing – disrupting a client network it spent years building and closing the strait through which much of its oil flows. The deeper consequence, however, runs the other way. China does not need American allies to defect. It merely needs American alliances to fray. When partners hedge, China gains bargaining power in multilateral forums. When coordination weakens, Chinese preferences face less resistance. When the United States withdraws from institutions or treats them with contempt, Beijing fills the vacuum – in trade forums, in technology standards, in the rules that will govern the digital economy for decades. Trump has handed Xi Jinping a gift he could never have won on merit: the fracturing of the West.

The double demonstration

Trump’s strikes on Iran and Venezuela have sent a signal to BRICS countries and China’s other clients: their patrons cannot protect them. But democratic allies have drawn the same lesson in reverse: the American guarantee is only as good as one man’s mood.

Edmund Burke, the father of conservatism, warned against tearing down institutions in fits of passion. He knew that what takes centuries to build can be destroyed in months – and that the destroyers always believe they are saving what they ruin. America’s alliance system was not collapsing under its own weight; it was delivering unmatched influence.

America may have looked stronger in the immediate aftermath of the strikes on Iran. Now, the evidence is not so clear – and the costs of being wrong are irreversible.

At home, an unconstrained president trains institutions to stop trying. Abroad, he trains allies and adversaries alike to doubt American promises. The two essays in this series describe the same instinct operating in two domains – and the damage compounds in both.

Great powers do not fall to foreign conquest. They fall when leaders mistake bullying for strategy. The house is the civilisation. Trump is not renovating it. He is removing the load-bearing walls.

The choice facing Americans is not between strength and restraint. It is between power that compounds and power that decays – between an America that leads and an America that pays ever more for ever less.

America First – or America Last?

This essay was originally published in Quadrant on 12 March 2026. Roger Partridge writes at Plain Thinking

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