Iran Strikes Israel. Direct Hits Against Military Targets. Netanyahu, Biden Vow Retaliation

## A politics of spectacle and system: the new logic of American foreign policy What emerges from this exchange is a portrait of American foreign policy not as a coherent doctrine but as a contested performance: part improvisation by a dominant personality, part institutional choreography by a sprawling bureaucracy. The conversation frames contemporary U.S. external action as a mixture of showmanship—audacious statements, viral pronouncements, theatrical gestures—and deeper, sometimes contradictory currents of statecraft. That duality matters because it shapes how allies, rivals and nonaligned states interpret Washington’s intentions. Is the United States signaling a real shift of power and principle, or simply recalibrating old hierarchies in a new rhetorical key? The discussion makes the case that the answer is both unsettling and consequential: rhetoric has been weaponized into strategy, but the steady machinery of power continues to push in multiple directions, producing policy incoherence with geopolitical effects. ## Personality, spectacle and the hollowing of words A central theme in the conversation is the way presidential rhetoric has been decoupled from predictable policy outcomes. The talk argues that when public declarations lose credibility—as when extravagant claims about military feats are later followed by seeming concessions—the result is not just domestic confusion but a strategic blank check for opponents. In this logic, the leader’s capacity to dominate media cycles matters as much as institutional authority. The conversation points out that words are being used instrumentally: ambiguity and performative hyperbole preserve optionality for policymakers, while also allowing the leader to frame events for a domestic audience regardless of follow-through. This theatrical mode of diplomacy does important work. It can intimidate, force concessions, and reset debates in capitals around the world. But it also erodes trust. When declaratory power becomes unreliable, other states learn to discount American statements and instead read actions, alliances and institutional behavior. The result is paradoxical: spectacle increases short-term salience but reduces long-term credibility. For actors outside the immediate Western orbit, the predictable lesson is to prepare for volatility rather than to accept the worst-case rhetoric at face value. ## The transatlantic balance: rupture or managed asymmetry? A recurring line in the discussion interrogates the state of transatlantic relations. The exchange posits that the familiar narrative of a neat transatlantic alliance—an equal club of like-minded democracies—has been exposed as a fiction. What remains, the conversation suggests, is an operationalized asymmetry: U.S. power continues to underwrite European security and to shape NATO’s agenda, but the norms that sustained a shared sense of mission have weakened. This is presented as a twofold development. On one hand, blunt presidential rhetoric and transactional diplomacy have strained European perceptions of the United States as a reliable partner. On the other, European governments have adapted by recalibrating deference: rather than cultivate equality, many have chosen accommodation to secure ongoing security guarantees and economic ties. That accommodation is not evidence of durable alignment as much as a pragmatic division of labor—Europeans accepting a subordinate role to maintain the benefits of U.S. protection. The conversation frames this as a managed relationship of inequality, not an outright breakdown. Yet it warns that such an arrangement is brittle: it relies on institutional inertia and short-term political calculations rather than shared strategic purpose. ## Middle East dynamics and the Israel dimension The conversation places the Middle East—and in particular the relationship with Israel—at the intersection of personal politics and geopolitical calculus. The argument advanced is that some foreign-policy decisions that appear at odds with broader stated aims (for example, a declared U.S. desire to reduce entanglement in the region alongside repeated confrontations with Iran) are shaped by personal networks, donor relationships and political dependencies, as much as by formal strategy documents. This produces paradoxical behavior: simultaneous talk of withdrawal and repeated steps toward confrontation, tailored to serve domestic political imperatives or to satisfy influential constituencies. What follows, according to the discussion, is a regional environment where signaling matters more than consistency. Military deployments, threats of punitive measures, and high-profile endorsements of allies are used as bargaining chips. This raises particular risks for states seeking neutrality or nonalignment: actions that look transactional to observers can nonetheless produce cascading security dilemmas, inviting retaliation or counter-coalitions. For nonaligned actors, the lesson is to treat declaratory politics cautiously and to build resilience against episodic escalations that may be driven more by domestic politics than by durable strategy. ## Great-power responses: patience, systematization, and the long game When it comes to how Russia and China respond to U.S. unpredictability, the conversation emphasizes strategic patience and systemic consistency. The argument is that both powers have learned to discount volatile rhetoric and to rely on institutional continuity—defense doctrines, economic planning cycles and long-term diplomatic strategies—that outlast individual leaders. Where American tweets or theatrical threats create short-term noise, Beijing and Moscow prefer to respond through calibrated measures that preserve leverage and wait out political cycles. The discussion highlights examples of this approach: in trade disputes, for instance, China is depicted as prepared to endure economic pain if it preserves perceived long-term interests; in security matters, Russia is portrayed as exploiting U.S. inconsistency to consolidate gains and force negotiated outcomes on favorable terms. That patient posture is a reminder that states with robust strategic cultures can absorb shocks that would destabilize less cohesive systems. For nonaligned countries, that steadier approach by major powers presents both opportunities and dangers: it can enable pragmatic hedging, but it can also entrench spheres of influence that complicate neutral choices. ## The bureaucracy, the “blob,” and the fragmentation of authority A persistent thread in the exchange criticizes the myth of a monolithic foreign-policy apparatus. What the conversation puts forward is a picture of a fragmented governance landscape: elected leadership, permanent bureaucracies, private advisors and informal networks all vie to set direction. That fragmentation explains policy contradictions. Strategic doctrines and official documents may articulate one set of objectives, while informal channels and partisan constituencies pursue another. This fragmentation creates two vulnerabilities. Internally, it makes coherent long-term planning difficult: policy oscillates with political tides and personal feints. Externally, it complicates signaling: foreign states cannot easily discern whether an official document, a public statement, or a back-channel whisper represents the durable intent of the United States. The discussion treats this ambiguity as a tactical asset in the short term—allowing policymakers to maintain options—but a strategic liability in the long term: it undermines treaty credibility and complicates alliance management. ## Implications for neutrality and nonalignment For states that seek to remain neutral or nonaligned, the implications are stark. The conversation makes the case that the current configuration of U.S. behavior increases the premium on independent strategic calculation. Neutral states must become better at reading signals beyond headline rhetor

Live Stream with Peter Lavelle and Friends Join our live stream! #John Laughland Hello, everyone. John Loughlin here. I'm the director of Forum for Democracy International. Welcome to this week's forum—an unusually early morning forum, or I should say late afternoon for our guests in Japan. I'm joined by my co-host Peter Lavelle in Moscow, Jeremy Nell in Cape Town, and by our two guests, Pascal Lottaz in Japan and Mark Sloboda, also in Moscow. Pascal, you wrote a very interesting piece the other day, a week or so ago, about the Board of Peace—Trump's extraordinary ad hoc structure that he cobbled together at Davos, just as everyone was reeling from his various threats over Greenland. Before we get into the Board of Peace, and because we've decided to entitle this show *Trump's Foreign Policy*, perhaps I could start with a very basic question. Does he have a foreign policy? Does Trump have a foreign policy? If you ask, I don't know—what is the foreign policy of Britain? It's relatively easy to answer that question: it's to remain aligned with America. If you ask what's the foreign policy of France, it's to strengthen the European Union and shape it in France's image, and so on and so on. But does Trump have one, or is it just endless deployments of the shock doctrine, as I like to call it? In other words, making completely outrageous statements and threats, upping the ante—often with military power as well—screaming and shouting, overturning every possible apple cart, leaving everyone dazed, and then moving in to scoop up the ruins. What's your view, Pascal? #Pascal I mean, what you just described, I think, is his tactic—his way of implementing what I do think is a policy, or at least in his mind, a strategy that’s forming around spheres of influence, period. I think this man believes the Western Hemisphere is ours, and we negotiate the rest in whatever way is most beneficial. And if we break something in the process, well, so be it. So he’s projecting—he projected a lot of power by, you know, basically abducting the president of Venezuela, right? Kidnapping. I mean, going in and kidnapping a president is, on the one hand, completely unproductive if you actually want to change things on the ground. On the other hand, it's an extreme muscle flex. I mean, the message—especially in Latin America— is, I think, well understood. You can see from how angry people are that it is understood. And I do believe that this bullying tactic—it's a bullying tactic, right?—that's how he works. But when we talk -- 1 of 18 -- about strategy, he’s made it clear several times that the Western Hemisphere is ours. Monroe Doctrine 2.0. This is our yard, our garden. We’ll chase everybody else out, and we’ll bully you out as much as we can. And in other places, we’ll project as much strength as we can, even though with Iran he’s showing right now how limited that ability has become. And with Ukraine as well—at the same time, as any bully does—he will never, ever give anything away unless you take it back, right? So even with Ukraine, the whole idea is not “let’s have peace tomorrow.” The idea is “let’s make it as costly as possible for Russia.” Not because he has a claim on that hemisphere, but because, why not make it difficult if they don’t want to play, right? He constantly thinks in terms of how to create maximum leverage, or how to use the leverage he has over everybody else. #John Laughland So I would say—do you buy the line that there’s a breakdown in the transatlantic relationship? Or do you think, as some do, that this is all a game of smoke and mirrors designed to get Europe to pay more for what are essentially American policies? #Pascal I think it's both. I mean, on the one hand, you do have a change in the way the transatlantic alliance works, right? You’ve got a clear change in tone. On the other hand, it leads to what Brian Berletic and others are calling a division of labor in order to implement the strategy. But it’s not done anymore under the humanitarian guise of “all for one, one for all.” It’s more like, no, we’re the boss, we’re telling you what to do—and dog, run. You know you’re the dog. #John Laughland Yeah, sure, but it can’t be both, Pascal. It can’t be both a division of labor and a relationship of dog and master on the one hand. It can’t be that and a breakdown in the transatlantic alliance at the same time. Around the time of Davos, shortly before he withdrew his threat of invasion, people were saying NATO is dead. #Pascal Yeah, and NATO—I mean, NATO has been brain-dead for quite a while. But the transatlantic alliance, the way the Europeans thought it worked, and the way they thought NATO was meant to work—I think that is dead. NATO as an instrument of power for the United States to direct its satellites is very much still there, very similar to how the Warsaw Pact was a good tool for the Soviet Union to manage its alliances or its surroundings. The United States, for the longest time, pretended this was a club of equals, which by now is utterly clear it’s not. If the boss says he actually wants a piece of the cake from one of the others, then, well, the other is going to at least sweat blood, right? -- 2 of 18 -- So the old idea the Europeans had of what NATO was—that one is dead. But NATO as a tool of power, I think, is very much still around. #John Laughland Mark, what’s your view? I mean, when the Trump administration took over, Marco Rubio gave an interview recently saying that it was now a multilateral, multipolar world, and America was ready to talk to the other big powers as equals and all the rest of it. We don’t really hear much of that anymore, do we, Mark? #Mark Sleboda No, not at all. I don't think Trump, as an individual, has a strategy—has a grand strategic vision. He has some vague formulations of a great-power foreign policy, like something that might have been conducted by William McKinley back in the 19th century, which seems to be about the only book he's ever read in his life. And he's got his own personal, shall we say, negotiation style, which is that of a mafia don—with lots of threats: what's yours is mine. He’s kind of reformulated American foreign policy on an individual, tactical level as a protection racket—a global protection racket. Now, he does have people with strategic vision behind him, right? Elbridge Colby, as the deputy war minister—or I guess now, the secretary of war for policy. He’s the one who crafted Trump’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, and, you know, is trying to implement these things as policy. But both of those documents clearly show that the U.S. desires to withdraw from the Middle East, leaving essentially everything to Iran and some vaguely defined Arab states they think are aligned with the Abraham Accords to handle things. But this entire giant buildup—uh, regime-change buildup—that the Trump administration has put in the Persian Gulf shows how, you know, you can write out a foreign policy for Trump, a strategic vision, but it doesn’t mean he’s going to follow it. And as for the Europeans, I respectfully have to disagree with you, John. I think, absolutely, on a personal level, there is a major, serious rift between the ruling European political elite and Donald Trump. That doesn't necessarily mean there's a giant transatlantic rift between the United States and Europe, because Trump is a blip. He’s going to be gone in three years, and unless J.D. Vance continues him and many of the same policies, we’ll be back to a neocon Marco Rubio or a Democrat who will return to the expected form and rhetoric of U.S.-led Western global hegemony—which is what the Europeans really want. So, they’ve adapted a policy of dealing with him and preventing that rift through absolute sycophancy. Right. Like rolling over, showing your belly, and crying “daddy.” And, you know, they've been remarkably good at that, despite all the provocations Trump has thrown out, including a threat to annex Greenland. And still, they're toeing the party line on that. Yes, European dignity as a civilization is literally being dragged through the gutter and defecated on. But they're really okay -- 3 of 18 -- with that as long as it keeps NATO in existence. And as it does, there’s no threat to NATO as an organization until there’s deep regime change in either the United States or Europe. That’s not going to go away. Trump, his administration—they’re surface level only. #Peter Lavelle Well, I mean, to both our guests—are we over-intellectualizing this? He's interested in wins. I mean, I don't think he would even comprehend our conversation. I think the Greenland story isn't over yet; I think that's still to play out. Why? For strategic reasons? No. For minerals? No. Oh—legacy, legacy. This is what drives him. Pascal, I remember one of the first times we talked, I asked you about neutrality studies, and I said, “Pascal, does psychology play a role in it?” And you said no. And I said, well, maybe it should. Because I think there’s an element of—look, I agree with almost everything that’s been said here, really high-level stuff. But this is not how Trump thinks. And I think that, you know, we have this—I call it the dilemma of common sense. We’re using common sense. He doesn’t. #John Laughland Yeah, OK. But what about Israel, Peter? Because, well, yeah—there’s always that. We can’t beat around the bush. Is he just an opportunist on Israel? #Peter Lavelle Pascal, go ahead. You take a chance on that one, Pascal. #Pascal Let me just say one thing. You know, we’re seeing something very interesting right now, also from a political science perspective. It’s about how difficult it is to separate the person from the system that’ s running. #Mark Sleboda So. #Pascal On the one hand, we have Donald Trump, but you can clearly see how he has his own problems running that ship, right? And how he’s not really running it. One of the reasons he uses his own Truth Social network—which he built from scratch, or had built from scratch—is so he can post to three million people what he wants the case to be, or how he wants to portray things. Then X and others pick it up, and suddenly it’s an issue—an informal way for him to make policy -- 4 of 18 -- pronouncements about the United States. But you can clearly see how others are not on board with that. The disagreements, even with Lindsey Graham, and how silent some of the people around him are—like Tulsi Gabbard and so on—show how this whole thing might not be moving the way he imagines it. And how difficult it is for us to understand… I mean, how the hell are the shots getting called? Who wrote that goddamn strategy paper? And now they’ve come out with a new strategy paper from the Pentagon. It’s like their strategy paper of strategy papers, and so on. And again, does the United States even have a foreign policy? You have different branches that do different things, and Donald Trump is one of them—not an unimportant one—but he’s built into an entire system. Even the Venezuela affair—I mean, at some point he must have had different plans in front of him, right? And we can’t even be sure that he’s the one who picked it. So who calls the shots? It’s really, really unclear to me. Mark, what do you think? Fair enough, so… #Mark Sleboda I think Pascal hit on it there, right? He’s trying to run his own foreign policy while the U.S.—I mean, if you want to call it “the blob,” as Ben Rhodes did, the deep state, the permanent bureaucracy— they’re trying to manage him. And, you know, we heard that from figures within his own previous administration, talking openly about how their entire game was to manipulate him, and how successful and relatively easy that was. Now, it’s not always easy. And when he’s trying to conduct his own foreign policy—by his, you know, all-caps tweets or “truths” on social media, as Pascal Lottaz pointed out—there’s probably a scramble every time he does that to manage it, to limit th