Neocons In Defeat Denial, Trump Schizophrenia Getting Worse | Daniel Davis

President Trump’s approach to diplomacy is exposing strategic incoherence at the heart of American foreign policy. The conversation in Istanbul laid bare a central paradox: dramatic public gestures of statesmanship sit beside short attention spans, conflicting pronouncements, and the sidelining of institutional constraints. The result is not merely unpredictability for its own sake, but a structural erosion of trust—between capitals, between allies, and between the instruments of statecraft and the person who commands them. That erosion increases the chance of miscalculation in crises that already look dangerously combustible. ## Trump’s erratic diplomacy and credibility The exchange painted a vivid picture of what happens when rhetoric and policy diverge daily. One day a leader declares an adversary’s nuclear ambitions “destroyed,” the next day vows to prevent any future weaponization “by any means necessary.” Such contradictions are not harmless. They make it impossible for partners and adversaries alike to form stable expectations about U.S. behavior. When the United States alternates between warm reception and blunt admonishment—airport greetings at one moment, tariff threats the next—foreign capitals learn not to negotiate with policy, but to negotiate with mood swings. This is more than theatrical inconsistency. It degrades the credibility of any tentative bargain, whether a memorandum of understanding over the Middle East or an informal crisis de-escalation. Diplomacy depends on the ability of leaders and bureaucracies to translate words into verifiable actions. When that translation breaks down, agreements become fragile artifacts that can be discarded at will. The wider implication, discussed in the conversation, is a world where bilateral diplomacy with the United States now frequently requires hedging: give a little to preserve relations, but assume plans must be revisited within weeks or even days. ## The MOU, trust, and broken agreements The Iran memorandum of understanding discussed in Istanbul illustrates how fragile such instruments have become. On paper, the MOU represented a pathway to manage a serious regional flashpoint. In practice, it became a momentary cosmetic that dissolved within days—a demonstration that a signed accord no longer guarantees follow-through. The conversation highlighted two linked problems: first, the transactional calculation that makes agreements useful only insofar as they provide immediate tactical gains (for instance, temporary relief in oil markets); second, the belief among some decision-makers that an MOU is nothing more than a symbolic pause, easily revoked when politics or circumstances shift. This pattern breeds cynicism abroad. If the United States can reverse course the moment domestic calculations change, then foreign partners have rational incentives to seek alternative hedges—deeper ties with rival powers, more robust unilateral capabilities, or clandestine paths to deterrence. The cumulative effect is predictable: more arms racing, more proxy competitions, and less incentive to enter into meaningful, long-term compromise. The Istanbul exchange warned that this is not a hypothetical danger but an active dynamic shaping negotiations with Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing. ## Loyalty, purges, and the “yes‑men” problem A striking theme in the conversation was how personnel choices translate into policy pathology. The recent pattern of selecting officials primarily for personal loyalty rather than independent judgment reshapes the machinery of decision-making. Loyalty-based staffing produces a culture resistant to inconvenient truths. Where a robust national-security apparatus once prided itself on challenging presidential assumptions, the conference discussion suggested a new norm: affirmation over scrutiny. The consequences ripple through the military and diplomatic corps. Purges and removals of dissenting commanders—or those unwilling to carry out legally dubious orders—send a brutal signal: comply without question or leave. That dynamic discourages principled dissent and elevates advisors who mirror the leader’s impulses rather than temper them. As Daniel Davis observed, the result is a hollowed-out advisory ecosystem where access is valorized over competence, and where institutional memory and strategic patience give way to the short-term politics of image and loyalty. This personnel problem also interacts with international risk. Military planners who anticipate being overridden by political leadership without pushback cannot credibly plan for high-stakes contingencies. Diplomats who fear punishment for delivering bad news will opt for agreeable framing instead. In sum, the workforce that should constrain risky choices is being reshaped into an echo chamber that amplifies them. ## Who shapes American foreign policy? A perennial question—do think tanks, the security establishment, and industry write American foreign policy, or does the president?—received a nuanced treatment in Istanbul. The respondents rejected a simplistic “deep state decides everything” narrative, while acknowledging that external organizations exert strong influence. Policy papers, corporate interests, and institutional cultures all push particular agendas into the presidential ear, but they do not mechanically determine final decisions. The conversation underscored that influence is conditional: think tanks and bureaucracies offer options, but the president filters those options through personal priors, political incentives, and immediate pressures. Under a disciplined, experienced leader, that filtering can produce coherent strategy. Under an erratic one, it produces whiplash. The current system, therefore, is a marketplace of ideas with unequal actors—each seeking to shape outcomes—but the final arbiter remains the occupant of the Oval Office. When that occupant is unreliable, the result is a policy that looks like a collage of competing impulses rather than a unified stance. ## Russia, the CIA, and the survival of diplomatic channels The exchange in Istanbul also addressed the persistence of diplomatic outreach even when expectations are low. Far from abandoning engagement after setbacks, Moscow and other capital actors continue to probe whether personal chemistry or tactical openings can be leveraged. Historical episodes show that conversations—even flawed ones—can provide pathways to de-escalation. The Russian willingness to talk after the Anchorage meeting, despite disappointment at the results, suggests that adversaries will keep lines open in the hope of exploiting future opportunities. Equally important is the role of intelligence services and intermediaries. The conversation pushed back on the notion that intelligence agencies secretly run policy. Instead, they function as providers of options and assessments. Their influence is significant, but they do not unilaterally impose grand strategy. Yet intelligence channels remain essential for crisis management. Where formal diplomacy is undermined by credibility problems, back-channel assessments and pragmatic operational contacts may be the last bulwark against unintended escalation. ## Europe, NATO, and the risk of conventional war spiraling One of the more urgent strands of the discussion was the strategic strain on NATO and European allies. The speakers argued that NATO lacks the integrated air defenses and sustained industrial capacity needed for a protracted high-intensity conflict with a nuclear-armed peer. This is not merely a budgetary critique; it is a sober assessment of logistics, munitions production, and integrated command-and-control in the face of modern warfare’s demands. The implications are stark. If Ukraine’s proxy war continues to drain allied inventories without a credible long-term supply plan, European militaries may face shortages at the very moment deterrence needs to be displayed. That scarcity increases the temptation to escalat

Neocons In Defeat Denial, Trump Schizophrenia Getting Worse | Daniel Davis The Ukraine Proxy-War is going from bad to worse for the NATO war coalition and the leadership knows it. Panik is setting but at the same time there is no strategy on how to confront the failing project, just Donald Trump's erratic way of saying one thing today, another tomorrow and a third one in the time between. How will Russia and China deal with this situation? In Istanbul, Daniel Davis joins Pascal Lottaz to examine what they describe as the contradictions driving American foreign policy. They discuss Trump’s diplomacy with Iran, Russia and China, loyalty inside his administration, and competing influences on White House decisions. Davis challenges the idea that intelligence agencies independently control policy, while warning that NATO lacks the air defenses and industrial capacity for war with Russia. The conversation explores European escalation, diplomatic credibility, and the danger of a conventional conflict turning nuclear. Daniel’s Links: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DanielDavisDeepDive X: https://x.com/DanielLDavis1 German: https://www.youtube.com/@DanielDavisDeepDiveGermany French: https://www.youtube. com/@DanielDavisDeepDiveFrance Italian: https://www.youtube.com/@DanielDavisDeepDiveItalian Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/@DanielDavisDeepDiveSpanish Russian: https://www.youtube. com/@DanielDavisDeepDiveRussia Portuguese: https://www.youtube.com /@DanielDavisDeepDivePortuguese Neutrality Studies Links: Neutrality Studies Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Support Neutrality Studies: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Neutrality Studies shop: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Time Stamps 00:00 An Istanbul conversation with Daniel Davis 00:40 Trump’s contradictory Iran policy 02:20 Diplomacy, trust and broken agreements 06:38 Loyalty and the people around Trump 11:53 Who shapes American foreign policy? 15:58 Russia, the CIA and diplomatic channels 19:34 Europe and the risk of escalation 22:45 Why Davis says NATO cannot win #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies today with a very special episode, because I'm here in Istanbul with my friend and colleague Danny Davis. Danny, welcome. Always great to be here. Good to be in Istanbul too. Well, it was a fascinating couple of days with a good conference, I would say, and now we are getting prepared to go back to our normal lives and deal with the craziness that is international politics. Let me put it this way: what did you read about international politics today or yesterday? I mean, what's happening also in the United States, maybe the Xi-Trump meeting and so on, that somehow links up with what we discussed here at the conference. Is there anything that comes to mind? #Daniel Davis -- 1 of 11 -- Well, one thing that just jumps straight out is President Trump gave almost like a Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde—two separate interviews on the same day, the 27th. And on the one, he said that the Iranian side, that basically they had already lost militarily and everything's going fine. And the good news is they don't have any nuclear weapons program because they've already destroyed it. So it's no problem. Then hours later, he gets into another interview and says, well, you know, the bottom line is we have to make sure that there's no nuclear weapon. There can't be a nuclear weapon for Iran, and we're going to do whatever we have to. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, you just told me today there was no nuclear, but it's gone. And then later in the same day, he says, yeah, well, we got to make sure they don't. Well, which is it? And if the Strait of Hormuz is open, and if you're getting more oil out now than pre-war, he says—he says—so I don't know how you say that there's been this, now what is it, eight-month war, all this stuff destroyed and the dueling blockades, but then more came out than even before the war. I don't know how that's physically possible, but yet that's the claim. And when you look at those kinds of things, you have to think, what planet are we living on? How do you do foreign policy? How do you make good analysis and say, all right, here's what I think we should do. Here's what they're doing. Here's what the experts are saying. But this, I think, will work when you have someone potentially—and you're saying it—irrational at the top that can't make rational decisions, or even remember from one speech to the next what he said and what he believes the conditions are? It's tough. #Pascal It is very tough, and I mean, we discussed this also in the conference, right? And you actually made the point that in order to have kind of a stable international environment, what we would wish for is actually a grown-up dialogue between these different partners, right? And I must say, though, you know, the way that Donald Trump welcomed Xi Jinping, going himself to the airport, I mean, funnily enough, one of the things you see is that he tries to treat Xi and also Vladimir Putin, you know, on a personal level, apparently quite okay. But then what does that mean for international politics if then, you know, the policy decisions become erratic, especially towards second-tier powers, let's say like Iran, which still can cause all of that havoc in the international scene. #Daniel Davis Well, I mean, it's a different version of the Jekyll and Hyde situation. So you have—what was it? I think May or so of 2025—President Trump meets with President Putin in Anchorage, Alaska. And the pomp and circumstance, red carpet, all kinds of optimism literally comes to nothing. According to the Russians, anyway, Trump agrees to all kinds of things. They're happy that we can bring the war to an end. And then none of them materialize. He doesn't follow through with any. He doesn't require -- 2 of 11 -- the Ukraine side to do any of their stuff. And then the thing just falls apart. Now, here he comes with Xi Jinping, and he's done this before, where he has another pomp and circumstance. He goes out to the airport, looks good on a surface level. Great. He's taking care of that. That's good. That's him showing seriousness with diplomacy, is personally going out. Very rare for him to go to the airport. You need somebody, et cetera. Usually he's at the Oval Office. Sometimes he meets them coming in. That's about it. But then he's done that in the past, and then it turns into nothing again. And then it goes back afterwards, and he starts saying all this bad stuff about China, and they're cheating, they're ripping us off, and I'm going to throw more tariffs on it. How can anyone do business with the United States? How can Xi Jinping, how can Donald Trump, how can Erdogan, how can the current Ayatollah, how can anybody deal with this when you don't know from minute to minute what his position is going to be? #Pascal That is true. That is true. And it's a huge problem. You cannot do diplomacy. And that's why I guess the Russians came also to the conclusion, just like the Iranians, that the Americans are structurally incapable of doing agreements, agreement-incapable. Because even if you do an agreement like the Iranians did with the MOU, which—it's only an MOU, you know, this was not a treaty, it was an MOU—but it was that. It was a roadway toward, you know, winding everything down and getting back to a civilized international, you know, relationship, right? And he threw it out of the window, like basically just the second he signed it, which then also explained to me why he signed it, because it was kind of a declaration of surrender. I think you also said that on your channel. Yeah. But in his mind, it didn't matter. Whatever, I could sign a piece of toilet paper, right? It doesn't matter. I do whatever I want to have the word anyhow. If it gets me a little bit closer to what I want, which is maybe just a little bit of a pause, and then I can try something else, then that's fine. I mean, it's inconsequential, at least it seems to me, to him and his administration. Well, see, here's the additional problem. #Daniel Davis On the MOU, for example, when he signed that thing and he had that big press conference right afterwards where he explained his reasons were—his reasons were rational. They were logical. Yeah, well, I can't go on. Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve was running really low, and in four weeks it could be beyond critical level. It's gone below that now. He said, "I don't want to be President Hoover. I don't want to be the one to preside over a global depression. I don't want to be the one." Wise thing to say. Valid. And then he threw all that out the window within, I think it was five days, is when we established this southern corridor in the Omani corridor in the Strait of Hormuz, which was completely outside of the scope of paragraph five of the MOU. We never even tried to get Israel to abide by paragraph -- 3 of 11 -- one of the MOU. And the only thing that we did periodically, or for a little while, was drop the energy sanctions on Iran for seven, eight days, something like that. And then we put it back in. We never did any of the other stuff. And so the whole thing went out. But on that day, he sounded rational and his logic was sound. But then he just ignored it, went back. And now you see, as of the 27th, he's back again to just saying stuff in the same day that's contradictory. #Pascal Do you think that it's just, like, the way that Donald Trump works, or is it actually, you know, more the entire government system at the moment that is unpredictable because you never know which side of the foreign policy crowd actually gets the say? I mean, because even in his administration, he has J.D. Vance in there, who has a foreign policy stance which is not completely out of domination of everybody else. I would say Vance is not a neocon, but at the same time, he also has Rubio in there, right? I mean, even within the cabinet itself, there's this kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of situation going on. Yeah, here's the problem. #Daniel Davis In his first administration, he did—number one, it's now very clear—he did not actually expect to win. So he didn't put much effort at all into forming a mental cabinet before he got in there and getting people vetted and everything like that. He was caught off guard. So now he had to just grab whoever he could in the couple of months before he took over. And so he just got guys who were basically already in the system. And that turned out to be, for him, a lot of problems. A lot of people pushed back, a lot of people undercutting, that he perceived, and many of us did, as a bad thing. But in retrospect, that was not necessarily a bad thing at all, because these were people that were focused on doing the job. And when President Trump said he wanted to do something that was irrational, illogical, or counterproductive, they told him so and they pushed back, and then ended up leaving. To solve that problem in the intervening time during the 2020 to 2024 period, now he expected to win. And so they put a lot of effort. And I know many of the people on that team for years prior were putting in lots of effort. The result is they got nearly everybody in there whose number one priority was loyalty to Trump. #Pascal Yeah. Secondarily, if they had skills. #Daniel Davis And I'm not joking at all on that. So that means that across the board, he got people who were loyal to a fault, and they would never challenge him. They would never push back, or at least rarely. And especially among the key ones, never. Whatever the boss is, that's what we're going to do. If he -- 4 of 11 -- says, "Tell everybody that I'm holding a small nuclear weapon in my hand," yes, then I'm holding a small nuclear weapon in my hand because that's what he told me to say. And they'll say it with conviction. And so now then you have a case where you really need somebody on the inside to say, "Mr. President, that can't work. This is go