Trump’s Foreign Policy Is Vibes With Bombs. The Left Should Say No.

The most honest sentence in American foreign policy right now is also the most damning: nobody knows what Washington believes, but everybody knows it can still bomb you.

That is not strength. That is not deterrence. That is a heavily armed identity crisis — and today’s news makes the danger impossible to cute-phrase away.

At the NATO summit in Ankara, The Guardian reports that President Donald Trump opened by lashing out at allies, saying he was “not happy with Nato,” complaining that members including Britain had not helped him in the Iran war, reviving his Greenland fixation despite Denmark’s sovereignty, and calling for the U.S. to cut trade ties with Spain because its socialist government refused new defense-spending targets. Hours later, after meeting the same leaders, he declared, “There was a lot of love in that room,” and praised Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “ingenious” for holding Ukraine together against Russia. Analysts quoted by The Guardian described the whiplash plainly: allies are “freaked out,” and, as Georgetown’s Charles Kupchan put it, “the United States doesn’t really have a foreign policy any more.” (The Guardian, July 12)

Meanwhile, the U.S. is again striking Iran. BBC reports that U.S. Central Command said it launched a third round of strikes this week after Iran’s Revolutionary Guard “blatantly attacked” the Cyprus-flagged MV GFS Galaxy in the Strait of Hormuz, leaving the ship unable to continue and one civilian crew member missing. Iran said it had closed the strait until further notice; the BBC reported that Iran claimed retaliation against a U.S. base in Jordan and that Gulf states were responding to missiles and drones. CNBC likewise reported that Trump ordered renewed airstrikes after the attack on the commercial ship, and that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said “no vessel” would be permitted to transit the strait. (BBC, July 12; CNBC, July 11)

So here is the progressive position, without the fog machine: Congress must claw back war power, the administration must stop treating diplomacy like a mood swing, and Americans should reject the fantasy that militarized improvisation is a substitute for a coherent democratic foreign policy.

No, that does not mean pretending Iran’s attacks on commercial shipping are harmless. They are not. Civilian mariners are not props in a regional power struggle. The Strait of Hormuz is a vital shipping lane, and setting ships ablaze or threatening crews is indefensible. A left foreign policy should be clear about that because anti-war politics are not the same as “anything America’s adversary does is fine.” That campy little dodge has always been morally lazy.

But it also does not mean handing a president a blank check to escalate because he found a microphone and a grievance. When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posts “Iran made a poor choice. Now they pay,” as CNBC reported, that is not a strategy. It is bumper-sticker militarism with a targeting package attached.

The deeper sickness is that U.S. foreign policy has become both overmilitarized and under-democratized. The public gets the risk. The executive gets the machinery. Congress gets a quote for cable. Working people get the bill — higher energy prices, deployments, veterans’ trauma, and the domestic austerity chorus that always somehow finds money for missiles before childcare, housing, disaster resilience, public transit, or hospital staffing.

This is where the left has to be sharper than the usual Sunday-show binary. The choice is not “Trump’s chaos” versus “respectable empire.” The choice is whether the United States can become a country whose power is restrained by law, whose alliances are accountable to democratic publics, and whose security policy is not permanently rigged in favor of arms contractors, fossil-fuel chokepoints, and strongman flattery.

Trump’s NATO performance matters because allies are not just reacting to one man’s tone. They are reacting to the fact that U.S. commitments now seem to swing with elections, personal feuds, and who most recently praised the president in a room. The Guardian’s account of Ankara — rage at allies, sudden warmth, personal affinity for Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Mark Rutte’s reported role as a “Trump whisperer” — reads less like alliance management than court management. That is humiliating for democratic countries, including ours.

And it is dangerous for ordinary people abroad. When Washington cannot decide whether it is defending law, chasing dominance, protecting commerce, punishing enemies, flattering autocrats, or staging a reality-TV dominance ritual, civilians become the shock absorbers.

Look at the West Bank. In a separate report, The Intercept says Rep. Ro Khanna, his staffer Cameron Kasky, their driver, and security guard were blocked for roughly 75 to 90 minutes by armed Israeli settlers near Zanuta; Khanna told the outlet it was “the most powerless I have felt,” and said that if this could happen to a U.S. member of Congress, “imagine what life is like for ordinary Palestinians.” The Israeli military, according to The Intercept, acknowledged a report of Israeli civilians unlawfully blocking foreign nationals and media, while disputing Khanna and Kasky’s account of soldiers’ conduct. (The Intercept, July 11)

That story is not the same as Hormuz or NATO. But morally, it belongs in the same column because it exposes the same rot: U.S. power is treated as sacred when it is projecting force, optional when it is restraining allies, and nearly invisible when occupied people ask for equal rights under law.

A progressive foreign policy would start from human beings, not prestige. It would defend shipping crews without sleepwalking into open-ended war. It would support Ukraine’s survival without turning Europe into a weapons-spending contest where every social budget is a piggy bank. It would oppose Iranian state violence without pretending U.S. bombs have a magic civilian-proof setting. It would condition military aid to allies on human-rights compliance. It would recognize Palestinian freedom as a legal and moral necessity, not a nuisance to be managed until the next summit photo.

And at home, it would insist that war decisions belong to the people’s representatives in more than ceremonial hindsight. Congress should require explicit authorization for further strikes against Iran, public reporting on civilian harm, clear objectives, and an exit strategy. If the administration cannot explain the legal authority, the metric for success, the escalation risks, and the diplomatic off-ramp, then it has not earned the power to continue.

The right will call that weakness. Fine. The right has spent years confusing swagger with safety and cruelty with clarity. But real strength is not a president insulting allies on Tuesday, praising them by dinner, and bombing by the weekend. Real strength is democratic discipline: law before ego, diplomacy before escalation, people before contractors, and peace before the addictive theater of force.

America does not need nicer imperial managers. It needs a foreign policy that knows its own mind — and has the humility to know the rest of the world is not a stage for ours.