The world is burning, and US President Donald Trump is responding with a mixture of bravado, recklessness, and stunning moral abdication. What was once dismissed as impulsive showmanship has now hardened into something far more dangerous: a pattern of reactionary, self-serving, and often contradictory decisions that are helping propel global crises rather than resolve them.
The tragedy is not merely that Trump is failing to solve global crises; it is that his leadership style is accelerating them. Under his watch, international institutions are weaker, alliances are shakier, great-power tensions are sharper, and humanitarian catastrophes are met with indifference. He once promised to end “forever wars,” yet his decisions are helping ignite new ones— wars with far greater potential to reshape the global order.
Trump campaigned on restoring US strength, but as conflicts intensify from Gaza to the Gulf, from Tehran to Doha, it is clear that Washington under his watch is losing strategic clarity, moral credibility, and diplomatic weight at a pace unseen in the modern era.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the continuing Israeli assault on Gaza and the catastrophic humanitarian toll on Palestinians. Far from using US leverage to halt the bloodshed, the Trump Administration has transformed US foreign policy into a blank cheque for Israeli military escalation. Even as images of hospitals reduced to rubble and mass graves emerge, Trump responds not with urgency but with boilerplate lines about Israel’s “right to defend itself,” ignoring the disproportionate destruction and the mounting accusations of war crimes.
In moments demanding leadership, he has chosen political expediency— reassuring his domestic base and donors rather than asserting even the faintest humanitarian restraint on the USA’s closest Middle Eastern ally.
The consequence of this moral retreat has been devastating: Washington is now viewed not as a mediator but as an enabler of civilian suffering. As Europe fractures over its own Gaza policies, as global protests intensify, and as the Arab world grows more disillusioned with the USA, Trump has allowed US credibility to erode to the point where even longstanding partners question whether Washington is still capable of playing any constructive diplomatic role.
This vacuum of leadership has also emboldened Israel’s escalating confrontation with Iran. In recent months, as Israeli military operations expanded from Gaza and southern Lebanon into direct strikes inside Iran— including attacks on strategic Iranian infrastructure— the Trump Administration not only failed to restrain the escalation but actively participated.
Rather than using US influence to prevent what analysts warned could become a region-wide war, Trump authorised US military support for Israeli strikes, framing it as a show of “deterrence.” In reality, it hardened Iranian resolve and pushed Tehran to retaliate, unleashing a spiral of strikes that destabilised the region and brought global oil markets to the brink.
Instead of brokering de-escalation, as previous administrations attempted, Trump positioned the USA as an active party to the conflict— destroying any pretence of neutrality and placing US forces and civilians at heightened risk.
Trump is still in office, and the world will continue to feel the impact of his decisions for months, perhaps years, to come. But the damage is already visible: a world less stable, less secure, and less hopeful. In the end, the USA’s greatest failure under Trump may not be a single decision or missed opportunity— it is the abandonment of responsible leadership in a moment that desperately needed it
Allies in the Gulf, already wary of being dragged into a direct confrontation, have openly expressed concerns that Washington’s impulsiveness is pushing the Middle East toward a catastrophic multi-front war. For Iran, this was not a deterrent signal— it was confirmation that diplomacy with the USA is meaningless under Trump.
Qatar, once one of Washington’s most reliable partners and the host of the largest US airbase in the region, has also found itself on the receiving end of Trump’s erratic foreign policy. Doha, which has consistently acted as an intermediary in hostage exchanges, ceasefire negotiations, and back-channel talks with multiple regional actors, was stunned when Israeli warplanes pounded the building where Hamas negotiators were engaged in peace talks.
Rather than accusing Israel for sabotaging peace talks, Trump publicly questioned Qatar’s reliability and accused it— again, without evidence— of “not doing enough” to pressure H,amas or Iran. The remarks ignored Qatar’s central diplomatic role and alienated one of the few states still willing to rescue the USA from its self-inflicted diplomatic paralysis. For Gulf partners, Trump’s statements signalled not strength but strategic incoherence.
It is not only the Middle East where Trump’s impulsiveness is reshaping global instability. His recent retreat when Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a halt in the export of key rare-earth minerals exposed the fragility behind Trump’s tough-talk trade posturing. For years, he portrayed himself as the only leader willing to confront Beijing, but when China cemented its dominance over rare-earth supply chains— materials essential for US defence systems, electronics, and advanced manufacturing— Trump folded.
Instead of mobilising a coordinated economic response, investing in domestic alternatives, or working with allies to secure supply diversification, he simply scaled back his rhetoric and quietly softened his stance, revealing that his “economic nationalism” was more performance than policy.
This moment encapsulated the broader truth: Trump’s foreign policy is reactive, not strategic; transactional, not principled. He boasts of unpredictability, mistaking it for strength, but unpredictability without coherence is indistinguishable from incompetence— and rivals have learned to exploit it.
Meanwhile, Trump’s handling of Russia remains one of the strangest contradictions in modern US diplomacy. Though he theatrically criticises Moscow when pressed, his administration continues to send confused signals about US commitments in Eastern Europe. Allies in NATO increasingly doubt Washington’s willingness to uphold collective defence obligations, especially as Trump repeatedly questions NATO’s value and accuses Europeans of “freeloading.” At a moment when Russia is probing for weakness wherever it can find it, Trump is providing it.
Global problems require foresight, but Trump governs through impulse. They require coalition-building, but Trump alienates friends and emboldens adversaries. They require moral credibility, but Trump’s selective outrage and silence on civilian massacres have made the USA appear morally bankrupt on the world stage.
The tragedy is not merely that Trump is failing to solve global crises; it is that his leadership style is accelerating them. Under his watch, international institutions are weaker, alliances are shakier, great-power tensions are sharper, and humanitarian catastrophes are met with indifference. He once promised to end “forever wars,” yet his decisions are helping ignite new ones— wars with far greater potential to reshape the global order.
Trump is still in office, and the world will continue to feel the impact of his decisions for months, perhaps years, to come. But the damage is already visible: a world less stable, less secure, and less hopeful. In the end, the USA’s greatest failure under Trump may not be a single decision or missed opportunity— it is the abandonment of responsible leadership in a moment that desperately needed it.
