“We have a big problem,” he said of North Korea. “We have somebody that is not doing the right thing, and that’s going to be my responsibility.”
Whether that burden will push Trump away from his “America First” outlook and toward a more traditional foreign policy remains to be seen. In just a few months in office, Trump has consistently upended foreign policy norms and shown that he has little interest in leading or enforcing the rules-based international order as other presidents did over the past 70 years.
For the moment, the biggest changes from the Obama years are in style and rhetoric. Trump often has seemed more ambivalent than outraged over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea. His interest in NATO, the cornerstone of security in Europe, is often largely confined to whether the allies are paying their fair share and the United States is getting a good deal.
He has shown a clear preference for stable dictators over the spread of democracy as indicated by the warm Oval Office welcome given to Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, who was shunned by the Obama White House for his brutal crackdown on dissidents.
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