When trying to assess President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, I have spent the past decade trying not to overthink anything. His first term seemed like it was the blend of isolationism in foreign policy, protectionism in foreign trade, and nativism in our cultural attitudes that has defined American populist and nationalist movements since the Know-Nothings. In Syria in Afghanistan, he was isolationist, setting in motion two withdrawals that led to a resurgence of ISIS and the Taliban respectively. In China, he was a protectionist, starting a trade war and implementing historic tariffs. At home, he was a nativist, implementing a travel ban against countries that were almost exclusively majority Muslim. These populist positions were not just contained to his first term, however. After being re-elected in 2024, Trump’s position on major powers trying to assert dominance in their spheres of influence has been more of the same. He has been dismissive, to put it lightly, of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and he froze American arms sales to Taiwan, cutting down on Biden’s efforts to deter a Chinese invasion of the island. In short, on the world stage, Trump has seemed like a typical American populist for most of his career, and his failures were the predictable failures of populism. No need to overthink it, right?

And yet, Trump’s second term has seen instances of American interventionism and hawkishness in Iran and Venezuela. Last summer, Trump ordered the bombing of Iranian military infrastructure. As for Venezuela, Trump oversaw the seizing of a Venezuelan oil tanker, the capsizing of civilian Venezuelan boats, the invasion of Caracas in order to capture the Venezuelan President, and the installment of a new interim President. Assertions of force like this cannot be called isolationism, but there was some cohesion between these actions and previous actions that seemed isolationist at face value. It was entirely possible that Trump did not want to pick too many fights with nuclear powers like China and Russia but felt perfectly entitled to pick on minor powers like Iran and Venezuela. Perhaps, instead of being fully isolationist, Trump was more concerned about foreign policy as nuclear powers exerting their influence on minor powers, or, as the Athenians put it, “what the strong do and the weak accept.” A year into his second term, that became my new theory of the president’s foreign policy.

But I was wrong. Our new “Memorandum of Understanding” with Iran is certainly not an American exertion over Tehran, but an endorsement of the status quo. It does nothing to address Iran’s nuclear program or ballistic missile capacity, and it outlines a plan for $300 billion to be sent to Iran for reconstruction. The memorandum even left an avenue for Iran to keep control over the Strait of Hormuz, an avenue of which they are now taking advantage. The deal outlined that Lebanon could not be attacked, but the language was ambiguous enough that it did not clarify whether the clause referred exclusively to the United States, or to Israel as well. Israel, which was not a part of the negotiations, was bound to keep attacking Lebanon, which they did after a Hezbollah strike. In response, Iran has now retaken control over the Strait. In short, the Islamic Republic got $300 billion, permission to keep their ballistic missiles, capacity to build nuclear weapons, and control over the Strait of Hormuz. The United States got nothing. So, why did Trump’s diplomats negotiate this deal and why did Trump sign it? What theory of foreign policy could possibly motivate this memorandum?

As it turns out, there is no theory. Trump, as he explicitly told the press on June 1, found the negotiations “very boring.” Then, 16 days later, we ended up with this deal. Evidently, he was too bored with these high-stakes negotiations to lobby for anything remotely useful for the United States. In my effort not to overthink Trump’s foreign policy, I overthought it by even assuming it was a policy. The United States raised the white flag in a war with Iran because the President was bored. There really is nothing more to it. And, the most disturbing part is, this kind of decision-making explains the past decade of Trump’s thinking towards foreign affairs. Did the U.S. withdraw from Syria and Afghanistan because the President got bored of the meetings in the Situation Room? Did the American trade war become global because the President got bored with targeting China? Did the President fail to even mention Taiwan in his summit with the Chinese because he got bored of those meetings too? Were the Army and CIA ordered to capture Maduro because Trump wanted a little bit of excitement? Any one of these questions could be answered affirmatively, and that, compounded with our surrender to Iran, is embarrassing for the United States.

Acknowledgement: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author, not necessarily Our National Conversation as a whole