Trump’s Foreign Policy Has No Clothes

María Carina Machado gives President Donald Trump her Nobel Peace Prize medal, Thursday, January 15, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

While recently co-hosting the Reagan Caucus podcast, an important item that we touched on was the lack of any consistent foreign policy doctrine at least going back to 2009. And while neither myself, John, nor Mike Nelson talked a whole lot about Venezuela in that episode, the policy of the Trump administration towards Venezuela really compounds the point.

Now, before I jump into the criticisms, I’ll be the first to admit that there are a lot of things President Trump has done in terms of foreign policy that I agree with. Mike, for example, did a good job pointing out that in the early years of the first Trump term, American foreign policy moved fast and acted decisively against ISIS in Syria. Operation Inherent Resolve completely destroyed the attempted Islamist caliphate who, under President Obama, had seized land on a scale rivaling established Middle Eastern countries and sent both Iranian and Iraqi forces (the latter equipped with U.S. provided vehicles, weaponry, etc.) running for the hills.

Under the direction of “Mad Dog” Mattis, with the approval of President Trump, an American-led intervention partnered with key allies on the ground (most notably the Kurds) was able to defeat ISIS. Operation Inherent Resolve should be the poster child for how America exercises her power, establishes deterrence, defeats her enemies, and keeps faith with her allies. And Donald Trump, as the President, deserves full credit for doing what President Obama was either unwilling or unable to do.

If all foreign policy efforts under President Trump looked like Inherent Resolve, I would be a very happy Reaganite. But...they don’t. And while I’ve done what I think is a pretty fair job of calling the balls and strikes, there comes a point where you must consider more than just calling balls and strikes, especially when it comes to something as important as foreign policy.

And this gets to the heart of the problem: this president has no consistent foreign policy doctrine. This foreign policy has no clothes. Virtually everything we hear from this administration is pretext rather than part of an internally consistent doctrine, and virtually all we hear from the defenders of this administration are justifications that change from one day to the next.

Even the vaunted “Donroe” doctrine fails to maintain any consistency. We have heard nearly a half dozen different explanations for why we launched the operation in Venezuela, and yet every explanation eventually fails because what we’re doing on a given day betrays the previous ones.

Did we invade Venezuela to stop drug trafficking? Did we invade Venezuela to arrest a criminal? Did we invade Venezuela to guarantee free and fair elections? Did we invade Venezuela because we’re the bigger country and we just want their oil? It’s not entirely clear what the answer is, because we have heard explanations coming from this administration that have more or less touched on each of these justifications, and yet the administration constantly engages in actions that undermine every possible reason.

Venezuelan drug trafficking has not ended. In fact, it continues nearly unchanged under Delcy Rodríguez, whose state-sanctioned criminal enterprises look virtually the same as they looked under Nicolás Maduro. The justification for snatching Maduro was that he was a criminal, and yet we are officially looking the other way as Delcy continues to do exactly what we supposedly arrested Maduro for doing.

And the same inconsistency exists when it comes to the supposed goal of ensuring free and fair elections in Venezuela. The Venezuelan people are just as far from getting a legitimate and democratically elected government as they were before Maduro was captured. They are arguably further because, since Maduro’s capture, the Trump administration has consistently undermined the opposition while further entrenching the current regime. I mean, whatever happened to María Carina Machado? Even after she prostrated herself and gave President Trump her Nobel Peace Prize, this administration has more or less dismissed her and her movement as unimportant. All while making deals with the existing regime that span years; this suggests that as long as Delcy plays ball with what Donald Trump actually cares about, she can expect to maintain power for as long as she wants.

So, what is the “Donroe Doctrine” other than imperialism over banana republics?

Now, I’m more than ready to confess that I may be wrong, and I’m sure that’s not how Marco Rubio would characterize his honest efforts to expand freedom in Latin America. But this only reinforces my point. We don’t know. The administration doesn’t seem to have a clear doctrine we can rely on or even know. And, as has often been reported about Donald Trump since the early years of his first term, he has the tendency to make knee-jerk decisions based on whoever talked to him last, or whoever can paint their priority in a way that gets an emotional outburst from the President. Perhaps that’s why one day, Marco’s winning the argument and America cares about the Venezuelan people and their plight; then the next, it’s Vance who wants us to stop doing anything altogether; and the next, Trump’s pure id takes over, and we’re seizing oil.

And that’s the real problem. Not just that there is no consistent foreign policy doctrine under this administration, but that instead of at least having those debates out in the open, so many publications, outlets, and talking heads think their job is to talk about the elegance of the garments the Trump administration is wearing when, in reality, this administration is stark naked.