What has been Trump’s biggest foreign policy success? What has been his biggest failure?

President Trump’s biggest foreign policy success has been to help end the war in Gaza — the longest Israeli war since its founding, one that produced unprecedented death and destruction on all sides. Working with Arab leaders, Trump pulled together many of the existing ideas to end the war and facilitated a process that may bring peace to the region. He used his leverage and the goodwill engendered in Israel during his first term to force an Israeli prime minister loath to end the war to do just that. Yes, much more active diplomacy in March and April might have produced the same result earlier. Yes, many of the ideas in his 20-point peace plan were proposed by others before. But none of this in any way diminishes that Trump played the key role in getting it done.

Trump’s biggest foreign policy failure has been the alienation of India. A proud nation, which is both the fifth largest economy and the largest democracy in the world, has seen itself targeted by a president who does not appear to understand the value of the past quarter-century’s ever-growing U.S.-India alignment. India and the United States need each other to compete effectively against China. India needs the U.S. consumer market for its products, and the United States needs India for its talent. But all that is now in question, as Trump deported Indian immigrants in shackles, coddled Pakistan in the aftermath of a major military confrontation with India and imposed 50 percent tariffs on Indian imports. India got the message, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew to China to meet with Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping to retighten bonds that had frayed during the Indian-American rapprochement.

Ivo Daalder is a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center.

Throwing traditional rules of diplomatic behavior to the wind, President Trump has presided over a dramatic nine months since taking office. His foreign-policy tools are blunt and transparent — tactics that would have made his predecessors recoil. He calls leaders out in direct and often insulting ways. He pushes his way into the frame. He posts and shames and agitates, compelling others to bend to his will due to fear of his disfavor. So far, the biggest deliverable from this approach has been the deal to bring the Israeli hostages home, release Palestinian prisoners, and — at least for now — halt the horrible Israel-Hamas war. But throwing out decades of hard-earned experience at doing diplomacy also meant discarding thousands of people and billions in programs that were working for the benefit of U.S. interests. Jettisoning U.S. development assistance, humanitarian aid and international broadcasting means abandoning to the Chinese, Russians and others the tools of soft power, a diplomatic own-goal that will impact generations. With technology recording everything in real time, global citizens will not forget, and it will have consequences.

Farah Pandith is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Muhammad Ali Global Peace Laureate.

President Trump’s biggest foreign policy success is stemming illegal incursions into the United States. Enforcement of existing authorities has dramatically reduced the flow of attempted border crossings — to about one-ninth the number from the last year of the Biden administration. To be sure, Trump officials have enacted novel interpretations of some authorities, like declaring military zones along the southern border, and implemented their policies in such demeaning ways that they have alienated neighboring countries and likely discouraged immigrants the U.S. wants and needs. So even the president’s major achievement has come at both significant and avoidable costs.

The biggest foreign policy failure is destroying the wellsprings of American power. No great power in history has had as much voluntary assistance from other countries to sustain its power as the U.S. since 1945. The reason for this historical anomaly is that the U.S. and its allies built an international order that mutually benefited states when they opted in and played by the rules. The U.S. didn’t wring the last ounce of advantage out of its position, and so others helped us and wanted us to succeed. President Trump’s approach is collapsing that goodwill, thereby making everything the U.S. tries to do in the world costlier and more difficult.

Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

President Trump’s greatest foreign policy failure and success are the same: His reckless, erratic and incoherent approach to foreign policy has brought an abrupt end to the era of American global dominance. This is both a profound loss for the United States and, for much of the rest of the world, perhaps a substantial blessing, at least in the longer run.

For decades, we styled ourselves “the indispensable nation,” yet our foreign policy was often short-sighted and ham-handed. We consumed more than our share of global resources, waged costly wars and carried out “humanitarian interventions” that caused immense suffering. Our selective approach to international law undermined the very institutions we claimed to defend.

Trump has destroyed what remained of America’s credibility as a global leader, placing U.S. security and prosperity at risk. For the rest of the world, however, America’s disappearance from the field may be a relief — or at least an overdue corrective — forcing (and enabling) states to develop new strategies for cooperation, protection and problem-solving.

After 80 years of U.S. global dominance, Donald Trump has ushered in the Post-American Era. We can only hope the new order that emerges will be slightly less savage than the one we left behind.

Rosa Brooks is the Scott K. Ginsburg Chair in Law and Policy at Georgetown University Law Center.

Donald Trump’s most consequential foreign-policy achievement is the ongoing Middle East realignment of 2025. Against the odds, he is pushing Saudi Arabia and Israel to finalize a process that has lingered unfinished since the Abraham Accords. Trump is approaching the deal not as a peacemaker but as a broker of interests. The Saudis presumably would gain access to U.S. defense systems and investment incentives; Israel would secure normalization with the region’s economic heavyweight; and Washington would reassert itself as the indispensable intermediary. Such an agreement would not bring democracy or human rights, but create a pragmatic balance of power that reduces direct conflict and strengthens America’s influence without additional troop commitments. It would bolster the same network of relationships and allies that helped Trump broker a Gaza ceasefire and the release of all surviving hostages — an outcome that restored U.S. diplomatic relevance in a region long skeptical of it.

Trump’s biggest failure, by contrast, has been the prolonged confrontation with China. The second-term escalation of tariffs — justified as protecting American jobs — triggered a cascade of retaliations that disrupted global trade and accelerated China’s regional dominance. Asian allies, weary of unpredictable U.S. demands for financial “burden sharing,” began hedging toward Beijing. Whatever short-term trade benefits America derived will come at the cost of long-term strategic coherence and a more inflationary global economy.

Trump’s foreign policy captures the paradox of his presidency: tactical victories that impress in isolation but corrode structural stability. He understands leverage better than legitimacy.

Moisés Naím is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Candidate Donald Trump promised quick victories on foreign and trade policy, and in some areas, he’s delivered. The still-developing deal between Israel and Hamas, for example, shows that Washington can still provide leadership for the benefit of others, and I expect Trump to remain focused on ensuring that deal holds together. He used U.S. power to help de-escalate fighting between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, resolve friction at the Cambodia-Thailand border, and broker a deal that restored calm between India and Pakistan following a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. He has used leverage to seal favorable trade deals, though mainly from governments that can’t afford a damaging fight.

But Trump’s campaign sales pitch has still exceeded the deliverables. He pledged to end the war in Ukraine. Russia is now expanding its fight into neighboring NATO countries, and Trump has responded with a series of vague and ineffective threats. China, meanwhile, has pushed back hard on his trade pressure, using the leverage provided by its dominance of critical and rare earth minerals to try to persuade Trump that he can’t isolate China or contain its technological development. As others resist his pressure, it remains to be seen just how effective he will be.

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group.

Trump’s biggest foreign policy success is also his biggest foreign policy failure: empirically demonstrating that bad-faith diplomacy is counterproductive. He has unintentionally performed a helpful public service in showing how an antagonistic, isolationist and self-serving approach fails to achieve a safer America long-term.

Trump says his tariff policies are good for the country, but Americans are paying higher prices and watching as our closest allies strategize for a future in which they seek progress despite us, not in collaboration with us. He acts as if his needless hard-line tactics will cow violent dictatorships, but there has never been a more opportune time for immoral despots around the world to implement their dark visions, because they know any degree of pandering to his ego will mollify him and allow their actions to go unaccountable. He has taken the progress achieved in the American Century and squandered it in service to his own enrichment — and those in his worshipful close orbit — leaving the rest of us behind. Trump’s compounding international failures have shown the world that toddler tantrums don’t work.

Charlotte Clymer is a military veteran and the author of Charlotte’s Web Thoughts, a Substack on politics, religion, foreign policy and culture.

Trump’s greatest foreign policy success to date is the Gaza ceasefire. Regardless of whether it ever turns into a comprehensive peace (I personally doubt it), the fact of having stopped Israel’s brutal punishment of the Strip’s inhabitants is itself a major accomplishment. Even if Hamas does not lay down all its arms and manages to retain some form of governance in Gaza — and much more so if a real deal is achieved regarding a Palestinian state — this is a huge win for Trump.

Trump’s greatest foreign policy failure lies in the way he is losing the so-called and misnamed Global South to China. Through his tariffs (for example on Brazil), his attacks on boats off the Venezuelan coast, his disregard for African aspirations (expressed through cuts to USAID), his exchanges with India, the free hand he bestowed on Israel in Gaza, and his indifference to the United Nations, Trump has alienated U.S. friends, antagonized U.S. adversaries, and pushed all of them closer to China. If this continues, the loss for the United States will be huge, and the gain for China substantial.

Jorge Castañeda is a former secretary of foreign affairs of Mexico.