By now, you’ve probably read several takes on U.S. President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, including in this magazine. On the latest episode of FP Live, I thought it would be useful to spotlight a realist point of view. Realism, which can broadly be defined as the school of international relations in which countries prioritize their interests rather than values, has some areas of overlap with Trump’s “America First” instincts—in concept if not in implementation. What are they, and why do they matter?
My guest this week was Emma Ashford, an FP columnist and senior fellow at the Stimson Center. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box above, or follow FP Live wherever you get your podcasts. What follows here is a lightly edited transcript.
Ravi Agrawal: What has stood out for you the most about the Trump administration’s foreign policy in the first 100 days?
Emma Ashford: Well, it has certainly been an active period. We’ve had new peace talks—many of them headed by Steve Witkoff, who appears to be Trump’s new negotiator—on Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, and, potentially, on North Korea. We’ve had the on-and-off-again tariffs. On the domestic side, we’ve had DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] impact foreign-policy bureaucracy and how the U.S. conducts foreign policy around the world. There have been meetings and interactions between the new administration and various U.S. allies. Some of those have been friendly, like when Vice President J.D. Vance visited India last week, but most were contentious, like with the Europeans in particular. So, if nothing else, they are hitting the ground running on foreign policy.
RA: We knew he was going to focus on things like illegal immigration, tariffs, and ending the war in Ukraine. What has surprised you?
EA: Even on the domestic side, DOGE’s bureaucracy-cutting approach was surprising. Like many folks in D.C., I woke up one day to discover that there was no longer a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). And that was shocking. In any other administration, the administration would have proposed a plan to fold USAID into [the State Department], gone on a messaging campaign highlighting its problems, and then moved toward closing it. Instead, they just did it. The speed with which they’ve moved, and their willingness to cut away at the foundations of how the U.S. conducts its foreign policy, surprised me a lot.
RA: Is it possible to discern Trump’s ultimate objective from these first 100 days?
EA: The one constant is that Donald Trump believes “America first.” It’s not just a slogan for him. He is fundamentally a nationalist. That’s the through line that I see in everything he’s doing. Now, the problem with that is that looking for American interests in every area without prioritizing or considering trade-offs—for example, by fighting with Europe over defense and also tariffs at the same time—can be counterproductive. I don’t think this means his approach is coherent, but he is very consistent in always pushing for the most that America can get from whatever he’s doing.
RA: So you published a terrific piece in FP that explored four models that might explain what you call the White House’s “‘move fast and break things’ approach to foreign policy.” The first model was, as you put it, the return of realpolitik. Where do the Trump administration’s actions fit that model, and where do they fall short?
EA: I would be thrilled if this were an accurate description of the Trump foreign policy. We’re seeing this argument from quite a few segments of the Republican Party, comparing Trump to Nixon for trying to take big steps to fix America’s strategic oversteps. Trump is trying to effectuate a pivot to China, to end U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine, to force European allies to pick up their own role, to pull back from the Middle East, to rebalance trade. One could paint a picture that suggests that this is about strategic recalibration, that this is realpolitik.
But Israel remains one of the exceptions. Donald Trump remains extremely supportive of Israel. He has been willing to lean on the government in Israel, but not to an extent that he’s managed to stop that war. He is poised to either potentially make a nuclear deal with Iran or potentially start military strikes on Iran, which would be the exact opposite of that.
And these tariffs should make us question this model. Some people argue that these tariffs will bring back manufacturing, secure our supply chains, and weaken the dollar to help American exporters. But that’s not how the tariffs are being implemented.
RA: The second model you propose is this idea that domestic politics and interests are the biggest foreign-policy drivers. In other words, foreign policy begins at home. And you cite DOGE efforts as evidence of this model.
EA: This is the model that many in the Democratic Party applied to Trump during his first term. We all remembered the notion that Trump is doing certain things in foreign policy because he likes dictators and they owe him money, which turned out to be not particularly accurate. But especially on the Democratic side of the aisle, the narrative exists that the Trump administration is trying to enrich its donors. Or that Trump’s deportation agenda or campaign against Mexican cartels is an attempt to bolster domestic support. Even J.D. Vance, when he yells at allies in Europe or in the Oval Office for not spending enough on defense, could be playing to an audience at home.
RA: You call your third model “a return to the first term.” So in other words, despite the turbulent first 100 days, we might be moving toward a Trump-Reagan synthesis. Explain that.
EA: I should caveat this. I don’t think this one is particularly accurate, but there are a lot of people that still believe it. I looked at what Trump did in his first hundred days last time. Most of the best-remembered or most outrageous foreign-policy moves happened after the first 100 days. So it’s possible that if the administration’s most radical voices, like Elon Musk or Steve Witkoff, fail in their efforts, the Republican old guard will creep back in.
RA: The final model looks at infighting within the Republican Party and suggests that the chaos is because various factions within the party or Trumpworld are jostling for their own pet projects.
EA: This is something we saw at the start of the first term, as Trump was saddled with advisors who didn’t really share his views. This time around, Trump has a broader base of support. He has a MAGA coalition inside the Republican Party that is more nationalist, protectionist, Jacksonian. He is bringing people into the administration who would have been unthinkable in previous Republican administrations. People like Tulsi Gabbard, for example, or even J.D. Vance, whose views are outside the mainstream. So we are still seeing contestation between that group and the classic view of Republican foreign policy. We see it particularly over Iran and Israel, where there’s still very strong Republican sentiment and where the potential for a Trump peace deal is not necessarily popular.
RA: So Emma, which of these four models that you’ve proposed do you find to be the most convincing—or maybe none of them are and maybe the chaos is the point? Where do you land on that?
EA: I think number four, for me: the notion of the Republican internal foreign-policy civil war. I find that quite persuasive because it explains the areas where we don’t see much internal disagreement. So, let’s take Ukraine, for an example. Initially, we saw some contestation between the Keith Kellogg wing of the administration and folks like Witkoff who wanted to push harder and open up to Russia faster. We’ve seen the Witkoff faction come out on top, so there’s less contestation now.
Immigration would be another one. There’s almost no disagreement. The policy has been very consistent. Draconian? Yes. Unthinkable four months ago, but it is consistent. But then there’s other areas—like tariffs, allies, and even peace talks on Iran or Gaza—where there’s still internal contestation. That explains the inconsistencies.
RA: Is Trump someone who is willing to shift positions according to what he sees around him? In other words, is he an ideologue or not? On Ukraine, for example, after he met [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky at the pope’s funeral, it seemed like his thinking maybe shifted a little. He said [Russian President Vladimir] Putin might be “tapping me along,” so perhaps he’s admitting that his approach hasn’t been working so far. On tariffs, he might actually be an ideologue who genuinely believes that tariffs are good and trade deficits are bad. But even there, he recalibrated based on market reality, which suggests that he’s willing to change.
EA: Frankly, he has sincerely held views on a number of these issues. He very much wants to be seen as a peacemaker, as a dealmaker, and as somebody who does better than previous presidents. That [former President] Joe Biden couldn’t end the war in Ukraine, but he will. But reality sometimes intervenes. On Ukraine, he clearly favors leaving the war. He would like to open up to Russia. He would like to make a big deal. He would like a Nobel Prize for it. But he is willing to use harsher rhetoric on Putin and to walk away if the deal isn’t good enough. It’s the same thing on tariffs. He feels very strongly about them. He doubled down repeatedly, but when it became apparent that markets were in meltdown, he walked things back. So, he is not a committed ideologue who will follow things through to the absolute bitter end, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have opinions.
RA: Emma, you’re a realist. For all the criticisms of Trump, he is sometimes credited for, in his own chaotic way, rebalancing things that needed rebalancing. The shift in relations with China during his first term, for example, is often cited as an example of a correction that Trump made that had broad bipartisan support. Biden continued some of these moves. Are there foreign-policy areas or decisions that Trump has made that you agree with?
EA: I think Trump is correctly moving toward negotiation with a number of other states. He is not necessarily doing everything I would recommend on Ukraine, but he is bringing some balance back to that policy. The Biden administration had this “to the bitter end; nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” approach, which was never going to resolve the conflict.
I certainly think pulling back from the Middle East and from Europe—if they achieve that—to focus on Asia would be a significant achievement.
But they could undermine their own successes with tariffs. It is one thing to talk about empowering U.S. allies to defend themselves. That’s a good idea even without a huge constituency for it in Washington. There’s even a constituency among U.S. allies for that, but not if it’s paired with punitive tariffs. And so, again, there are elements of realpolitik here. But I do worry that some of his pet projects—tariffs, immigration, etc.—could undermine it.
RA: Let’s come back to Ukraine for a minute. Realist scholars like John Mearsheimer famously made the case that the expansion of NATO encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine. I know you don’t agree with Mearsheimer, but realists often see Putin’s actions through a more rational lens than others. You said that you don’t entirely agree with Trump’s approach to Ukraine. Where are the areas that you agree with, and where are the areas that would do things very differently?
EA: I think Trump does share this view. John Mearsheimer expounds the very extreme version of the thesis that NATO expansion caused the war. But many realists, including myself, have long advocated for some of how the Trump administration is approaching these negotiations, like not being doctrinaire on issues like Ukraine joining NATO. There is divergence over Trump’s willingness to give things away to Russia; I would argue he should drive a harder bargain. But he’s pursuing a broadly realist approach to ending this war.
Pressure on Kyiv was needed to convince them that negotiations are actually happening. Pressure on European capitals was needed. And overtures needed to be made to Russia. So, Ukraine is perhaps the best case so far that Trump is pursuing a realpolitik foreign policy.
RA: It strikes me that in all our discussion about realism here, for the few FP Live listeners who don’t quite know what it means, can you define realism quickly?
EA: If you have several hours, yeah, we could do a seminar. There’s many academic versions that are all slightly different, but realists fundamentally believe that interests trump values. So the U.S. should pursue its interests rather than necessarily trying to go out in the world and reshape it in our image or spread democracy. So a realpolitik approach to international affairs would look more like the politics of Richard Nixon than the politics of Bill Clinton or even Joe Biden.
RA: Within that school of thought, what is the biggest disagreement with Trump’s foreign policy?
EA: The tariffs are a consistent source of disagreement. Most modern realists are free traders because they think it makes the U.S. stronger. But historically, realists would have been mercantilists and would have supported Trump’s tariffs.
But also realists aren’t all Republicans, and they certainly aren’t all right-wing on social issues. On immigration, deporting a lot of people without due process to El Salvador worries a lot of people, no matter what your foreign-policy beliefs are. Take some of the personnel issues or the problems that [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth has had managing his department or his advisors. For most realists, we would hope for a level of competence that we’re not necessarily seeing right now.
RA: So given everything you’re describing about Trump’s first 100 days, how should the rest of the world react? What are their options? Because they’re confronted with a very unpredictable president, but also a decline in the rules-based order that will disproportionately hurt smaller countries.
EA: We should not exaggerate the extent to which Trump is killing the liberal international order, the rules-based order. Some of that would be happening naturally. We’re moving toward a more multipolar world, where the U.S. can’t necessarily control or manage everything. We’ve seen presidents including Joe Biden violate various aspects of the rules-based order, like humanitarian protection. Trump is continuing to move in that direction, but this isn’t some abrupt shift or aberration. He is part of a process of change in U.S. foreign policy. The consensus after the Cold War was that America was the world’s policeman. Now we’re moving closer to a focus on American interests and what Americans want to see from the world. And to be fair, I think many allies grasp this. Last time around, I thought Trump was a four-year aberration. Now I think, particularly in Europe, many allies see that the old world is not coming back. States should view this in an interest-based frame rather than falling back on some of the old language about values or democracy or liberal order.
RA: On the idea of “the world’s policeman,” Trump seems to have tapped into a broad sense among the American public that foreign wars are a waste of money. Will this trend endure in American foreign policy? What does that do to the world?
EA: Donald Trump is not a foreign-policy specialist. He’s not spent years going to the Munich Security Conference and hearing people pontificate about America’s role in the world. If you poll the average American on how they feel about the world, they want the U.S. to be involved and take a major role, but they don’t want it to play the leading role. So he is in the mainstream there in a way that many in D.C. are not. So I do think this is an enduring trend.
The open question is twofold. First, can Trump lock in his approach to the world in the Republican Party? I do think the post-Trump Republican Party is naturally going to be more realist and less neoconservative. And then the other question is what do the Democrats do in response? At the moment, they are not making any foreign-policy moves at all. Kamala Harris repeated the same lines that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden used, claiming Trump is undermining everything America has built, and needs to be out there in the world. I’m not sure that plays well with American voters. And so I think what I’m watching more closely, even the Republicans, is how the Democrats are reacting.
RA: Let’s talk about China. This is another area where American views on China have been consistent, turning sharply downward over the last decade or so. Americans generally feel like China’s more of a threat than they did 10 or 15 years ago. Now, Trump has said he would be open to a deal with China. And I’m curious how you see the Trump administration’s approach toward China, because of, on the one hand, historically high levels of tariffs, but then signaling that this is a negotiating tool to deal with Xi Jinping.
EA: It’s incoherent, and that’s the big problem. There are people inside the Trump administration arguing for tariffs as a way to decouple from China over the long term and strengthen American manufacturing, etc. But I think Trump himself sees them as transactional. It’s about leverage. For all that the American people see China as a competitor, they primarily want to avoid a war with China over Taiwan, or even a major trade war. They want to rebalance the relationship so the U.S. isn’t as dependent on China, so that there are some industries here that are ring-fenced, for example. And that’s a difficult needle to thread.
RA: Emma, a last question. What do you think Trump’s second term is doing to the world order? And I asked this because you said that from a realist perspective, Trump represents a trend line and is not an aberration. But how much of a change to world order is Trump? What does that mean for global governance?
EA: The declining salience and importance of the United Nations, for example, is a trend we’ve seen through several American administrations. Just because Trump tossed out these organizations, it’s not significantly or qualitatively different.
Trump is different because he is willing to be a wrecking ball. Most other American presidents have talked about reframing the U.S. role in the world while maintaining existing commitments. Trump is probably more willing to smash existing commitments to reach a new equilibrium. We learned in his first term that if he destroys something, like the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], for example, it creates a new space for policy. So he’ll bring a lot of change, but I’m not sure he will necessarily direct what emerges from it.
RA: You don’t seem as worried as many other commentators about the wrecking-ball effect. For example, when you wreck a policy like the JCPOA, the effect between 2015 and now is that Iran is, of course, much closer to a bomb. There are impacts that to me seem worse than what you’re describing; why is it not as bad as I might fear?
EA: There are some areas where I do worry. On tariffs. On the impact that Trump has had on the status of the U.S. dollar. These self-inflicted blows will undermine U.S. hard power over the long term.
In other areas, Trump is drawing attention to or highlighting existing situations that were not sustainable. Continuing the war in Ukraine, for example. We literally don’t have the munitions to do it. There’s not the popular support to keep sending money. I don’t think he necessarily has the right solutions, but things were going to break at some point.
