Donald Trump did not wait for his formal return to the White House on January 20 to weigh in on world affairs. It is therefore not premature to take stock of his first year in power now. The same man who said his success would be measured as much by the wars he prevented as by those he did not start has not always kept his word. In one year, he has already ordered bombings in three countries – Yemen, Iran and Nigeria – not to mention deadly strikes in the Caribbean Sea, carried out in the name of a war against drug trafficking that was never approved by Congress. These have been accompanied by threats of intervention against the indefensible regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, serving as a stark reminder that the entire American continent is now considered subject to the interests of the United States alone.

Trump claims credit for eight decisive interventions that put an end to lingering conflicts. While the intention is commendable, albeit clearly driven by his obsession with a Nobel Peace Prize, the reality is far removed from this tally, as it includes already-signed armistices and aborted attempts. The results achieved by the Republican president regarding the two major wars he faced from the moment he took the oath – namely, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the war that led to the destruction of Gaza after the massacres of October 7 carried out by Hamas – have been deeply disappointing. No progress has been made in the former, which he had promised to resolve within 24 hours, and the ceasefire achieved in Gaza has so far not led to any beginnings of a political mechanism that could one day result in a just and lasting peace.

In both cases, Trump has only himself to blame. In February, in the Oval Office of the White House, he dramatically broke with his predecessor Joe Biden’s consistent support for Kyiv, without obtaining anything in return from Vladimir Putin. The latter is now able to impose his vision of a war he started, without ever being contradicted by his American counterpart.

Devastating deterioration

Following the path of his Democratic predecessor, Washington’s alignment with the extreme positions of Benjamin Netanyahu, ranging from a Gaza Strip where Palestinians are barely surviving to an occupied West Bank handed over to Israeli settlers and soldiers, promises ever more devastating deterioration. Trump has also proved incapable of influencing US allies, starting with the United Arab Emirates, which is fueling a fratricidal war in Sudan, the ongoing horrors of which have recently been reported in these pages.

The US president has three more years to deliver an assessment in line with his ambitions. This requires lessons to be learned from the most controversial decisions of his early term. The abandonment of American soft power, whose brutality has cost thousands of lives where Washington once aided the most vulnerable, the open disregard for universal values such as human rights, and for already-weakened multilateral institutions, and the hostility toward historic allies, especially Europeans: Do these really meet the imperative of “America First”? Or do they, in reality, play into the hands of Washington’s historic rivals, namely Moscow and Beijing?