Why Are We Shooting Ourselves in the Foot, Face, and Other Places?

Mr. President, You Owe the American People a Clear Explanation--Drawings by Genevieve Shapiro

Sir,

You ran and won on a platform promising to rein in they/them, the price of eggs, and immigration. To a lesser extent, you vowed to bring “efficiency” to public institutions while repeatedly claiming you had nothing to do with the government-gutting proposals of Project 2025, most prominently during the presidential debate. Apart from guaranteeing to end the war in Ukraine on “day one,” you said little about foreign policy.

This is why the frenzied activity of your first month back in office—which your supporters take for evidence of progress and your detractors see as a smoke screen for the capture of the state by plutocratic interests—deserves a clear and convincing public explanation.

I hope you use your scheduled March 4 televised address to Congress to do this plainly, and to calm the public’s mounting anxiety. Some of your more illustrious predecessors have provided this kind of presidential leadership in similar circumstances of dramatic departure and sweeping change in the past. (Fat chance, I know. I see the TL:DR¹ notation in my mind’s eye already.)

*****

Two Basic Questions

Given the disparity between promises made and your radical actions, you owe the people credible answers and convincing explanations to two basic questions:

First, why the targeted destruction of the federal government by an unelected immigrant billionaire without official status, relevant background, or formal qualifications, not to mention a shred of accountability to Congress or the general public? The consequences of this reckless experiment will ripple well beyond the narrow arc of your administration and impact present and future Americans across the country in untold ways. It’s true you won a close election. But this narrow margin gave you nothing close to a mandate to take such radical, far-reaching, and potentially dangerous action, which you never previewed in your campaign.

I know you will need to be briefed on the technical details of the many hidden things being done in your name (and you will never know what they don’t tell you or probably understand much of what they do). But a clear and convincing public explanation is the least you owe the American people, some of whom—according to early reports—may be feeling the pangs of buyer’s remorse for this and other reasons.

Second, why the radical realignment of a successful (all told) foreign policy orientation that has been in place for over 75 years? You have a well-earned reputation for disruption, and (based on everything we saw in Round 1) your critics had reason to expect the worst in Round 2. Still, you have exceeded expectations, without so much as hinting at the scope and scale of what was to come. Where does one begin? You have assailed neighbors, friends, and allies for no apparent reason, burned through in mere days the reservoir of goodwill accumulated over decades of painstaking public and behind-the-scenes effort, and abruptly and perversely aligned yourself with our country’s principal strategic enemy. In denying the reality that Russia initiated an unprovoked war of aggression, you voted in the United Nations against long established American interests, values, and allies in NATO, Europe, and Ukraine, and with the forces of global autocracy and disorder—Russia, Belarus, and North Korea, among notable others.

Together with your bullying, bellowing VP, your staged Oval Office mugging of the hapless punch-drunk wartime President of Ukraine was a fantastical, nightmarish, unspeakable embarrassment. If you hadn’t already done so before, you brought eternal shame to yourself, to the office of the president, and to the entire nation. That you have spun this despicable kayfabe spectacle as a display of strength that made for “great television” surprised no-one. But what about the real world, where Ukraine continues to fend off missile and drone attacks from your friend Putin and people continue dying?

Why? Where will it end?

The American people deserve a clear and compelling explanation.

You have already dismantled the US Agency for International Development, a symbol of our values, generosity, and common cause with people beyond our borders, and one of the principal policy tools of our foreign engagement. Now you reportedly plan to scale down our diplomatic footprint and global presence more broadly², and this at a time when strategic competition with the People's Republic of China (PRC) is ramping up. (Your own Secretary of State made this case categorically in his confirmation hearing).

The cost-benefit assessment of such a plan doesn’t even begin to make sense. A rational approach based on clear and present US national interests would require a move in precisely the opposite direction—of strengthening, reinforcing, and investing more in diplomacy and international engagement, not less. This engagement begins with being physically present. Instead, you will leave the field free and clear for exploitation by our fiercest competitors and rivals, and perversely prepare the terrain for countless uncontested own goals. Who will you blame?

Why?

The American people deserve a clear and compelling explanation.

As any student of strategy knows, our national security draws from a range of instruments—from diplomacy and information to military and economic. Depending on need and circumstances and the interplay with our national interests, we rely on a mix of strategic approaches using more of one instrument or more of the other. I understand that building trust and “tending the garden” (as President Reagan’s Secretary of State George Schultz used to say)³ may not be your thing, but that critical element of international relations enters the power calculus, too. (Try calling in a favor from a friend you have just publicly dissed, lied to, or tried to extort.) Just as importantly, our national security requires the skilled orchestration of all available instruments by a capable conductor. If one didn’t know better (and one doesn’t), one might get the impression that your goal was to hollow out our strategic instruments and to hobble their successful orchestration. Why is this impression wrong?

*****

Absent a clear and convincing explanation, your actions appear frankly puzzling, like a kind of unprompted and unnecessary unilateral dismemberment, akin to shooting ourselves repeatedly in the foot, face, and other places too.

Please help us make sense of this. Help us put things together. What is the strategic frame? How are our national interests being served by gutting the government and aligning with Russia? How will these changes benefit the American people, now and in the future? We need some reassurance. If there was ever a time, now is the time to play the role of President. Tell us why we shouldn’t yet ring the alarm bells for a five-alarm fire or call in the cavalry with sharp bugle cries, the wheels of our justice system turning too slow in light of the circumstances.

Depending on the credibility and plausibility of your explanation, those of us with continued faith in the resilience and response capability of our constitutional republic may feel the redoubled need to summon Congress from its slumber—to protect the system, contain the damage, and clean up after you, if they still can.

1. Too long/Didn’t read

2. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/27/trump-state-department-cuts-00206494

3. https://afsa.org/on-trust