The Transactional Superpower: What Donald Trump Left Behind

By :Aditya Sinha
There was a time when American foreign policy came dressed in moral rhetoric. Democracy, human rights, and international order were the standard justifications, even when interventions were driven by power politics. Trump’s foreign policy rips off this mask. It is openly transactional. In Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi, he did not speak of liberty or reform. He spoke the language of deals.
The doctrine, such as it is, prioritises economic gain and immediate strategic alignment over any notion of value-based diplomacy. In doing so, it ends decades of moral posturing. America no longer sermonises about what others should be; it simply asks what they can offer. One exception would be Trump’s recent antics during his meeting with South African President. He played videos alleging white ‘genocide’ in South Africa.To that extent, there is a certain brutal honesty in this approach. Unlike past presidents who cloaked oil deals in the language of freedom or sold arms while decrying authoritarianism, Trump makes no such claims. His is a stripped-down realism, what Gerard Baker aptly calls “mater-realism", that foregrounds national interest over idealism. From a purely realist perspective, it is coherent. Foreign policy, as Morgenthau would argue, is not about morality but about power and survival. Trump’s doctrine takes that logic to its extreme: if an autocrat can deliver contracts, align on a geopolitical axis, or support a U.S. agenda, they are welcome, no questions asked.
But this pragmatism veers dangerously into ethical abdication. Consider the “gift" from Qatar, a Boeing 747 handed over to the Pentagon. While framed as a strategic gesture from a partner in the Gulf, it reeks of impropriety. Is it a gift, or a quiet payoff for favourable political treatment? The line blurs. Or take the warm embrace of Syria’s Ahmed al Sharaa.
Just a few years ago, this was a regime seen as an active enabler of anti-American insurgents in Iraq and a participant in crimes against its own people. Today, it is welcomed back into the fold because Riyadh prefers it. Then there’s the soft-pedaling of Chinese influence, alternating between tariff wars and cozying up for “win-win" deals, driven not by strategy but market whims. If values don’t matter, anything becomes negotiable.
One can argue that nowhere is the incoherence of this doctrine more evident than in Trump’s approach to China. On one hand, he promises economic decoupling and paints Beijing as America’s foremost strategic rival. On the other, he oscillates between tariff escalation and trade truce, driven less by long-term vision and more by momentary political calculus.
One month it’s an all-out economic war; the next, it’s about “beautiful deals." This back-and-forth has not only confused allies and markets, but also undermined America’s strategic leverage. Beijing, by contrast, has pursued a methodical, economically-rooted global expansion, securing ports, data infrastructure, and rare earths. Trump’s erraticism has done little to contain China’s rise; instead, it has highlighted Washington’s own drift, where grandstanding replaces strategy and trade is wielded not as statecraft but as campaign fodder.The Trump Doctrine does more than just merely reject idealism. It dismantles the moral architecture of American power without offering a stable alternative.
The result is a foreign policy defined not by consistency or vision, but by improvisation and indulgence. What emerges is a United States willing to overlook war crimes, corruption, and repression if the price is right.
In the short run, this may yield gain, investment deals, arms contracts, optics of strength. But in the long run, it risks corroding America’s credibility, weakening alliances built on trust, and empowering a world order where impunity thrives. The world may no longer have to listen to American sermons, but it must now reckon with a superpower that has put its conscience up for sale.

This shift also hollows out the institutions that have historically underpinned American diplomacy. The State Department is increasingly sidelined, its professional corps bypassed in favour of personal envoys, business intermediaries, and family members. Embassies are reduced to outposts of transactional engagement, their purpose distorted from long-term relationship-building to short-term deal brokering.

Foreign service officers trained in regional languages, history, and political nuance now find themselves irrelevant in a system that values loyalty over expertise and spectacle over substance. Over time, this corrodes institutional memory and damages the very machinery of diplomacy that allowed America to project influence with subtlety and permanence.

Globally, allies are adapting. In Europe, discomfort with America’s unpredictability has accelerated conversations around “strategic autonomy." In Asia, states hedging between Washington and Beijing now lean more cautiously toward China, not out of preference, but because trust in American consistency has eroded.

Even authoritarian partners, while happy to cash in on the new rules, know this is a volatile game. They may gain short-term favour, but they also recognize that in Trump’s world, loyalty is disposable, and alliances are always up for renegotiation. This creates a geopolitical environment that is not multipolar but transactional, where the absence of principle invites chaos.

What is perhaps most ironic is that Trump’s foreign policy, for all its bravado about American strength, reveals an anxious inwardness. Reducing international engagement to trade deals and loyalty tests reflects a diminished vision of global leadership. Great powers do not lead solely through coercion or commerce; they lead by setting norms, shaping systems, and investing in global public goods. That America, under Trump, no longer aspires.