Has Trump's Foreign Policy Already Peaked? — with Ian Bremmer

**Dan Senor** (0:00)
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**Ian Bremmer** (0:23)
Even if there are folks that in the United States in this case that feel like the abused spouse by Israel, and there are some that do feel that way, there are a lot of young people, Democrats and Republicans, that say we shouldn't be supporting Israel. But the reality is that the response to that will be a hedging strategy. It will not be a decoupling strategy. It's inconceivable to me that a Democrat or Republican administration in 2029 would decouple from Israel any more than they would decouple from NATO. But having said that, I do think that the United States has done a lot of damage to its long-term alliances, and I think that Netanyahu has done a lot of damage to Israel's long-term relationship with the United States by putting himself above the interests of the country.
I think most Israelis believe that.

**Dan Senor** (1:19)
It's 12 p.m. on Thursday, July 28th here in New York City. It's 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 28th in Israel. As Prime Minister Netanyahu is meeting with President Trump at the White House, a meeting that might shed light on the next phase of the Iran War. There's a conventional narrative out there that since the end of World War II, America's foreign policy has been built in part on having the strongest military and economy in the world and a network of alliances that provided geopolitical and security leverage to the United States. And so the narrative goes, then came Donald Trump who implemented a very different policy, one in which America has not withdrawn from the world. It is still striking enemies, arming partners, pressuring allies, and reshaping the global economy, but its relationships are becoming more conditional and more transactional. Allies are spending more on their own defense, but they're also hedging, wondering whether a commitment from Washington is only good until the next election. This policy might have been a long overdue correction. America's allies have often been accused of free riding, international institutions have constrained Washington, and a tougher United States may be forcing other countries to carry their own weight. But pressures both at home and abroad have been mounting. And with the midterm elections coming up here in November, our guest today argues that President Trump's foreign policy may have reached its peak. Have the Iran war, Venezuela's regime change, and the transactional foreign policy met its ceiling? For Israel, this question is not theoretical. Is Israel the exception to this question? Bound to America by military, intelligence, political and cultural ties, too deep to break? Or is Israel a preview of the alliances America will retain? Indispensable, deeply integrated, but increasingly transactional.
Our guest today has spent years thinking about America's foreign policy and what happens when no country is both willing and able to sustain international order.
Ian Bremmer is the president and founder of the Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, both of which we'll link to in the show notes, which provides nonpartisan news and analysis of global affairs. He's the author of numerous books.
Our conversation right after this brief message.

**Daniel Hartman** (3:35)
Hi, I'm Daniel Hartman, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

**Yossi Klein Halevi** (3:39)
And I'm Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.

**Daniel Hartman** (3:43)
What's more important, to be feared by your enemies? Or morally true to yourself?

**Yossi Klein Halevi** (3:48)
Should Israel strive to be a nation among nations? Or should it accept the fact that it is now a fortress apart?

**Daniel Hartman** (3:55)
What do Israelis and Diaspora Jews owe each other?

**Yossi Klein Halevi** (3:58)
If you're Jewish, or a friend and ally, these questions have been gnawing at you these past few years.

**Daniel Hartman** (4:04)
For some of you, like for us, these questions have been keeping you up at night. And for some, they've been simmering in the background, waiting for answers.

**Yossi Klein Halevi** (4:13)
But dilemmas don't always have clear answers. What they do deserve are honest and respectful debates.

**Daniel Hartman** (4:20)
And as it happens, Yossi and I love to challenge each other to get to the bottom of things.

**Yossi Klein Halevi** (4:26)
We look at current events through a lens that speaks to us most deeply, a Jewish lens.

**Daniel Hartman** (4:31)
So, if today's Jewish dilemmas are on your mind, tune in to our conversation on For Heaven's Sake, a partnership between Ark Media and the Shalom Hartman Institute.