Welcome to the Age of Dumb Kissinger

Newsweek

2 days ago

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For all his controversies, Henry Kissinger, who would have turned 102 last month, was a master strategist. His vision of realpolitik—rooted in cold calculation, balance of power, and pragmatic diplomacy—helped shape global politics for decades.
His legacy is instructive—and not just because Marco Rubio is the first person to serve simultaneously as secretary of State and national security advisor since Kissinger. President Donald Trump has stripped down and distorted the lessons of the late statesman into a crude, transactional, impulsive worldview that mistakes bluffing for strength and coercion for strategy.
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty
Welcome to the Age of Dumb Kissinger, where Washington is undermining its leverage, weakening alliances, and emboldening adversaries. Kissinger understood that power isn't just about threats—it's about credibility, relationships, and patience. Trump's transactional instincts betray an obsession with performative actions regardless of long-term costs.
Kissinger believed that power stemmed from a combination of economic strength, diplomatic influence, national self-interests, and military deterrence—but most importantly, the perception of resolve and strategic consistency.
Trump's version of power, however, is modeled on a shallow and superficial grasp of the bar takeover in Goodfellas—all chest-puffing bravado, but without the discipline, foresight, or grasp of power dynamics that true grand strategy requires.
In repeatedly weakening the coalitions that sustain American influence, Trump has demonstrated that he fundamentally misunderstands the sources of American power. His public skepticism of our NATO treaty commitments, at least unless allies pay more, ignores the alliance's strategic value as a bulwark against Russian expansionism and source for democratic resilience.
His efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into making concessions, while credulously accepting Russian President Vladimir Putin's lies and manipulations has not only undercut Kyiv's fight against Russian aggression but also signaled to Moscow that U.S. support for Europe is transactional and unreliable—a message Beijing appears to be taking away about Taiwan as well.
Trump can oscillate between impatience with Putin, even threatening Russia with sanctions coordinated with Europe, and backtracking after Putin makes just a marginal counteroffer in bad faith. Trump can be quick in throwing his fellow European leaders under the bus. Why? For no other reason than being entranced by Putin's lies and flirtations.
This is a sign of profound weakness, damaging to our nation's credibility, and, on the other side of the world, showing Chinese President Xi Jinping exactly who he's dealing with in Washington—a president prone to endless temper tantrums, whose mind can be changed in the last minute, sometimes with as little as a vague public statement, with no higher strategic thought than that.
Similarly, Trump's erratic behavior toward key economic partners further reflects his shallow grasp of power dynamics. His repeated tariff threats against Canada—a cornerstone of North American economic might—and bizarre musings about Greenland reveal a mindset that conflates economic leverage with diplomatic strategy.
And in perhaps the one instance where a much tougher stance on trade would engender broader public and even allies and partners' support—China—Trump has made it remarkably clear that his actions are driven by his feelings rather than solid, long-term policy planning to bring jobs and industry back to the United States.
A strategic approach would have consulted and coordinated with like-minded countries, especially in Europe and Japan, to put Beijing on notice about its beggar thy neighbors practices—such as overcapacities that erode others' industrial base.
But instead he went on his own, slapping a 145 percent rate on Beijing, convinced that it would bring China to the table to make concessions, only to back down later—generating "TACO" ("Trump always chickens out") headlines that describe his tariff hammer as less mighty than he claims because, very narrowly and without regard to the larger national interest, it would hurt his own base.
Taking America Off Center
Perhaps where Dumb Kissinger rings most true is in Trump's inability to understand Kissinger's ultimate goal: that maintaining a stable balance of power was consistent with our interests. Kissinger knew that stability required a web of relationships where each great power balanced the others—and where Washington operated as the fulcrum around which the system pivoted.
Trump's foreign policy, however, leans on disruption rather than order.
Kissinger's diplomacy excelled because he understood the value of predictability—that rivals must understand the limits of your ambition and the consequences of crossing redlines. Trump, however, mistakes unpredictability for strength and chaos for leverage. His admiration for strong men mirrors a mafioso-style belief in dominance and intimidation, rather than the calculated balance Kissinger sought.
The legacy of Dumb Kissinger diplomacy is a world less stable and certain of American leadership. By misunderstanding the foundations of power, Trump is squandering U.S. influence. By misapplying coercion without strategy, he is inflaming conflicts rather than resolving them. And by failing to understand the delicate balance that Kissinger worked to maintain, Trump is making America's rivals stronger and its allies more vulnerable.
Kissinger's realpolitik may have had its flaws—often ruthless and always morally ambiguous— but it was grounded in a coherent understanding of power and diplomacy. Trump's misunderstanding of the lessons of this approach have resulted in a foreign policy that is simple, crude, and ineffective.
Trump is showing what happens when realpolitik is reduced to mere transactionalism—and where spectacle outweighs strategy. So welcome to the Age of Dumb Kissinger—a world of bluster without balance, power without purpose, and chaos without control.
Michael Schiffer served as assistant administrator for Asia at USAID in the Biden administration, senior advisor and counselor at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and prior to that, at the Department of Defense in the Obama administration.
Anka Lee served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia at the Pentagon and led China policy and strategy at USAID in the Biden administration.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.