US foreign policy's long been transactional – but not like Trump's

AllAfrica

2 days ago

The US president, Donald Trump, watched on recently as the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan shook hands in the White House. They had just signed what Trump called a 'peace deal' to end nearly four decades of conflict.
The deal grants the US exclusive rights to develop a transit corridor through southern Armenia, linking Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan. The White House says the corridor will be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.
Trump has positioned the US as the guarantor of security in the South Caucasus, packaging this as a commercial opportunity for American companies. This exemplifies what researchers call transactional foreign policy, a strategy that offers rewards or threatens costs to get others to act rather than persuading them through shared values.
US presidents have long mixed economic incentives with diplomacy. But Trump's approach represents something very different. It's a foreign policy that operates outside institutional constraints and targets democratic allies. It exploits American power for personal gain in ways no previous president has attempted.
US presidents have commonly used transactional approaches in their foreign policy. In the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt promised to protect Latin American governments from internal rebels and external European intervention to ensure debt payments to American bankers.
This sometimes required the US military to take control of customs houses, as happened in the Dominican Republic in 1905 and Cuba in 1906. Presidents Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge ordered similar military interventions in Nicaragua in 1911, Honduras in 1911 and 1912, Haiti in 1915 and Panama in 1926.
In the mid-20th century, presidents Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy innovated foreign aid policy in an attempt to dampen the appeal of communism. They did so specifically through land reform policies.
American officials viewed rural poverty in developing countries as fertile ground for communist recruitment during the Cold War. So US aid was used to promote food price stabilisation and facilitate land distribution.
Around the same time, Dwight Eisenhower applied financial pressure on the UK during the 1956 Suez crisis. Britain and France, coordinating with Israel, invaded Egypt to retake the critical Suez Canal waterway after it was nationalised. The US blocked British access to financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to force the withdrawal of its troops.
More recently, Barack Obama's 2015 Iran nuclear deal bundled sanctions relief with nuclear limits. And Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, coupled export controls with subsidies and tax credits to pull allies into a shared tech-security posture. As a result, Japan and the Netherlands limited the sale of semiconductor equipment to China.
The Armenia-Azerbaijan peace negotiations also began under the Biden administration. It is not hard to imagine that a similar deal, without the Trump branding, would have occurred under a Kamala Harris presidency.
Trump's undemocratic approach
While a transactional approach isn't unique in American foreign policy, Trump's strategy marks a shift. Particularly in his second term, it resembles that of a typical authoritarian leader. Trump is carrying out his approach with minimal congressional or judicial constraint, with policies shaped by personal whims rather than institutional consistency.
This manifests in four key ways. First, Trump operates outside international and domestic legal frameworks. His tariff policies, for example, probably violate international and US domestic laws.
Second, Trump systematically targets democratic allies while embracing authoritarian partners. The US has had strained relationships with its allies before. But there has never been this level of animosity towards them. Trump has threatened to annex Canada, while praising authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Viktor Orban and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Third, Trump prioritizes domestic political enemies over traditional foreign adversaries. He has gutted institutions that he views as politically hostile, like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department. He has even deployed federal forces in US cities under dubious legal reasoning.
And fourth, Trump exploits American foreign policy for personal gain in ways no previous US president has attempted. He receives more gifts from foreign governments, including a US$400 million Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from Qatar. The jet was expected to serve as Air Force One during his presidency, but was transferred to Trump's presidential library foundation.
Trump's own company, the Trump Organization, has also signed deals to build luxury towers in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. And Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner secured US$2 billion from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund just six months after leaving the White House. Kushner has denied that the investment represented a conflict of interest.
Authoritarian approaches lead to authoritarian outcomes. Research consistently shows that authoritarian systems produce weaker alliances, underinvestment in public goods and non-credible promises.
They also decrease state capacity as professional institutions are hollowed out in favour of personal loyalty networks. Trump's weakening of career diplomatic services and development agencies sacrifices institutional competence for direct presidential control. This undermines the very capabilities needed to implement international agreements effectively.
Trump's style further encourages flattery over mutual interests. The naming of the Armenian transit corridor mirrors earlier examples: Poland's 2018 proposal for a US military base named 'Fort Trump', foreign nominations for a Nobel peace prize and overt flattery at diplomatic meetings. These are all designed to sway a leader with personal praise rather than emphasising American interests.
Previous US presidents usually embedded transactional bargains within larger institutional projects such as NATO, the IMF, non-proliferation regimes or the liberal trade system. While those arrangements disproportionately benefited the US, they also produced global gains.
Trump's deals may yield benefit. The Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement, for instance, could reduce the risk of conflict and unlock trade in the South Caucasus. But his approach represents a fundamentally different kind of American leadership – one that is undemocratic.
Patrick E Shea is senior lecturer in international relations and global governance, University of Glasgow
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.