Why has Donald Trump transformed his foreign policy from isolationist to interventionist?
He doesn’t have some newfound curiosity in foreign affairs. Nor does he now deeply care about the global order. He’s shifted his focus for a different reason entirely: because his domestic agenda keeps getting stymied by checks and balances.
Unlike at home, Trump has few restraints on the global stage. He likes that environment much more.
He’s a bull who needs his China shop.
America’s domestic political system is resisting Trump more than many think. Sure, he’s gotten things done and caused lots of trouble. And to the victims of his abuses, the restraints on his power are far too weak.
But Trump’s domestic agenda has been muddled and underwhelming, especially for a president whose party controls Congress.
This is true even when the noise is screeching. Take DOGE, Trump’s partnership with Elon Musk. Remember how it was supposed to dramatically reduce federal spending?
For all its sound and fury, DOGE was largely negated by the very president who authorized it. About Trump's 2025 spending bill, Musk asked: “What’s the point of DOGE if the government’s just going to add $5 trillion more in debt?”
Moreover, while many Republicans slavishly acquiesce to Trump, not all of them do. Republican senators are rejecting his demand to end the filibuster. House Republicans are investigating the Epstein files.
The courts, for their part, rule against Trump regularly, including striking down his signature tariffs policy. His effort to undo birthright citizenship will likely soon meet the same fate.
State and local governments are likewise resisting Trump. Just look at California’s and Virginia’s broad gerrymanders in response to his (and his fellow Republicans’) election machinations.
The media–traditional and independent alike–have been fierce, notwithstanding Trump’s threats (and lawsuits). And the people in the streets, like in Minnesota, have made their voices heard.
Polling data suggests that Democrats will take the House in November. If they do, Trump will likely be impeached (again), and his legislative agenda will be in tatters.
Indeed, Trump has worthy opponents across American society thwarting his domestic ambitions.
Every single day.
But foreign policy, alas, is different. These checks don’t work internationally. A simple comparison illustrates the point: The same president who can’t get his political rival, Adam Schiff, indicted can unleash the might of America’s military on a whim.
Trump can largely do what he wants globally–including blowing up suspicious ships, taking out heads of state, invading sovereign nations, and threatening to end a civilization on social media.
It’s not supposed to work this way. The United States Constitution is ambiguous in numerous respects. But with declaring war, it’s clear: Article 1, Section 8 grants to Congress, not the president, “The power to declare war.”
“Only Congress can declare war,” Republican Senator Rand Paul said in March while protesting the Iran invasion. “That’s not my opinion. That's Article 1 of the Constitution … History will not be kind to a Congress that gave away its most solemn responsibility.”
As Trump's supporters emphasize, multiple presidents have initiated hostilities without congressional support. But numerous others have gone to Congress, as George W. Bush did in 2002 before the Iraq war.
One virtue of working with Congress before declaring war is that the public debate is more robust. Today, the American people are left to guess why Trump invaded Iran.
When he did so, without first seeking congressional authorization, he violated Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
It’s that simple. Yet there was no practical way to stop him.
Congress moves far too slowly to block an aggressive commander-in-chief. And the courts can only do so much. Judges can force Trump to refund his tariffs, for example, but they can’t unwind the invasion of another country.
Ultimately, the person in the Oval Office is what matters most. As John Adams put it long ago, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality … [which] would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
Trump’s global ambitions flow from his domestic frustrations. The way to restrain him should be to follow the Constitution. That is, unfortunately, like trying to catch a whale with a fishing net.
Edward Larson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning legal historian, and William Cooper is an attorney and author. They cohost the podcast How Our Constitution Works And Why It Doesn't.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.