Donald Trump calls his foreign policy America First. Its stated objectives are readily understood: lower energy costs, prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, end the war in Ukraine, make European allies carry more of the burden of their own defence, and protect American economic and strategic power.
But foreign policy cannot be judged only by its intentions. It must also be judged by its consequences — including consequences that were never intended.
Recent events connect issues that are often discussed separately: the confrontation with Iran, disruption of global energy markets, a new reliance on Russian diesel, pressure on Ukraine to stop attacking Russian refineries, growing European doubts about American reliability, and China’s opportunity to benefit from divisions among its competitors.
This article does not claim to know Donald Trump’s private motives. Nor does it argue that every consequence discussed below is inevitable. Instead, it asks a simpler question: are these policies achieving their stated objectives — and what credible risks might they create?
Iran: destroying facilities is not the same as eliminating a nuclear threat
The Trump administration says military and economic pressure on Iran is necessary to prevent Tehran obtaining a nuclear weapon and to constrain its missile and regional military capabilities.
US and Israeli strikes have severely damaged Iran’s known enrichment infrastructure, and Iran is not currently known to be enriching uranium. That is a significant military result. But it is not the same as permanently eliminating Iran’s nuclear capability.
Before the attacks, the US intelligence community assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had not authorised the weapons programme suspended in 2003. At the same time, Iran had accumulated an unprecedented stockpile of highly enriched uranium and possessed the technical capability to shorten the route to a weapon if its leadership changed course.
The attacks damaged physical infrastructure. They did not erase scientific knowledge. Significant enriched material may remain, while reduced access for International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors has made independent verification more difficult.
That creates two possible long-term outcomes. Iran could conclude that pursuing nuclear weapons is simply too costly. Or Iranian leaders could draw the opposite lesson: states without nuclear weapons can be attacked, while nuclear-armed states are considerably harder to attack.
Neither outcome is inevitable. Both are credible enough that policymakers should consider them.
The energy contradiction
The confrontation with Iran has also affected energy markets. Disruption around the Strait of Hormuz — one of the world’s most important petroleum routes — has contributed to higher and more volatile oil and fuel prices.
Trump has simultaneously made reducing diesel prices an important objective. In October 2026 he announced an agreement following discussions with Vladimir Putin under which substantial additional quantities of Russian diesel would be made available to the market.
That produces an uncomfortable policy tension. The United States is attempting to alleviate an energy-price problem partly through Russian supply while pursuing a Middle Eastern strategy that itself contributes to disruption in global petroleum markets.
Russia, diesel and Ukraine
The contradiction becomes sharper when Ukraine enters the picture.
Ukraine has been attacking Russian refineries as part of its war against the country that invaded it. Trump has demanded that Ukraine stop those attacks, explicitly connecting them with reduced diesel production and higher prices. He has also publicly called for Ukrainians to replace President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a leader capable of making a peace agreement.
International law does not give Ukraine unlimited freedom to attack energy infrastructure. Individual targets must satisfy the laws governing military objectives, distinction, proportionality and protection of civilians. But a country exercising its right of self-defence is not automatically prohibited from striking legitimate military objectives inside the aggressor’s territory.
The question of consistency is therefore unavoidable. If disruption to fuel markets does not prevent the United States pursuing military objectives it considers essential to its national security, should fuel prices prevent Ukraine from attacking legitimate targets it considers important to resisting an invasion?
The money behind Russian energy
There is another contradiction. American sanctions on Russian petroleum have repeatedly been justified on the grounds that energy revenue helps finance Russia’s war. Trump’s own Treasury Department has used precisely that reasoning when sanctioning major Russian oil companies.
Allowing additional Russian diesel sales therefore creates additional commercial revenue for Russian energy producers, although the unpublished terms mean that the precise benefit to the Russian state cannot presently be calculated. It would be misleading to claim that a particular diesel payment directly buys a particular Russian weapon. But increasing energy revenue weakens one of the economic pressures deliberately designed to constrain Russia’s capacity to sustain an expensive war.
The same US administration continues to restrict Iranian petroleum revenue partly because such income can support Iran’s military capabilities. The principle — energy revenue can support military power — is therefore accepted by Washington. The question is whether that principle is being applied consistently.
What peace is Ukraine being asked to accept?
Russia continues to claim Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as Russian territory despite not fully controlling all four regions. Ukraine has resisted demands to surrender additional territory and is seeking credible security guarantees against another Russian invasion.
Ukraine is participating in negotiations. The disagreement is therefore not accurately reduced to “Russia wants peace while Ukraine refuses it”. The dispute concerns the terms of peace: territory, military security and whether any settlement would deter another invasion.
A negotiated territorial compromise is not automatically appeasement. Wars sometimes end with painful compromises. But if territorial aggression eventually produces internationally accepted territorial gains without a credible deterrent against repetition, other governments may draw conclusions about the usefulness of military force.
The nuclear lesson of Ukraine
Ukraine adds another uncomfortable dimension to the Iran question.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine relinquished the nuclear weapons located on its territory. Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum it received security assurances concerning its sovereignty and borders from Russia, the United States and Britain. Those assurances were not equivalent to NATO’s Article 5 guarantee, and it would be inaccurate to claim that America promised automatically to go to war for Ukraine.
Nevertheless, Russia subsequently violated Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Governments elsewhere can observe that history. If states conclude that international assurances can fail while possession of nuclear weapons provides a stronger deterrent against invasion, efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation become more difficult.
Europe: a stronger ally — or a more independent power?
Trump has demanded for years that European countries spend more on defence. On that measure, his pressure is producing results. European defence expenditure is rising sharply.
But why Europe is becoming more self-reliant matters.
Britain remains deeply connected to the United States through defence, intelligence and nuclear cooperation, yet has placed limits on participation in American offensive operations against Iran. France has increasingly argued for European strategic autonomy. Germany has maintained its sanctions policy toward Russia despite Trump’s Russian diesel decision. Poland remains strongly committed to the American military relationship because of its proximity to Russia, while Italy has demonstrated that even a government politically sympathetic to Trump can disagree sharply with Washington over military policy.
The result is not a European-American divorce. NATO remains central to European security, and Europe continues to depend heavily on American intelligence, logistics, long-range strike capabilities and nuclear deterrence.
But Europe is increasingly building capabilities that could reduce those dependencies.
Could Europe become a strategic superpower?
The possibility should no longer be dismissed.
Europe possesses enormous economic, technological and industrial resources. Britain and France possess nuclear weapons. Germany is an industrial and increasingly important military power. Poland is rapidly strengthening its armed forces. The EU’s Readiness 2030 programme is intended to mobilise hundreds of billions of euros for defence, procurement and industrial capacity.
A truly independent European defence capability remains years away. But a European strategic pillar incorporating British and French nuclear deterrence, German industrial strength, Polish and Nordic military capability and wider European resources could eventually become a formidable deterrent.
That need not make Europe an American rival. A stronger European pillar could make NATO stronger by sharing the burden more evenly.
But if European integration is driven primarily by declining confidence in Washington, America may discover an unintended consequence: it successfully persuaded Europe to become capable of defending itself — and simultaneously reduced Europe’s need to follow American leadership.
Energy dominance — or continuing dependence?
Trump’s domestic energy strategy prioritises expanding American oil, gas and coal production. Greater domestic production can improve supply and potentially reduce prices in the short term. But oil remains a globally traded commodity whose price is affected by wars, sanctions, shipping routes and decisions taken thousands of miles from the United States.
Renewable electricity cannot solve an immediate diesel shortage, and petroleum cannot yet be replaced in every sector. But sustained investment in renewable generation, nuclear power, storage, electricity grids and electrified transport offers another kind of energy security: reducing the proportion of an economy exposed to international petroleum shocks.
The relevant criticism is therefore not that all fossil-fuel production should stop tomorrow. It is whether concentrating national policy on fossil-fuel abundance preserves the geopolitical vulnerabilities that “energy dominance” is supposed to overcome.
And then there is China
China may be one of the largest strategic beneficiaries of a more divided international system — without needing to create those divisions itself.
It would be inaccurate to describe China as a country with no territorial ambitions or willingness to use coercion. Beijing claims Taiwan as Chinese territory, has not renounced the use of force, and continues substantial military and maritime pressure around the island.
But China also has little interest in global economic collapse. It depends upon international trade, imported energy and functioning markets. Prolonged disruption of the Strait of Hormuz hurts China as well as Western economies.
What benefits Beijing is something subtler: an America distracted by multiple conflicts; a Russia increasingly dependent upon Chinese trade and markets; and American allies becoming less willing automatically to align themselves with Washington.
China does not need Europe to become pro-Chinese. A Europe that is simply more strategically independent of the United States already changes the balance of international power.
What Beijing may learn from Ukraine
Ukraine provides China with contradictory lessons.
Russia’s experience demonstrates that invading a determined neighbour can be extraordinarily expensive, militarily unpredictable and economically damaging. That is a powerful warning against attempting to seize Taiwan by force.
But Chinese strategists can also observe Western political endurance. How long will democratic governments sustain expensive commitments? How reliable are American security promises across different administrations? Can economic pressure eventually override strategic objectives? What happens when the victim of aggression is pressured to make concessions in order to end a costly war?
We cannot know what conclusions China’s leadership will ultimately draw. But these are foreseeable questions for any government studying the conflict.
The larger question
None of this establishes that Trump wants instability, wants Russia to win, wants Europe weakened or wants China strengthened. Claims about hidden motives are unnecessary.
The more important question concerns consequences.
A military campaign intended to prevent nuclear proliferation could strengthen another country’s perceived need for a nuclear deterrent. A peace strategy intended to end one war could weaken deterrence against future territorial aggression if the settlement rewards conquest without credible security guarantees. An energy strategy intended to create independence can leave an economy exposed to international fossil-fuel shocks. Pressure intended to make allies contribute more to their defence can simultaneously encourage them to prepare for a future in which America is no longer indispensable.
And while the United States, Russia, Iran, Ukraine and Europe struggle with those consequences, China can watch, trade, negotiate and learn.
The policies may therefore need to be judged not merely by whether they are labelled America First, but by a harder question:
Could a foreign policy intended to increase American power ultimately accelerate the emergence of a world in which America has less influence over its allies, its adversaries and the international system itself?
Sources and further reading
United Nations — UN Charter, Chapter VII and Article 51
International Atomic Energy Agency — Verification and monitoring in Iran
US Treasury — Sanctions on major Russian oil companies
Reuters — Trump announces Russian diesel supply agreement after talks with Putin
Financial Times — US pressure on Ukraine over strikes on Russian refineries
Washington Post — Trump calls for Ukraine to replace President Zelenskyy
Reuters — Strait of Hormuz traffic and oil flows during the Iran conflict
European Commission — European defence readiness
Élysée — Franco-German Defence and Security Council
UK Government — UK-France nuclear policy and cooperation
Note: This article distinguishes documented events from analysis. Possible future consequences are presented as possibilities, not predictions. Where negotiations or sanctions remain in flux, conclusions may change as new evidence emerges.