hen a patient talks to his doctor, his goal is to make sure the doctor
gets the correct diagnosis and to get the minimal treatment necessary.
He must avoid the temptation to insist that the doctor must do whatever
the patient wants. That would cause the doctor to label him as a
difficult patient. A
dentist can get revenge (“This might sting a bit”), but all
a regular doctor can do is fob him off onto somebody else, leaving the
patient’s problem unsolved.
Much of what US President Trump is trying to do, as desirable as it may be, uses this same style. His tactics produce resistance because his style creates opposition. He is the classic difficult patient.
Whenever my left-wing relatives mention Trump, they complain that his policies don’t make any sense to them. This is partly because the news media won’t speculate about Trump’s real objective. Yes, they’re biased and dishonest. But even if they wanted to tell us, they can’t because they don’t know what it is. No one does.
Trump can get what he wants by force or by explaining the problem. If he makes a good case, it will start a debate that produces cooperation instead of anxiety. If not, those who generally support him are forced to explain his dealmaking-by-brinkmanship strategy over and over. In fact, we can only speculate what our own country’s actual policy goals might be. We can blame the press and social media all we want, but the fact is that Trump’s ‘loose cannon’ tactic makes it hard to defend him because we’re liable to guess wrong.
The art of not bombing Greenland
If Trump could learn the language of technocratic obfuscation, it would go a long way toward a dazzling success for the Republicans in the mid-terms. But not telling us what’s going on disorients everyone, friend and enemy alike.
Obfuscation is not just the art of disguising one’s true intentions. It’s a way of achieving a goal by stating the problem, explaining why it must be solved, and then waiting until people suggest the solution you really want. That tactic was used by our greatest president, Calvin Coolidge, whose strategy was to keep his mouth shut and his options open. It prevents over-promising and gives the negotiating partners a sense that their views are being accounted for.
In the Greenland caper, Trump did the opposite: declaring the goal without explanation and explicitly not ruling out the use of force, which would have destroyed NATO. The Europeans, terrified of losing their protection, instead put a token ‘tripwire’ force to stop him.
Trump could have said “we calculate that the Greenlanders don’t realize they are in danger and in need of stronger protection, and we’re willing to help any way we can.” Instead he said, “all options are on the table ... we will get Greenland one way or the other,” which means the same thing, but in a threatening way. Then Trump started talking about how much he wanted to mine their rare-earth minerals. To him it probably sounded like a basis for a good deal; to the Greenlanders it suggested that the next time the USA drops an H-bomb on them it might not be a dud.
When Trump finally proposed his new Framework—something he could have gotten anytime—some of Trump’s supporters speculated that his real goal must have been to shake Europeans out of their complacency. Instead, the Euros saw it as successfully reining in a loose cannon. Instead of talking about ways to solve their problems (which might well be unsolvable), they now talk about the need to disengage from the US. This 4D chess can be tricky.
Other commentators speculated that the goal was to remind Europe that their territories are not invulnerable and can be taken away by any power, including the US, that sees them as valuable.
China is finding out the hard way that this approach weakens them in the long run. The world now sees China as rapacious and exploitative. The US is disinvesting and using tariffs to reindustrialize and onshore production. Yet even here, Trump’s mercurial policies baffle financial experts. To them, stability is everything. They praise Congress for being paralyzed because paralysis creates stability. Without stability, as New Yorkers might say, ain’t nobody reindustrializing nothing.
The art of not using tariffs as a tool of foreign policy
Trump may be the most prolific innovator in presidential history. The conservative press praise his accomplishments. But no one really expects the tariffs to survive Trump. Each time Trump uses them as a tool of foreign policy by raising and lowering them apparently on a whim, it convinces a few more people that our foreign policy is coercive, irresolute and unpredictable. The plan to build skyscrapers in Gaza has people taking bets on whether the Israelis or the Gazans will blow them up first. Bribing Greenlanders to join us doesn’t make sense, either. If being part of America was so desirable, they should pay us a million bucks apiece to get in.
Everyone knows it’s his way of negotiating: never tell anyone your real goal, scare the crap out of them by stating the most extreme option, then negotiate back to what you really want. But it can be counterproductive when used with friends. Needlessly antagonizing our good ally Denmark could well result in the sale of Greenland to Canada rather than the United States, leaving it essentially defenseless.
Those times when Trump managed to keep his mouth shut, let his less bombastic staff describe the policy, and then acted from quiet strength are the times he was most successful. Maybe our best tool of foreign policy right now is a big roll of duct tape. 3M makes some good duct tape, maybe the best duct tape ever. Just a thought.
jan 23 2026, 6:55 am
