Trump Has Lost Credibility Worldwide, at Huge Cost

By confusing friends and foes, strategy and personal chemistry, posturing and resolve, the American president has made everyone less safe.

"Credibility, like trust and a good reputation, is hard to earn, easy to lose. It’s also ruinously expensive once it’s gone, especially in international relations. So it is no small matter that Donald Trump, eight months into his second term as US president, has squandered whatever credibility America had left in foreign and security policy.

The latest embarrassments occurred last week, when Trump fired off several zingers on the same day, causing world leaders to be by turns shocked, puzzled or — most devastatingly — indifferent verging on bemused. In a rambling speech at the United Nations, Trump offended not only that institution but also individual countries from Brazil to Britain. Later, he ad-libbed his latest reversal on the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

Kyiv, he said, could “fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form” because Russia looks like a “paper tiger.” This missive came a month after Trump rolled out, literally, the red carpet for Russian President Vladimir Putin; and after he first set, then shifted, then sheepishly dropped an ultimatum to Putin to enter ceasefire talks. In the months before that, Trump had variously blamed Ukraine for its own invasion and claimed that Kyiv held “no cards” and had to cede territory. And all the while, he has kept asserting that Putin would never have invaded if only he, Trump, had been in the White House in 2022."

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-09-29/trump-has-lost-credibility-worldwide-at-huge-cost?srnd=homepage-americas