Filenews 1 October 2025 - by Andreas Kluth
Credibility, like trust and reputation, is difficult to gain and easily lost. It is also catastrophically costly when lost, especially in international relations. Thus, it is not at all negligible that Donald Trump, eight months after starting his second term as US president, has squandered whatever credibility America had left in both foreign and security policy.
The latest embarrassing moments came last week, when Trump fired multiple spikes on the same day, making world leaders take turns shocked, puzzled, or — most devastating — indifferent, bordering on embarrassment. In a verbose speech at the United Nations, Trump insulted not only the institution in question but also countries from Brazil to Britain. Later, he improvised his latest twist on the Russian war against Ukraine.
Kiev, he said, could "fight and win all of Ukraine back to its original form" because Russia looks like a "paper tiger". That message came a month after Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for Russian President Vladimir Putin — and after first set, then shifted, and then timidly threw an ultimatum to Putin to enter ceasefire talks. In the months leading up, Trump had accused Ukraine in various ways of invading its own territory and argued that Kiev had "no paper" and had to cede territory. And all this time, he constantly claimed that Putin would never have invaded if he, that is, Trump, had been in the White House in 2022.
A US president, unlike the rest, has many audiences, domestic and foreign. International ones include adversaries, allies, and other countries that could go either way. The primary opponent in this context is, of course, Putin. His KGB-trained mind seems to have long concluded that Trump is what the Soviet-era KGB called a "useful idiot."
Since Trump took office this year, Putin has not held back, but intensified his bombing of Ukraine, as well as his "grey zone" operations against European NATO countries – and all this without suffering any noticeable consequences from Washington. In recent days, Russia has even sent drones to Poland and Romania, fighter jets to Estonia and apparently more drones to Scandinavia. This does not look like respect, fear and awe for Trump's "power".
Trump is not the first U.S. president in recent history to lose America's credibility. Barack Obama once drew a red line to prevent Syria's Bashar al-Assad from using chemical weapons against his own people, and then did nothing when the dictator did just that in 2013. Trump also eroded American credibility in his first term, such as when he first threatened the North Korean dictator, then "fell in love" with him, and then went uninvolved when Kim Jong Un put his nuclear program on the fast track, in which he remains. Trump also negotiated a flawed deal with the Taliban for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, which his successor, Joe Biden, then executed with a disastrous withdrawal.
In this context, anyone who has followed US policy over the past decade, from friendly Europe to rival China, already had reason to doubt the credibility of the US. What Trump did in his second term is to remove doubts and confirm the loss. The allies now know that they cannot trust America, while the adversaries are banding together and recalculating their plans for "mischief" or worse.
Researchers have been studying credibility in international relations since at least the Munich Agreement of 1938. At that infamous meeting, which today means derogatory "appeasement", Britain and France tried to prevent war with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, but they did not bring any credibility to the table – that is, not in the eyes of Adolf Hitler, which was what mattered.
During the Cold War, credibility was the linchpin of strategies and game theory aimed at preventing East-West conflict from developing into a nuclear conflict. "[Credibility] is one of the few things worth fighting for," said Thomas Selling. Credibility – in this case meaning the assurance of catastrophic retaliation against any first strike – was and is the quintessence of deterrence.
After the Cold War, when the nuclear threat seemed to be waning, scholars began to put forward caution. Was credibility based on past behavior or on subjective assessments of the future actions of the incumbent in the White House? How do cognitive biases distort perceptions?
Keren Yarhi-Milo, dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, says many policymakers have concluded that "it may not be worth fighting for reputation," especially after the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Dropping bombs on someone to prove that you're willing to drop bombs on someone is just the worst reason to use force," Obama said in an attempt to explain his failure in Syria — failing to understand that other enemies were now less likely to consider future American red lines.
In 2025, such reasoning looks like a passé again, as the deficit in American credibility seems to invite more aggression from geopolitical rivals or from uncontrolled countries. What Trump tried to sell as a force through the "madman theory" looks more and more like weakness through whimsy, indecision and chaos. Jarhi-Milo and Hillary Clinton (both teach a course together at Columbia) argue that he is also deluding himself into believing that personal chemistry (with Putin, say) can replace strategy and expertise in international affairs, and above all genuine determination.
Suspicions of danger are everywhere. America's partners are becoming increasingly anxious and making alternative deals for their security: Saudi Arabia has just signed a defense pact with Pakistan after witnessing an Israeli strike against its Gulf neighbour, Qatar, which is an ally of the United States, but received no help from it. America's adversaries continue to test the resolve of Trump and the West, as Putin does in eastern Europe. Or, like Xi Jinping in Beijing and Kim in Pyongyang, war scenarios are once again running in secret. Other countries, such as India, are reluctant to commit to America and are keeping all options open, even shaking hands with Moscow and Beijing.
These reactions to America's loss of credibility will increase the risk of global conflict. The risk will increase even more if the US, under the current or a future president, panics and decides to overcompensate for the restoration of its reputation, with a ostentatiously severe turn that could end in war. If America and the whole world are becoming less secure, it is because Donald Trump's foreign policy is, literally, unreliable.
Adaptation – Editing: Lydia Roubopoulou
