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The second Trump administration has been far more disruptive, damaging, and dangerous than most observers—including me—expected, and the tragically inept war with Iran is driving that point home in spades. As a result, every country in the world is having to figure out how to deal with an increasingly rogue United States. Ask yourself: If you led Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Denmark, Australia, etc., what would you do?

Here’s why this is a hard problem. The United States is still very powerful, even if it is now pursuing policies—misguided mercantilism, mindless attacks on science and academia, overt hostility to immigrants of all sorts, doubling down on fossil fuel dependence, wasteful military spending, chronic deficits, etc.—that will weaken it over time. For the moment, however, other states still have to worry that U.S. power could be used to harm them either intentionally or inadvertently.

The second Trump administration has been far more disruptive, damaging, and dangerous than most observers—including me—expected, and the tragically inept war with Iran is driving that point home in spades. As a result, every country in the world is having to figure out how to deal with an increasingly rogue United States. Ask yourself: If you led Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Denmark, Australia, etc., what would you do?

Here’s why this is a hard problem. The United States is still very powerful, even if it is now pursuing policies—misguided mercantilism, mindless attacks on science and academia, overt hostility to immigrants of all sorts, doubling down on fossil fuel dependence, wasteful military spending, chronic deficits, etc.—that will weaken it over time. For the moment, however, other states still have to worry that U.S. power could be used to harm them either intentionally or inadvertently.

Second, as I have argued at length elsewhere, the United States is now acting like a predatory hegemon, exploiting positions of leverage built up over decades to exploit allies and adversaries alike. This zero-sum approach to nearly all relations with others includes a deep hostility toward most international institutions and norms, deliberately erratic behavior, and a tendency to treat other foreign leaders with ill-disguised contempt while expecting demeaning acts of submission and fealty from most of them. As the fallout from the war in Iran spreads throughout the region and around the world, it underscores that the administration either didn’t understand how its actions would affect other states or simply didn’t care.

Which brings me to the third problem: U.S. foreign policy is now in the hands of a remarkably incompetent set of officials, from the president on down. International influence depends on many things, but one of the key ingredients is other states’ belief that the people they have to deal with are smart, well-informed, and generally know what they are doing. At this point, does anyone in the higher echelons of the Trump administration merit that description? Not that I can see. Conducting foreign policy is a difficult business, and no government gets everything right, but this administration commits own goals on a weekly basis while insisting that it is infallible.

To make matters worse, some of these features are not going to be easy to correct after Trump leaves office, even if he is replaced by someone with very different views. The institutional capacity of the U.S. foreign-policy machinery is being hollowed out as experienced civil servants retire or are dismissed (include some senior military officers) and are either not replaced or superseded by Trumpian loyalists.

And because the U.S. body politic remains deeply polarized, other states must also worry that the pendulum will simply swing back and forth between........

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