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President Donald Trump’s first week back in the White House sparked more drama than maybe any in history—the 70 executive orders, the pardons of 1,500 insurrectionists, the highly publicized raids and deportations. And then there were his opening moves in foreign policy, which wreaked their own kind of havoc.

But while his moves in domestic policy were expected—he’d promised them all through his reelection campaign—his moves on the world stage came largely as a surprise and portend capriciousness and chaos in the months ahead.

Even the one move that can be seen as a success in the short run—a standoff with the president of Colombia—may boomerang, to his and our detriment, in the long run.

The big promise Trump made in foreign policy was that he would end the Russia–Ukraine war “in 24 hours,” even before taking the oath of office. In fact, though, when he put his peace plan on the table, a few weeks after he won the election, Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected it out of hand. Last week, when Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Russian goods, Putin shrugged. (The U.S. imports almost nothing from Russia these days, so there’s almost nothing to tariff.)

It seems Trump thought he could get a quick and easy peace treaty because A) he’s the self-proclaimed master in “the art of the deal,” B) his predecessors were “totally inept” (as he said to a group of world leaders at Davos), and C) he “get[s] along” with Putin.

What he seems not to have realized (this was a pattern in his first term as well) is that A) dealing with world leaders is not the same as dealing with, say, the New York City Department of........

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