From The New Republic:
How the Failed Orange Prince Became a Global Laughingstock
Machiavelli argued that it is better to be feared than loved. Donald Trump fails at both internationally—and it makes him dangerous.
In The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli states it is ideal to be both loved and feared, but because they rarely coexist, it is safer to be feared than loved. He argues that fear is more reliable than love, which is fickle, but crucially advises that a leader must avoid being hated. Donald Trump wants to be an autocrat who follows this advice but fails at it miserably on the international stage, and the world is in greater danger because of this.
Donald Trump has had success with this model inside the United States, to be sure. He is loved by a few, hated by many, and feared by all. Institutions routinely cave to his demands, including individuals, corporations, law firms, hospitals, and universities, even when those demands violate state or federal law.
The Republican Party has become the Party of Trump, where the organizational platform is whatever Trump says it is today. Indeed, Republicans are so afraid of Trump that they have all united around unrealities, like January 6 being a peaceful protest. To paraphrase George Orwell, “The president told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was his final, most essential command.” To do otherwise means losing your office at best, and being indicted by the Trump Department of Justice at worst.
Trump, however, does not have such leverage over people living in other countries, or their leaders. He is widely despised in educated, democratic countries, which even a year ago had no confidence in his leadership. Today, most people of the world express significantly higher approval of China’s despotic, genocidal regime than they do of U.S. leadership.
Behind Trump’s back, world leaders reportedly consider him a “laughing fool” and a buffoon. They even were caught sniggering at him in 2018. Reports indicate that many foreign leaders and diplomats view him as vain, susceptible to flattery, and easy to manipulate. This perception has led to a strategic, often performative, approach by world leaders to manage his transactional style of diplomacy, sometimes referred to as “kissing the ring” or “Trump Management 101.”
Now, even countries that had regarded him as a useful idiot, like Russia, are increasingly seeing diminishing value in courting him as an asset as the 2026 midterms approach. They sense that it’s going to be a drubbing, and Trump’s ability to throw his weight around will be constrained by a democratically held House, and perhaps Senate. Now, in places where Trump used to be popular (like Hungary), even Trump and JD Vance’sham-handed attempts to influence elections fell flat.
Conversely, countries are seeing increasing value in defying Trump. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney brought the Liberal Party of Canada to a shocking win in 2025 by repudiating Trump and promising to stand firm against him. Fifty-five percent of Canadians regard the United States as the greatest threat to Canadian national security, and yet they’re still more than willing to tell the U.S. to get stuffed when pressured to accede to maximalist demands. NATO has lost patience with him as a whole, basically telling him he’s on his own with the war he started. No matter how Trump has threatened, bullied, or cajoled European leaders, none (other than Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Ukraine) has offered to assist in reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
This situation of being neither loved nor feared, but nearly universally hated and mocked, has direct implications for the war with Iran. Currently, Trump seems content to extend the ceasefire indefinitely, relying on the assumption that the blockade will eventually force Iran’s hand. This seems unlikely: Iran is not a democracy, and public opinion counts for very little. The IRGC has already proven it can kill its way out of civil unrest. What is evolving is a test between it and the United States to see who can absorb the most economic pain, and Iran’s government seems more likely to survive it than Republicans on Capitol Hill in November 2026.
Trump has tried to bluster and threaten his way through negotiations: promising to destroy every Iranian power plant and infamously threatening on Truth Social that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Iran’s leadership, though fractured, still collectively looked at these threats and yawned a “whatever.” There are no indications that Iran will be back to the negotiating table, leaving Vance and Steven Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East,perpetually in a state of getting ready to leave for Islamabad for further talks.
Over time, the effects of the blockade will pile up on Trump, and he will be forced to either make peace on terms unfavorable to the U.S. (and to his own image as a master dealmaker) or resume bombing. So far, the bombing campaign seems to have accomplished little other than to put younger hard-liners in power and destroy a lot of antique military equipment that Iran didn’t need to close the Strait of Hormuz and terrorize its Gulf State neighbors. It did, however, put a serious dent in U.S. missile inventories and get 13 U.S. troops killed and a bunch of exquisitely expensive and nearly irreplaceable military equipment destroyed.
Even if Trump does resume bombing, he’s effectively trying to dig his way out of a hole he’s already standing in. His stated goal of bringing down the Iranian government by targeting power plants has never worked before. It didn’t work in Vietnam with Operation Linebacker II(North Vietnam got concessions that led to the fall of South Vietnam). It hasn’t worked in Ukraine, where Russia’s systematic destruction of Ukraine’s power grid has failed to bring the Zelenskiy government down or force it to sue for a dishonorable peace.
It is difficult to predict how Trump would react to this further likely failure of bombing: whether to simply give up and take an even worse deal from Iran, or escalate by destroying Iranian water infrastructure, particularly dams, reservoirs, pumping stations, and desalination plants. The latter could very plausibly end Iranian civilization as we know itunder the worst-case scenarios for people dying of thirst or fleeing as refugees.
No one outside the U.S. seems to be afraid of Trump anymore, and he is hated rather than loved. These key factors will drive the ongoing Iranian crises, and are the driving force leaving Trump with the options of accepting Iranian terms and trying to spin it as a win, or getting pushed far enough into a corner that he decides to do something monstrous enough to make himself truly feared.
