US President Donald Trump may be a champion of making America great. When it comes to other countries, however, the proud America Firster is interested in how they trade with the US, stopping conflicts, and having their leaders publicly back his flagship initiatives.
He has been emphatically uninterested in committing American resources to improving the governance and humanitarian record of foreign countries.
“We are getting out of the nation‑building business, and instead focusing on creating stability in the world,” Trump said in a major foreign policy address during his 2016 campaign, marking a shift from predecessors who tried to export American values to developing states. “Our foreign policy will always put the interests of the American people, and American security, above all else.”
He returned to the theme in May during a visit to the Middle East, long a crucible of American adventures in state-building. Presenting his vision for the region in Riyadh, Trump said that “great transformation” of prosperous Gulf countries “has not come from Western interventionists… giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs. No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called ‘nation-builders,’ ‘neo-cons,’ or ‘liberal non-profits,’ like those who spent trillions failing to develop Kabul and Baghdad, so many other cities.”
“In the end, the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” he thundered.
Published originally on November 23, 2025.
Read the full article at the Times of Israel.
