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The American think tank concern of foreign relations has ranked the 10 best and worst decisions in US foreign policy history.
With the past as our guide, is Washington learning from history or repeating it?
Welcome to Road Today, the panel discussion with Miike Anna in Beijing.
US foreign policy has seen its sharing of controversy, from violent Westward expansion and interwar isolationism to numerous military interventions abroad.
The Council on Foreign Relations surveyed more than 350 members of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, asking them which decisions left the most enduring legacies, for better or for worse.
The Marshall Plan and the creation of the United Nations topped the best list.
The invasion of Iraq, the Vietnam War and the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement ranked among the worst.
Now, as Washington grows more skeptical of multilateralism, reassesses alliance more transactionally and returns to tariffs and sanctions, history feels closer than ever.
So what lessons And what warnings does American diplomatic past hold for today?
To explore this and more.
Joining us on the line are Zun Medican Research Fellow at the Center for China and Globalization.
Joseph Mahoney, Professor of Politics and International Relations at East China Normal University.
Liu Kuangyu, Researcher at Institute of Taiwan Studies at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Ladies and gentlemen, before we dive into the discussion, I think it's important to clarify something for our audience.
As one of America's leading foreign policy think tanks, the Council on Foreign Relations inevitably reflects certain US-centric perspectives.
At the same time, its ranking also reviews the internal tensions and contradictions within American diplomacy itself.
So today, rather than simply accepting or rejecting this list, we just want to use this decision's highlights, both praised and condemned, to better understand the underlying logic of US foreign policy.
So let me start here.
How do you interpret the logic behind this ranking and why release such a list at the beginning of 2026?
Professor Mahoney.
Well, it's a good question.
And I was looking at the list and trying to puzzle through that.
For example, why would we rank the tragedies committed against Iraq worse than those committed against Vietnam?
And why is there a certain type of selection?
Why are some things noted and others aren't?
Here, I think I'll draw sort of a strange analogy.
There are a lot of discussions, for example, related to basketball.
Who's the GOAT?
Who's the greatest player of all time, LeBron James or Michael Jordan?
It's really a generational question.
So people who are younger, people who grew up watching LeBron James, they tend to think he's the greatest, whereas my generation tends to think it would be Michael Jordan.
I think there's a little bit of this type of generational bias in some of the say the first two examples.
If we had created this list 15 years ago, even maybe certainly 20 years ago, I think most people would have regarded the Vietnam experience to be a much more grotesque experience in human history.
That said clearly, people who grew up through that forever war, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, would probably be more likely to privilege that.
So I think there's a little bit of this sort of generational selection bias going on.
At the same time, I think there's another criteria of selection bias, which is a lot of the cases that have been chosen seem to be oriented towards a critique of contemporary policies.
So I think we can look at a lot of tragedies in the past, but which ones are most relevant to current challenges facing US government leaders and which mistakes are they most likely to repeat?
So there's something about contemporary problems that's sort of privileging the selection of previous problems.
I think.
Finally though, one of the things that's really sort of misleading about the list is, is there is actually a consistent logic through all of these negative events, even the dark side of many of the positive events.
One of the problems, I think, is that, in a certain way of looking at history If you're looking at history from the liberal perspective or is largely a dominant Western perspective, you tend to look at historical events as discrete phenomenon.
If we look at it from more of a Chinese perspective or more of a Marxist perspective, we would look at how all of these events belong to a similar logic, a similar imperial logic or a similar win-lose logic, this sort of thing.
And so I think, looking at it from that Marxist or Chinese perspective, it's sometimes difficult for us to discern what really is the fundamental difference between what the US did in Vietnam versus what it did in Iraq.
And how do we really distinguish those things, when it was the same underlying imperial behaviors that guided both unilateral decisions?
Mm-hmm.
I think that's a very profound point.
Sun, what's your take?
How do you see the logic behind this ranking and why release a list like this at the very first two months of 2026?
I mean first of all.
I do also.
I mean one of the points I was thinking about the selection of the worst and the best 10 decisions seems to also depend on the current consciousness of the American society.
I mean.
One reason, for instance, To distinguish between Vietnam versus Iraq could also be that the suffering of the Vietnamese at that point, even though there was a lot of awareness, there was a lot of mobilization within American college campuses.
But Iraq is more recent, but also you have so many more Iraqis In the American society and people from the Middle East within the American society who are also working in think tanks, who are working in media, who perhaps make that suffering more understandable, more relatable, more tangible for the imagination of the American masses.
Maybe to some extent.
Secondly, I mean, I think, the choice of the timing.
I feel the second term of President Trump has, by all standards, the extent his administration could go to reduce America's connection with traditional allies, to disrespect international norms or the international legal order as we say it.
It's also, I mean, obviously an important year for the United States as a country.
But I think there's a realization that more reflection is required today towards you know what were the mistakes of the past.
And I think, the position that the United States finds itself in today Especially.
You know, of course, you know conflicts and issues in the Far East, or the Middle East, or Latin America, or countries like Afghanistan.
I mean, they have been occurring every now and then.
This is a new, but the current conflict with Europe, for example over Greenland, you know this becomes more vivid and with current escalation between countries,
Canada and the United States with the visits of both, you know, Starmer and Carney to Beijing.
I think this is a moment for American scholars and policymakers to really wonder what direction is America's legacy heading towards.
How much further can the country become isolated from partners, from longstanding partners, whose economic opportunities that came with, for example, the Marshall Plan, Post-Marshall Plan, I mean all of that resulted in what they think is America's rise as a global power?
And today, those very relationships, that level of trust that had been achieved, is being sabotaged proactively.
But I also I mean, I agree that it is a very US-centric, a very list that maybe if Chinese scholars made the list or if Middle Eastern scholars made a list, it would look very different.
But I think to that extent, we can accept that they look at the world from a certain vantage point.
And reflection, given where the U.S. stands today, extremely isolated.
And the one country that is breaking international law at a pace which is more vivid, which is unapologetic, is something that maybe a lot of people did not expect.
Indeed.
Can I add?
Yes, please.
One of the interesting things about the Council of Foreign Relations is that, although it's technically bipartisan, We can see that a lot of the examples that have been listed are more directly connected to Republican Party excesses historically.
It's interesting because the Trump administration does not like the CFR and the CFR is widely perceived as being made up of sort of old school center, left and center-right scholars who have a lot more in common with each other than they do with the current Trump administration.
So there is a little bit of an ideological component, an ideological critique that's going on in some of the selection of these cases that are being directed specifically at the Trump administration.
Kwong Yu, what's your take and how do you look at the timing of the release?
Yes, I agree with the professors before.
They talked about the recent effect and the institutional effect of the CFR.
In my perspective, I think the ranking reflects a broad consensus among American foreign policy historians about what works and what fails in long-term statecraft.
I see a very clear message that you're trying to send that US foreign policy endures best when it builds collaborative policy institutions rather than imposing unilateral force.
So releasing this survey in early 2026.
I think it comes a time when the US is reassessing its global role amid renewed great power competition, ongoing conflicts, As elections and strategic reviews shape the next phase of American foreign policy.
I think this survey also highlights in the shift how the US understands its own diplomacy legacy.
They are increasingly judging foreign policy not only by military victories or immediate political wins, but also by lasting stability, moral standing and ability to sustain global leadership.
Also, like the CFR, we must be mindful of its own stance.
We know that CFR is one of the most influential foreign policy think tanks.
It's even regarded as the so-called shadowed State Department.
But it was founded after World War I to underscore the importance of U.S. engagement in the world.
We read an article from Michael Froman, who is the chairman of the council.
He described the current geopolitical landscape as the most complex moment in in the past 80 years.
So he believes that we are entering a period of redefinition.
We see questions that have long been seen being resolved about the future, about nature and the role of the us, and now suddenly getting a new question.
So In this sense, I think this release of this survey stems from pretty deep concern over the complexity and uncertainty that Trump's new world order has brought, both to the US and to the world.
Then before we dive into the reflections, let's focus on several landmark cases first.
The list ranks the creation of United Nations as the second best decision, the Bretton Woods system seventh, NATO sixth and the Marshall Plan the first.
This represents the high point of American institutionalism, often described as laying the foundation for US global influence after World War II.
Kuang Yu, where do you think their best qualities lie?
I think this initiative stands out as America's best foreign policy decision, because they avoid reckless unilateral action and instead build a so-called or in-quote multilateral, rule-based international order that preserved peace and prosperity for generations.
We see the Marshall Plan rebuild a devastated Europe that's stranded the Western democratic allies and blocked the spread of communism.
Actually more than that, it didn't just rebuild Europe.
It created a self-sustaining economic bloc that has absorbed the Soviet influence.
So turning the former adversaries into US allies through shared prosperity.
And also similarly, we see the UN created a diplomatic platform to prevent a direct great power conflict.
We see the Bretton Woods system Establish stable global finance and trade to institutions like MF and World Bank, and also NATO provide collective defense that stopped a major war in Europe.
So combined, they ended the cycle of destructive great power wars, unlocked global economic growth and set predictable norms of international behavior.
Professor Mahoney, do you share the same stance?
And what positive impact did they have on shaping the post-war international order, and what hidden risks did they embed?
Well, I agree with Quang Yu substantially, although I would question the overall value of NATO, particularly in terms of what he said in terms of stopping the spread of communism, which I'm not entirely sure was was a good thing, given my own political inclinations.
That's a West-centric idea.
Certainly as we look at the continuing legacy of NATO and the way it's been operationalized to provoke new conflicts with Russia, but also the way that President Biden tried to pivot NATO against China.
So, you know, these are part of historical legacies.
But I agree with Kwong Yu's assessment that you know institutional building was something that's very important.
I would also raise some serious questions about Bretton Woods dollar dominance and the extent to which this, you know, certainly brought some stability to the global financial system, but was also provided a foundation for the United States to impose economic hegemony on the global south.
You know, of course, we're still struggling with this today as the world moves towards a de-dollarization and the risks that that continues to carry.
However, again to get back to sort of the historical context, Clearly what this list is trying to signal is a criticism of the Trump administration pulling out of international organizations, abandoning the Paris Agreement, quitting more than 66 international organizations, including a large number associated with the United Nations.
Abandoning the World Health Organization.
All of these things speak to a decline in multilateralism, in tandem with Trump's declaration that he's essentially above international law.
And I would say although it's not clear that it's anything significant yet but the mechanisms that he tried to create with the Board of Peace, which was authorized initially by the United Nations Security Council but appears to be a means for building an alternative to the UN Security Council, where he alone would call all the shots.
It speaks to a very willful destruction of international institutions in ways that run very contrary to a multipolar world or this sort of multilateralism or multilateral approach to sort of international democracy that I think most countries are seeking.
Finally, it's interesting with the Marshall Plan, because today we look at not only the Marshall Plan and the tremendous role it played in helping to rebuild Europe, which ultimately served the strategic interests of the United States and Europe, but the immediate contrast is what we're seeing with China's Belt Road Initiative and the extent to which We see the West, above all the United States, essentially abandoning the developing world, but at the same time, we see the US trying to force countries to break their BRI partnerships with China, but not providing any sort of alternative development assistance.
This is, I think, part of the context, in so much as we've seen a number of CFR and other American scholars saying look, you're not really competing well with Chinese development schemes.
And as a result, you're losing position globally.
Now whether or not that's a fair assessment.
That's, I think, part of the direct reference of the model in terms of its contemporary context.
Zun just a moment about the comparison of the Marshall Plan and the Belt and Road Initiative, a quite topic we are frankly tired of arguing about today.
But as an expert on BRI, do you see any similarity?
And about the list, we were just chatting in the office.
Some say this best legacies already contain the institutional DNA of American first, from the very beginning.
What's your take?
I'll go to the list and then come back to this comparison.
Because, alongside NATO, the United States also initiated CETO and CENTO, which were supposed to be the NATO versions of Central and Southeast Asia right.
But those didn't work, NATO did.
Yes, I also I have to agree with Professor Mahoney.
I mean, that's the way NATO has been weaponized and the way it has worked and played out.
There are many issues with that.
So we definitely see that the CFR scholars, I mean they do have that perspective of what has strengthened versus what has weakened American hegemony or reputation as a global hegemon.
I mean, I think to some extent.
That is a perspective that many in other parts of the world will disagree with.
That said, I mean I think the United States through the 1950s 60s, even to some extent 70s, they were proactively helping or working with these newly, you know, independent nation states, including my own, to modernize their infrastructure.
Pakistan, for example, had two of the world's largest dams, Darbela and Mangla Dam, which were built by the Americans.
They helped us modernize our agriculture.
They helped us improve the yields as an agricultural country.
That was important.
So that interest that the United States had taken in the development of countries was there, even though it may have been problematic in some ways.
And of course it was part of this whole effort to deter the influence or further expansion of the Soviet Union in those countries.
Right.
But that interest was there and it was important when it came to the practical benefits or the practical utility of stronger partnerships with the United States.
And even today, I mean if we see that Professor Mahoney talks about, it's true.
There is no alternative that Washington or, to a great extent, even for some time, the EU,
They also criticized the engagement of developing countries the Global South with China under the BRI.
We have so many new theories coming out every now and then.
They have to be so creative to think of why countries should reject this very obviously, very practical and much needed cooperation with China.
But they do not have any alternatives today.
But in the past, they actually did.
So I think that comparison is valid.
And I think it is just the lack of capacity of the United States today, or even the EU today, to really provide tangible goods to the world at large, because either the administrations keep changing their posture,
They also don't have expertise anymore the way China does.
And I think when they talk about the Marshall Plan, maybe on some level there is a realization that unless they are able to provide something practical, something useful to the world, their relevance, their importance will deteriorate with time.
Overall if, let's say, the United States did come up with a plan for developing infrastructure in other countries and they're able to execute it.
I also don't think that China would have an issue with that.
I mean if really the global powers came together to help build the world so that we can all benefit economically, like clearly even in the list I mentioned, the Marshall Plan became a source for the United States to even be able to build itself as an economic power.
And that same logic can extend globally today, right?
There shouldn't be any problem with that.
But because they lack the capacity, they lack the expertise, they lack the political will, the ability to execute that.
I think they just the easiest way is to just, you know, criticize what China is doing in the PR.
And I think obviously they see what China is doing is something that had worked for the United States in the past.
And they see their own position weakening and China's, you know, further increasing, using the same logic of.
You know what had worked for them as a global power, especially when it came to more practical
And people forget that in the 50s and 60s, the United States was actively involved in improving, helping countries improve their infrastructure.
You know, there are two issues there to illustrate your point.
The first is you look at the tremendous waste and failure of the United States in Afghanistan, where the trillions of dollars spent and nothing to show for it.
So you know if you wanted to hold up an example.
But even worse than that, you look at the failure of the United States to even take care of and redevelop its own infrastructure.
So you're absolutely right to say that the US has lost this capacity for whatever reason, due to corruption or a lack of political will or simply a loss of capacity say, comparable to what we can see with China's major state-owned enterprises.
But nevertheless, I think that these are prime examples of why the world can't depend on the US, because even when we've seen them trying to act on their own behalf or concentrating efforts in other countries, it's been an absolute failure.
You know, can I add a very quick point?
I completely agree with that.
That, you know, they have in one of the worst decisions, the coup against the Mossadegh government.
And even within that, you know they state one of the reasons is that that normalized this kind of interventionism and adventurism for the United States.
And from then on, the list is endless.
So I think that these things are also connected.
From emerging as a power that recognized the value of providing practical benefits and goods and having an economic tilt, they shifted towards being a power that thought okay, the easier way is just to orchestrate a coup or just to fuel instability in a country.
And that's an easier way to recruit allies or partners or to reduce the possibility of less friendly states from operating within their own environment.
So I think that being in the list is maybe I'm not sure if the other panelists agree or if you yourself agree, but I think the logic of that that it normalized this kind of adventurism is also something worth noting.
It was a departure from a more pragmatic way to conduct themselves towards a more coercive.
Thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for your in-depth perspectives.
Let's have a short break.
Coming back, we'll continue our discussion on the most consequential moments in U.S. foreign policy.
This is Real Today.
Stay with us.
Welcome back.
You're listening to Road Today, the panel discussion with me, Gui Anna, in Beijing.
We've been talking about some of the most consequential moments in US foreign policy.
Let's continue our discussion.
Since we've already brought up the Middle East, Let's take a look at what's actually on the table when it comes to US.
Middle East policy.
The 1953 coup against Iran's Mossadegh is listed among the worst decisions, though at the time it was framed as defending the free world.
In today's U.S.-Iran tensions, Kuomintang, what lessons does history offer?
Has U.S. policy toward Iran fundamentally changed?
I think not.
We see the 1953 coup in Iran shows a persistent pattern of US policy towards the Middle East.
For the past century, American innovation has often operated under a so-called dual narrative.
They speak publicly about supporting democracy and defending freedom.
They act privately to secure access to energy resources, maintain especially key regionalizing on the continent and limited unwanted influence from other powers.
This combination of idealistic language and strategic self-interest has remained consistent, and democratic goals has always been the top priority when they conflict the with the core geopolitical and economic concerns.
But the main historical lesson for today's US-Iran tensions is that outside interference creates long-lasting distrust.
We see that coup undermined Iran's political development and left a legacy of suspicion that still shapes bilateral relations.
Interventions that ignore a country's sovereignty and public and real estate conditions will not produce stable outcomes.
They often lead to greater instability and hostility over time.
And US policy towards Iran.
I think now is maybe changing in tactics, but not in fundamental goals.
Today, the US still relies more on sanctions deterrence, diplomatic pressure rather than direct regime change operations in Iran.
But it still seeks to limit Iran's regional influence, protect its allies and preserve the US strategic position in the Middle East.
And these core objectives have remained largely unchanged, which is why I think the relationship would continue to face deep and unresolved tensions.
And also now here is a new power that the U.S. needs to think about is China.
They are trying to push China out of this era.
Professor Mahoney, what's your take?
Over the years?
Has US intervention in the Middle East ever escaped the binary of democracy promotion versus resources control?
I agree with virtually everything that Kuan-Yu said.
I'll just add a few other little details which, in fact, we could go back to the Safavid dynasty of 1501 and the establishment of Shia rule religion as a way to distinguish Persian culture from an Arab culture that had conquered and spread Islam across Persia, and a desire to achieve sort of a re-establish you know, the cultural privileges associated with one of the ancient cultures of the world.
To some extent that legacy continues to this day and certainly informs some of the broader context of conflict between the Shia and Sunni-led or influenced countries.
I think one of the interesting things if you go back to the previous government of Iran, which was close to the United States, it was also close to Israel.
And this was in large measure because this was in contrast with the Arab countries that tended to lean to some extent towards the Soviet Union although, of course, Saudi Arabia and a few others had close oil relationships with the United States.
At the same time, though, we have to recall that at that time, the US was supporting a king in Iran.
It wasn't about democracy.
And in the last couple of months we've also seen the United States supporting a king as an alternative to the current Islamic Republic.
So it's not really about democracy.
It's about having someone in power who is going to provide some sort of benefits to the United States.
And Kwon is absolutely correct that, although the US strategic interests in the Middle East have shifted through time and the tactics have remained largely the same, the key emphasis today seems to be not simply responding to this long-standing claim that Iran poses an existential threat to Israel and the close ideological and cultural link between Israel and the United States, which remains sacrosanct, but all the more so because we do have a fundamental shift in geopolitics.
We do have China having risen as a major power.
We do have China playing an instrumental role in reshaping geopolitics above all across Asia.
We see China playing a powerful role through organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, among others, to bring peace and stability and development security to Central Asia.
We understand that Iran plays an integral role in these efforts.
We also understand that for a long, long time there's been a paradigm in geostrategic thinking that holds that Whoever can control Afghanistan can control Asia, including China.
So this is part of the reason why we saw the US intervening in Afghanistan in the late 1970s, building the Taliban, which went on to become the Taliban, to resist the support for the socialist government in Afghanistan.
Certainly, as the British had long ago figured out, the tremendous strategic mineral wealth in Afghanistan that should make Afghanistan one of the most wealthy countries in the world, but also means it's a risk for whoever has access or control over those resources.
So there are all these sort of things swirling together.
But the key right now with Iran is the extent to which Iran is in a strategic partnership with China and part of this strategic vision of greater security and development in Asia, which runs fundamentally contrary to the legacy of US imperialism.
Zhiyuan.
Are we seeing a change in how the US deals with Iran or just a rebranding of other strategies?
And one thing to reflect on here is that why has US so-called exporting democracy so often resulted in further conflict, refugee crisis and anti-American sentiment?
Wow.
Both professors have given such detailed analysis of why we see the existing manifestation of the US'.
's posture towards Iran.
I think to answer your first question, I completely agree with a lot of the points that have been mentioned.
The overall global picture has just become so complex.
With China's rise, I agree.
Like with the SEO, China's rise breaks the global south, becoming less of a silent majority.
I think there is an acute realization that the old tactics, those might have more lasting consequences.
Within the Middle East.
You know the United States is also trying to manage its relationship and to maintain its relevance with many other key players the Arab countries.
I think it's also a question of you know, we saw back in.
I'm not sure if Professor Mahoney or the other panelists I mean, they'll agree with me, but I think this refusal to directly get involved in intervention, I mean, might have to do with how complex Israel's own image has become globally.
But it also reminds me of back in 2012 when, at that time, the Netanyahu government was supporting Mitt Romney against President Obama, and then Obama won the election.
That's when the Iran nuclear deal did happen.
And I think a lot of people who read into that was also.
The US also wants to maintain a balance and not have one country, even if it's such a close ally, have this kind of power over the United States to be able to, you know, to a greater extent or entirely, to determine how they deal with the region at large.
So I think that same realization, Israel has become a complex country.
The popularity of the country is obviously, you know, very questionable at this point, more than ever in recent history.
And then you have the Arab countries who can be partners.
So in that situation, if the United States still, if the Trump administration still went ahead with supporting a coup or, more in a more obvious way, supporting regime change, I think that would also reduce their ability to work with those other allies the Middle Eastern, the Arab countries who are also now seeking deeper partnerships with China, and very actively so.
So it's a very complex reality that the United States does confront.
I'm not sure.
Obviously, resources are the end goal.
Democracy.
Wars in the name of democracy have always I mean historically, you look at any example it's always been about resources.
It's always been about reducing the ability of governments that might be unfriendly from the United States on vantage point to come into power.
Look at what's happened in Syria.
Look at what's happened in Libya.
I mean, there is an idea that Gaddafi's biggest crime was that he was somehow gathering the African countries together to form a very powerful bloc that could again reduce the American hegemony's ability to have access more unquestionable access to resources in that continent, and so on and so forth.
So we have, I mean, democracy being a reason I think that's been questioned very in every case that you see that that's clearly not the case.
And, like Professor Mahoney mentioned Afghanistan, the creation of the Taliban.
It was obviously a joint effort which included many countries.
It had very severe ramifications for the entire region that we continue to face even today.
And the same is in the Middle East.
No country has been seen to be more stable.
Libya was one of the strongest economies of the African continent.
And look at where the country stands today.
Look at Syria.
And actually what's fascinating.
I think I might go on a bit of a detour here, but before Trump's first election he said that if American leaders just went to the beach and got a tan instead of interfering in the conflicts in the Middle East, the world would have been a better place.
And I think a lot of people resonated with that.
If they did nothing they did not sell weapons to so-called allies, they did not interfere in different conflicts, they did not side with different parties or different resistance movements within the region the whole region would have maybe found a better equilibrium.
But what about the resources that come from the region?
What about China's attractiveness to those countries?
And that's when I think even Trump's fight being less of a multilateral, you know, or having less of a and this is also my view that I think he's less hegemonic, so to speak, in his perspective, than Biden administration was.
He is willing to complicate relations with the EU, with Canada, et cetera.
He's more unilateral in his posture, but still he is also faced with complex realities and wants to, from his perspective, maintain the US'.
's strength and control over certain regions.
It's a more complex world.
And I think the result is that we see decisions that are quite, I mean, more unilateral.
The US cannot at this point withdraw from the world at all.
Because there is just so much competition.
There's China.
There are other multilateral initiatives emerging from other centers of the world that might reduce their own access to resources and partners.
Yeah, it's a very complex reality.
But I think overall we see a world that is much more critical and aware of the reality of American interventionism than ever before.
Then, if we look at the list, the invasion of Iraq ranks as the single worst decision, with the Vietnam War second.
They were separated by nearly 40 years, but both were considered driven by manipulated intelligence and overly broad congressional authorizations.
The Gulf of Talking Resolution and the Iraq War Resolution almost feel like the same script replayed.
Kuang Yu, how do you explain this historical repetition?
Yes, it reminds me of what Hegel said.
The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
The pattern you mentioned, the pattern of repetition, reveals history a lasting flaw how the US makes major war decisions.
The two episodes share a fatal disconnect between the U.S. ambitions and the local realities.
We see it in this institutional and political lessons to not automatically fix the US behavior without stronger oversight, without honest intelligence assessments and a deeper humility about the limits of the US military power.
I think the U.S. will remain vulnerable to repeat this pattern.
One more thing they said.
The fundamental issue, I think, is both wars constitute unprovoked and provoked invasions by a hegemonic power against the sovereign nations.
Under international law.
In my opinion, the US should have been held accountable for its war crimes.
Yet its leaders were not.
They ran free.
Nevertheless, America continues to routinely accuse other nations of crimes against such like humanity and war crimes, and so on.
So this is profoundly ironic and unjust.
And, following this, recent events in Venezuela, we seem increasingly accustomed to the notion that Trump's War Department possesses an inherent right to wage war.
Yesterday it was Iraq, today it was Venezuela, but tomorrow it could be any other nation.
And a greater irony is that America's targets have never been major powers on its equal footing.
It attacked Vietnam and Iraq.
Because The strong is bullying the weak, because the US is confident of victory.
Yet the outcomes were disastrous falling to traps of the US own making and even sometimes triggering domestic crisis and government change.
So history, I think, will repeat itself, proving that unjust wars will only bring disasters upon themselves.
And simultaneously, whether the US seeks to return to Asia or pursue its so-called Indo-Pacific strategy.
I think the US should heed lessons from history.
Let us not forget the Korean War as well.
Should America, I think, if they want to engage a war or proxy war in Asia.
I think negative outcomes are highly probable.
Perhaps even may lead to the collapse of US hegemony.
Very insightful analysis.
Professor Mahoney, why does this crisis to deception, to war cycle in US foreign policy seem so hard to stop?
Is it institutional problem or does hegemony itself require a permanent enemy?
Well, you know, I think, if you look at just to go all the way back in time to the beginning of the United States, the United States itself was initially an expression of British colonialism and the dispossession of land and resources from the indigenous people of the Americas.
And this was repeated throughout the Western Hemisphere, from the most northern parts of Canada all the way down to Patagonia.
We can see this tragic history.
You then look when the United States begins to advance this paradigm again, not simply by taking land from the indigenous, but committing various forms of ethnic cleansing and genocide against them in order to build up the country that it became.
And then the next step of that is to start aggressing against nearby countries.
Mexico, for example, to take most of the best land from Mexico Texas, Southern California, parts of Utah Arizona, New Mexico.
All of these were seized essentially at gunpoint. from Mexico.
And this is in the midst of doctrines like the Monroe Doctrine, where the United States says it has essentially a hegemonic privilege in the Western Hemisphere.
You can then take that to the next step, which is looking at the Spanish-American War, which was fostered through duplicity and a false flag operation, which then leads to the Philippine-American War, where the United States goes in under this idea of benign benevolence but is actually suppressing indigenous efforts for independence, and brutally so.
And just to remember, one of the things that really accelerated Japanese concerns to build an empire that could compete with the West was not only the entry of the European powers into China, not only the Germans building the first foreign naval base in Asia in Shandong, but also the establishment of the United States, the second foreign naval base in Asia, by the United States and the Philippines.
So it has this ripple effect that goes on to play out in much bigger tragedies.
There was always this deception.
There was always this idea that the United States would enter the sovereign territory of others.
And then when people tried to defend themselves, the U.S. would use this as a pretext for war.
And even if that didn't work, they would simply lie.
The Gulf of Tonkin or what we saw in Iraq, these were nothing new.
And, by the way, we saw the same thing in Dominican Republic in 1965, the same thing in Grenada in 1983, the same thing in Panama in 1989.
The same thing, a little bit different, but there was sort of a shifting, evolving narrative and justification for the war in Afghanistan.
All of these things are not simply failing to learn from history.
It's quite the opposite.
They learned from history.
They are deliberately repeating these patterns because that's what they were able to use in order to not only build their nation, but to extend their global imperial reach.
Appreciate that thorough explanation.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's set aside the list for a moment.
It's only the second week of February, but we've already seen dramatic shifts in Americans' relations with the world.
So Zhuyan, in your view, what has the US done best in foreign policy so far this year, and what has it done worst?
I think somehow the best and the worst is the same thing, obviously.
I mean, I think one of the worst is also what they're doing with Greenland and Canada.
I think that is the worst in terms of losing their own partners to a great extent.
The trust that obviously Trump 10 was also very detrimental to the trust between their United States and Europe in general.
But now I think it's led to, Greenland has led to a situation where they think, okay, we can also be like other countries in the Middle East.
And I think that's also the best, because it's making other parts of the world realize that they need to be more pragmatic.
So I think the overall effect is that the capacity of US imperialism to target even their closest allies is maybe pushing those allies to look at other alternatives and to understand that it's important for them to Connect with the world at large.
So I mean, I think that for me, I mean that that that action can have longer implications in terms of what it means for American imperialism.
What's your take?
How would you say Americans biggest success and biggest failure in foreign policy this year?
It's a little bit hard because I don't know who I should speak for for Americans, for Trump or for the world as a general.
But let me name one.
Overall, I believe the wisest move by Trump administration has been maintaining a degree of rational and radical in its approach towards China.
I think that's my point, especially among the series of aggressive, even reckless or irrational diplomatic maneuvers like Zun has just mentioned.
We see the leaders China and US have had another phone call recently and positive elements persist within the broader strategic competition between the two nations, while we see there are numerous issues require careful management, but at least both sides still share a fundamental consensus of risk managing.
So the new norm-induced US-China relations might be managing competition and avoiding miscalculations.
But let's go and see.
And the worst part, I think, maybe Venezuela, the reason we all know why.
And another I might mention is that Trump's support for Takaichi, Sanae Takaichi.
Of course, if you, like I said, if you stand for the U.S.-Japan coalition, it's right.
But if you look at the world peace, I think it's very negative.
That's a great point.
I'm curious to hear Professor Mahoney, your take on this.
So far in 2026, how would you evaluate the U.S. foreign policy?
What's worked well and what's gone wrong?
Well, I think we can take sort of a broader view in terms of the negatives and say the way in which Trump has waged aggression.
Now we can speak of specific cases Venezuela, threatening the sovereignty of Denmark and Canada, and many others.
These are certainly key cases.
But what we have seen is a global trade war which has basically tried to employ rent-seeking and mercantilist policies that are trying to basically dispossess other countries and to transfer vast sums of wealth to the United States.
This is criminal and it's also failing to actually improve the economic well-being of the Americans.
So it's sort of doubly terrible.
It's not only bad for the world, it's also bad for the Americans.
So it's a catastrophic failure.
At the same time, I think we have to point very directly to the Trump administration's what I would characterize as the weaponization of climate change, which again has global implications which, while the cost for the United States would also be high the extent to which the US depends on fossil fuels and a close relationship between fossil fuels and the dollar, and the extent to which the US economy continues to depend on the hegemony of the US dollar.
The US position as a global North country means that its price or the cost associated with climate change relative to countries in the global south, most notably China Brazil India others, these rising countries, these emerging markets that are directly pushing back against US hegemony, these are the countries most at risk due to climate change.
And so I'm very concerned that quitting the Paris Agreement, denying that climate change is a problem, instead saying it's a communist plot that comes from China that's trying to knock the United States down.
I think these are things that threaten the lives and well-being of everyone on the planet and what would be remembered, I think, as one of the grosser crimes associated with this administration.
Finally, we can look at the policies towards migrants.
And immigrants.
One of the things that we see on the list is the way in which the US treated the indigenous populations in the United States historically.
And that's understood as a foreign policy issue and rightfully so.
But, of course, the same is true for the migrants in the US and the extent to which we see the US or the Trump administration specifically targeting people of color, specifically targeting, for example, Somali Muslims in the Minneapolis area, people from Central and Latin America, among other places in the world.
And the way in which this is going back to sort of the white republic values of Jefferson, but also Trump's hero Andrew Jackson, who worked very hard to try to create a society where white men would continue to dominate, not only domestically, but perhaps overseas as well.
Now, in terms of the positive, I don't think we can point to anything really positive at this time.
I think that there is some speculation that Trump might have superficially attacked Iran when the last bombing took place in order to diffuse that pressure.
I'm not sure that we can really make that assessment at this point.
We can question whether or not his efforts to create peace and resolve the conflict in Ukraine are measures in good faith or whether they're part of a broader strategic plan that has other negative ulterior motives.
But thinking about it a little more abstractly, I think when we read documents now like the new national security strategy, what we see is just a complete transparency.
We just see the true face of American unilateralism, the American determination to abandon as much as it can international organizations, and the extent to which the Trump administration believes itself to be above international law.
And I think, while all of those things are negative, that transparency is something that is good for the rest of the world to see.
We could talk about this topic for hours but unfortunately we ran out of time for this edition of World Today and really appreciate all of your perspectives.
Zuna Madakan, Research Fellow at the Center for China and Globalization.
Joseph Mahoney, Professor of Politics and International Relations at East China Normal University.
Liu Kuangyu, researcher at Institute of Taiwan Studies at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
That's all the time for this edition of World Today.
I'm Ke Anna.
Thank you so much for listening.
Bye for now.
