Deal-Maker Diplomacy Reconsidered: Trump's Second Term and the Evolution of Transactional Statecraft

 

Abstract

Eight months into his second presidency, Donald Trump has operationalized a distinctive paradigm of international statecraft—what may be termed "transactional deal-maker diplomacy." This approach prioritizes rapid, headline-generating bilateral agreements negotiated through non-traditional intermediaries over sustained multilateral institutions and career diplomatic channels. While this model has generated visible activity and marquee announcements—including peace accords in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, substantial arms sales to Persian Gulf monarchies, and massive AI technology agreements—the empirical record reveals a persistent gap between rhetorical ambition and durable institutional outcomes. This essay traces the intellectual foundations and practical manifestations of Trump's leadership paradigm, updates earlier analyses with contemporary evidence, and assesses both the achievements and structural vulnerabilities of transactional diplomacy as a governance model.

 

 I. Theoretical Framework: The Evolution of Trump-Style Leadership

A. From Persona to Statecraft: The Three Stages

Donald J. Trump’s political evolution provides a rare longitudinal case study in the metamorphosis of persona into statecraft. Over four decades, Trump has fused three distinct yet cumulative modalities of leadership: performance, negotiation, and governance.

The first stage—the televisual persona—was crystallized through The Apprentice, where Trump’s authority was staged through the dramaturgy of command: the omniscient host, the decisive executive, the spectacle of dismissal. This phase established his archetype as the sovereign entertainer, shaping the affective and linguistic codes that would later permeate his political communication.

The second stage—the transactional theorist—emerged through The Art of the Deal, which codified his worldview into a grammar of leverage, brinkmanship, and tactical fluidity. Here, power was reconceived as an outcome of constant bargaining, and success as a function of negotiated dominance.

The third stage—the geopolitical entrepreneur—has unfolded during his second presidency. In this phase, Trump’s media-inflected instincts and business logics have been transposed into the practice of statecraft itself. The result is an unprecedented synthesis: diplomacy reframed as deal-making theatre, and foreign policy re-imagined as a series of high-stakes brand transactions designed to generate both strategic leverage and political spectacle.

Crucially, these stages do not supersede but accumulate. Trump’s governing style retains the performative immediacy of television, layered with the instrumental rationality of business negotiation, and refracted through the institutional constraints of international politics. The 60 Minutes interview with Jared Kushner and real-estate financier Steven Witkoff in early 2025 captured this fusion vividly: rapid, improvisational bargaining, the use of private intermediaries, and a visible disdain for bureaucratic procedure. Trump’s diplomatic interventions operate as hybrid performances—part negotiation, part broadcast—seeking to collapse the temporal gap between action and acclaim.

Yet, this translation of entertainment logic into global governance exposes an intrinsic contradiction. Television rewards velocity, spectacle, and resolution; geopolitics demands endurance, subtlety, and structure. A contract may close with a handshake, but a peace accord endures only through institutional scaffolding and reciprocal trust. Thus, the central question of Trump’s second term is whether the dynamism that propelled his success in the boardroom and media sphere can yield stability in an international system defined by multi-sovereign complexity and veto-laden inertia.

Trump’s genius for narrative immediacy—his capacity to make governance appear as event—may secure headlines, but it often leaves the underlying machinery of implementation unattended. In the realm of diplomacy, where legitimacy is cumulative and credibility non-fungible, this disjunction becomes strategic vulnerability.

B. Perception as Strategy: The Limits of Symbolic Leadership

Throughout his political career, Trump has weaponized perception as an instrument of strategy. He grasps, more intuitively than most political actors, that international politics is as much theatre as substance—that reputations can shape the parameters of negotiation as effectively as armies or treaties.

In his first term, this took the form of symbolic appointments—most notably, the elevation of John Bolton to National Security Advisor in 2018, whose mere presence communicated menace to adversaries and reassurance to hawks. In his second term, the logic has evolved into what might be called reputational leverage: the deliberate orchestration of personalities, intermediaries, and envoys whose perceived attributes become tools of psychological negotiation. Trump’s envoys, often drawn from business or family networks, are valued less for institutional experience than for the reputational capital they embody—the ability to project boldness, unpredictability, and transactional credibility.

Yet perception, though catalytic, is ephemeral. The early-2025 Iran cease-fire exemplifies this dynamic: announced with fanfare, celebrated as a triumph of Trumpian negotiation, and then promptly abandoned to entropy. The episode reaffirmed a recurrent pattern—diplomatic announcement without diplomatic architecture. Similarly, Trump’s boast that he “brokered peace” between India and Pakistan was swiftly undercut by India’s official insistence that the cease-fire was negotiated directly with Islamabad, not mediated by Washington.

This recurring gap between performance and persistence delineates the structural limits of symbolic leadership. The Kushner–Witkoff recounting of the 2025 Gaza back-channel illuminates the danger: when Israeli strikes hit Qatari interests mid-negotiation, Qatari confidence collapsed, Hamas withdrew from talks, and the fragile network of informal intermediaries disintegrated. In effect, the performative economy of diplomacy—built on visibility, prestige, and momentum—proved incapable of absorbing strategic shock.

Perception can open the door to negotiation, but only institutional design can keep it open. Sustainable diplomacy requires redundancy, institutional anchorage, and credible enforcement mechanisms—capacities that Trump’s governance model, by privileging spectacle over system, chronically under-develops.

II. The Empirical Record: Eight Months of Transactional Diplomacy

A. The Persian Gulf Tour and the Logic of Commercial Diplomacy

Trump’s May 2025 tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates marked the most extensive projection of transactional diplomacy yet attempted by a U.S. administration. Over ten days, Trump presided over the announcement of more than US $2 trillion in investment pledges, including a US $142 billion arms deal with Riyadh, a US $96 billion Boeing order from Qatar Airways, and a US $1.4 trillion UAE investment framework spanning AI, energy, and digital infrastructure.

The most consequential, however, was the tentative agreement authorizing the UAE to import up to 500 000 Nvidia AI chips per year, dramatically expanding Emirati supercomputing capacity. The move—effectively a loosening of prior U.S. export controls designed to prevent technology leakage to China—illustrates Trump’s strategic calculus: privileging commercial volume and political optics over long-term security orthodoxy.

This approach amounts to what may be termed commercialized statecraft: the deliberate subordination of geopolitical caution to immediate economic spectacle. Each transaction serves dual purposes: (1) to dramatize American economic vitality, and (2) to embed material dependencies that align foreign elites’ interests with continued partnership with Washington.

Yet the visit also dramatized the enduring hazards of Trump’s hybrid leadership. Mid-tour, controversy erupted over reports that Qatar intended to gift the U.S. a US $400 million Boeing 747-8 to serve as a future Air Force One. Trump publicly welcomed the gesture—tweeting “A GIFT — FREE OF CHARGE!”—but legal scholars swiftly raised alarms under the Emoluments Clause, which bars acceptance of foreign gifts without Congressional approval. Critics warned that such gestures blur the constitutional line between state diplomacy and personal aggrandizement.

This episode crystallizes the moral hazard of Trump’s method: by merging personal branding with presidential prerogative, he risks transforming diplomacy into an extension of self-promotion—one that adversaries and allies alike can exploit as leverage.

B. Peace Deals and the Politics of Attribution: The Armenia–Azerbaijan Case

On 8 August 2025, the White House hosted Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for the signing of a joint declaration of peace—the first sustained cease-fire between the two nations in years. The accompanying agreement granted the U.S. a 99-year lease over the Zangezur Corridor, rebranded as the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP), envisioning a new trade artery linking the Black Sea and the Caspian.

The event exemplified Trumpian diplomacy in full flourish: branding, spectacle, and speed. Yet beneath the ceremony lay complexity. Qatar, the EU, and regional mediators had spent months engineering the framework; Washington’s intervention primarily expedited and televised the conclusion. While symbolically potent, the accord’s durability remains uncertain. Persistent disputes over territorial demarcation, refugee return, and energy transit continue to threaten its longevity.

Moreover, Trump’s habit of inflating attribution—portraying multi-party achievements as unilateral triumphs—has drawn scrutiny. Fact-checkers noted that his claims of “ending conflicts everywhere” were belied by his own posts celebrating “cease-fires” he now disavows. The India–Pakistan example remains illustrative: though Trump hailed it as a U.S.-brokered success, New Delhi emphatically denied any mediation. The result is a credibility gap that erodes both domestic and international confidence.

Such exaggeration is not mere vanity; it is strategic overreach. In diplomacy, where expectation becomes capital, overselling success constrains future flexibility and invites reputational backlash when peace falters.

C. The Mixed Record: Rwanda–Congo and Cambodia–Thailand

By mid-2025, the limitations of Trump’s “sign-and-celebrate” diplomacy became apparent. The Rwanda–Democratic Republic of Congo agreement, signed in Washington and ceremonially reaffirmed in Doha, collapsed within weeks when M23 rebels—allegedly backed by Rwanda—walked out of talks. Similarly, the Cambodia–Thailand truce unraveled amid renewed border violence, leaving over 40 dead and 300 000 displaced.

In both cases, the absence of a durable enforcement mechanism rendered the accords effectively symbolic. The high-visibility signature, intended to project presidential mastery, substituted spectacle for structure. By collapsing diplomacy into event management, the administration conflated the appearance of resolution with its substance—creating an illusion of order that may, paradoxically, defer genuine settlement.

D. Institutional Decline and Diplomatic Capacity

Paralleling these initiatives is an unprecedented erosion of institutional capacity. Under the aegis of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the administration has executed sweeping reductions across the State Department, USAID, and public-diplomacy agencies such as Voice of America. These cuts are justified under fiscal rationalization and the ethos of “lean governance,” yet they have eviscerated the very infrastructure required for sustained diplomacy.

This juxtaposition is paradoxical: as Trump expands America’s diplomatic theatre, the bureaucratic apparatus sustaining it withers. Seasoned diplomats have departed; regional desks are under-staffed; and analytic intelligence pipelines have thinned. Transactional diplomacy—by nature volatile—requires more, not less, institutional ballast: rapid information flow, inter-agency coordination, and post-agreement monitoring.

The result is structural fragility. Even as Trump proclaims a revitalized American primacy, the architecture underpinning that primacy is hollowing out. This institutional attrition, combined with the personalization of diplomacy, threatens to turn the United States from a system actor into a personality state—dynamic, visible, but strategically brittle.

III. The Governance Horizon: Ambition, Execution, and Institutional Constraint

A. The Implementation Gap

Eight months into President Trump’s second term, empirical observation reveals a consistent structural pattern: announcement outpaces implementation, rhetorical triumph diverges from policy outcome, and the interval between signing and delivery continues to widen.

Trump’s administration projects a relentless narrative of success — “deals made,” “wars ended,” and “America respected again” — yet the evidentiary substrate tells a more complex story.

Trade diplomacy exemplifies this asymmetry. The administration’s promise of “90 deals in 90 days,” predicated on a new doctrine of reciprocal tariffs, remains largely unfulfilled. In practice, Trump has redefined the mechanics of trade diplomacy: rather than negotiated bilateral frameworks, “reciprocal tariffs” have been imposed unilaterally through executive letters to foreign governments, which are then rhetorically reframed as completed “deals.” The effect is semantic victory in lieu of substantive transformation.

Similarly, peace accords illustrate the widening gap between announcement and outcome. Despite claims of multiple conflict resolutions, Trump’s foreign policy apparatus remains in search of a major, durable geopolitical achievement. The administration has indeed displayed frenetic diplomatic activity — from Ukraine to Gaza, and from Iran to the Sahel — but no initiative has yet yielded the kind of verifiable stability or institutional embedding associated with sustainable peace.

The alliance restructuring agenda adds a third dimension to this pattern. Trump has threatened NATO allies with tariffs, demanded increased defense spending, and even floated notions of territorial acquisition. His transactional, often unilateral diplomacy has destabilized both alliance confidence and global markets. Economists widely attribute recent turbulence in U.S. and global financial systems to the unpredictability of Trump’s tariff threats, which have replaced multilateral negotiation with coercive improvisation.

The aggregate picture is one of policy hyperactivity without administrative absorption capacity. Initiatives proliferate faster than the institutional machinery can translate them into stable outcomes.

B. The Structural Problem: Sovereign Actor Autonomy

A deeper structural flaw in the transactional model lies in its inadequate recognition of sovereign actor autonomy. Trump’s negotiation style—refined in domains of asymmetric power such as real estate and corporate management—assumes that displays of dominance, coupled with credible threats of withdrawal, will compel compliance.

Yet in the geopolitical arena, counterparties possess their own internal equilibria: domestic constituencies, alliance obligations, and strategic calculations that resist coercive manipulation.

The Ukraine conflict encapsulates this dynamic. Trump campaigned on ending the Russia–Ukraine war “within 24 hours,” and has indeed demonstrated a willingness to apply military pressure elsewhere—ordering strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure and presenting them as leverage for new “peace deals.” Yet neither Moscow nor Kyiv can be coerced into settlement terms that violate their core political survival imperatives. Both Zelensky and Putin operate within rigid domestic legitimacy constraints that no degree of American pressure can override.

American withdrawal of support, while potentially altering battlefield dynamics, cannot erase the underlying geopolitical contradictions. Thus, the very autonomy of sovereign actors exposes the limits of transactional power—a limitation that Trump’s negotiation philosophy has consistently underestimated.

C. The Economics of Durability

The durability problem is reinforced by economic evidence. Recent research by Kovac and Spruk (2025), “The Economic Dividends of Peace: Evidence from Arab–Israeli Normalization,” demonstrates that the economic payoffs of normalization—measured through GDP growth differentials—only materialized decades after institutional consolidation in Egypt and Jordan. The implication is clear: signatures do not produce stability; institutions do.

Deals that lack institutional scaffolding—mechanisms for trade facilitation, dispute resolution, monitoring, and confidence building—remain fragile. They may generate immediate political capital, but without bureaucratic infrastructure and international legitimacy, they collapse at the first strategic or economic shock.

Each time a ceasefire fails, a tariff is reversed, or a negotiating partner changes domestic course, the absence of institutional reinforcement transforms volatility into systemic fragility.

D. The Tempo Problem: Too Many Irons

Trump’s second-term foreign policy also suffers from what might be termed the “tempo paradox.” The administration is simultaneously waging tariff confrontations, renegotiating alliances, pursuing peace initiatives, escalating immigration enforcement, and even proposing territorial acquisitions—from Greenland to the Panama Canal to Gaza.

This level of simultaneity diffuses strategic focus and strains administrative bandwidth. The United States’ diplomatic, economic, and cognitive resources are finite, yet the administration’s approach presumes limitless elasticity. As a result, even the most promising initiatives become victims of attention scarcity.

The overarching paradox is that Trump’s “America First” retrenchment is executed through a proliferation of global commitments. The result is a system perpetually on the verge of overextension: an empire that proclaims withdrawal but performs expansion through unilateral assertion.

IV. Revisiting Core Theoretical Themes with Updated Insight

A. Perception, Leverage, and the Credibility Problem

Trump’s negotiation doctrine rests on a well-known insight from coercive diplomacy: perception shapes power. The credibility of strength, unpredictability, and the willingness to walk away can shift the bargaining equilibrium.

However, perception detached from execution erodes credibility. As international relations scholars have long argued—from Schelling to Jervis—coercive threats depend not on bluster, but on belief in the actor’s capacity and intent to follow through.

Trump’s frequent pattern of announcing tariffs, then withdrawing them; declaring peace deals, then abandoning enforcement; or issuing ultimatums without consequence, undermines precisely the perception of power he seeks to project. When victory declarations outpace material results, adversaries recalibrate expectations downward. The consequence is a credibility recession: partners discount American threats and doubt American assurances.

The administration’s assumption of limitless U.S. leverage — the belief that America can wage simultaneous trade wars, restructure alliances, and impose settlements globally — reflects a myth of omnipotence that collides with the constraints of political economy and diplomatic realism.

B. The Decline of Institutional Legitimacy and the Rise of Personalistic Governance

A hallmark of Trump’s governance model is the bypass of institutional intermediaries in favor of personal networks. Kushner and real estate magnate Steven Witkoff—neither career diplomats nor military strategists—have served as ad hoc envoys in Gaza ceasefire talks and Middle Eastern negotiations.

This personalistic diplomacy accelerates decision-making and bypasses bureaucratic inertia, but it erodes institutional continuity and accountability. Its vulnerabilities are threefold:

1. Reversibility: Personal relationships dissolve when administrations change. Successor governments may repudiate deals lacking procedural legitimacy.

2. Accountability deficit: Negotiations conducted through private intermediaries evade oversight, leaving no formal record of concessions or enforcement.

3. Brittleness under stress: When trust fractures—whether through political shifts or perceived betrayal—the absence of institutional buffers leads to total collapse.

Thus, while personal diplomacy may yield rapid symbolic gains, it produces structurally non-replicable and non-resilient outcomes.

C. The Definition of Success: Metrics and Measurement

By mid-2025, the limitations of Trump’s “sign-and-celebrate” diplomacy had become apparent. The Rwanda–Democratic Republic of Congo agreement—signed at the White House in June and ceremonially reaffirmed in Doha the following month—collapsed within weeks when the M23 rebels, allegedly backed by Rwanda, walked out of talks. The ceasefire’s breakdown underscored the fragility of arrangements that rely on performative visibility rather than enforceable guarantees. With no neutral verification body, regional security architecture, or economic incentive structure to sustain compliance, the accord devolved into another entry in a growing list of symbolic but short-lived deals.

The case of Cambodia and Thailand, however, has recently taken a more complex turn. Their earlier truce, initially brokered in Washington in May 2025, had indeed unraveled amid renewed border violence that left over forty dead and displaced more than 300 000 civilians. Yet, in late October 2025, both governments signed a new, expanded peace accord in Kuala Lumpur, witnessed by President Trump during the ASEAN summit. The Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord, as it is being called, builds on the failed May framework but introduces a trilateral monitoring mechanism involving Malaysia and Indonesia and a provisional border-development fund under ASEAN oversight. Trump hailed the signing as a “great victory for peace and trade,” while regional diplomats characterized it as a cautious reset rather than a resolution.

This latest development highlights a recurring feature of Trump’s transactional diplomacy: the recycling of partial or failed agreements into renewed signing ceremonies, enabling the projection of momentum even when underlying disputes remain unresolved. The Cambodia–Thailand accord demonstrates both the adaptability and limitations of this strategy. On one hand, Trump’s personal diplomacy and willingness to engage directly in multilateral venues such as ASEAN have created new openings for dialogue; on the other, the agreement’s success will depend less on Trump’s presence than on ASEAN’s capacity to enforce border stabilization and coordinate economic reintegration.

Thus, while the Kuala Lumpur signing tempers earlier criticisms of complete failure, it does not yet overturn the broader analytical finding: that Trump’s foreign policy apparatus remains predisposed toward event-driven diplomacy—one that equates visibility with durability and ceremony with substance. The Rwanda–Congo breakdown and the fragile promise of the new Cambodia–Thailand accord jointly illustrate the paradox of Trump-era statecraft: its brilliance at generating spectacle and its persistent difficulty in translating spectacle into sustainable peace.

 Synthesis 

Across these dimensions—implementation lag, sovereign autonomy, institutional fragility, and performative success—Trump’s second-term diplomacy illuminates a broader theoretical tension in contemporary governance: the substitution of velocity for durability, and perception for capacity.

The short-term optics of decisive action cannot substitute for the slow architecture of institution-building. What emerges, therefore, is not strategic coherence but a high-frequency oscillation between triumphal declaration and deferred consequence—a pattern that risks exhausting both America’s credibility and its capacity for sustained global leadership.

V. The Costs of Institutional Decline and Soft Power Withdrawal

Parallel to Trump’s diplomatic initiatives, his administration has accelerated a systematic withdrawal from the institutions and soft-power tools that have undergirded American influence for eight decades. This erosion is not merely administrative but ideological—a deliberate redefinition of power away from persuasion and partnership toward coercion and unilateral assertion.

The administration’s decision to rename the Department of Defense as the “Department of War” in mid-2025 epitomizes this shift in worldview. It signaled a rejection of post-1945 diplomatic norms and played directly into adversarial narratives portraying the United States as an aggressor rather than a guarantor of stability. Complementing this rebranding has been the shuttering of key soft-power institutions such as USAID, Voice of America, and the U.S. Institute of Peace, replaced by the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) whose primary mandate is fiscal contraction rather than strategic influence.

These steps have precipitated steep declines in global favorability ratings of the United States, particularly across Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, where China and Russia have rapidly expanded their media and development footprints. Analysts at the Brookings Institution and Chatham House have described this trajectory as “a self-inflicted contraction of empire”—an internal retreat that magnifies external vulnerability.

The October 2025 breakdown in U.S.–Canada trade negotiations over tariffs on critical minerals and AI technologies further exemplifies the institutional deterioration. Trump’s abrupt withdrawal from the Ottawa talks—after accusing Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government of “economic sabotage”—ended months of negotiation over the so-called North American Industrial Compact. The collapse not only froze bilateral trade reforms but also triggered a sharp downturn in investor confidence and renewed calls within Canada for greater alignment with the EU and East Asia. The impasse reflected the broader corrosion of America’s capacity for structured negotiation: personal confrontation has supplanted the procedural diplomacy that once stabilized North American relations.

Simultaneously, the October government shutdown, precipitated by a budget standoff with congressional Democrats over defense appropriations and border funding, revealed the domestic dimension of institutional fragility. The closure of federal agencies, furloughing of over 800 000 employees, and suspension of diplomatic processing further eroded international confidence in the reliability of U.S. governance. Allies interpreted the shutdown not as a temporary fiscal dispute but as evidence of systemic dysfunction—an inability of the American state to sustain continuity even as it proclaims global leadership.

These developments underscore the strategic paradox of Trump’s second term. By dismantling the very institutional and normative frameworks that have historically multiplied American power, the administration accelerates what Joseph Nye termed the erosion of soft power: the loss of attraction, legitimacy, and moral capital. The long-term influence of the United States has never rested solely on military or economic dominance, but on the appeal of its institutions, values, and reliability as a partner.

By retreating from development assistance, cultural diplomacy, and multilateral cooperation—while embroiling itself in partisan gridlock and fiscal crisis—Trump’s Washington projects an image of impermanence and volatility. This self-inflicted contraction not only diminishes America’s global leverage but also creates a vacuum eagerly filled by China’s Belt and Road 2.0 initiatives and Russia’s energy diplomacy. In effect, Trump’s governance model transforms America First into America Alone—a rhetorical triumph masking the structural exhaustion of the very system that once underwrote U.S. primacy.

VI. Refined Analytical Framework: Deal-Making as Governance Paradigm

The synthesis of original observations and contemporary evidence permits a refined characterization of Trump's governance approach as a distinct paradigm with identifiable strengths and vulnerabilities.

Defining Characteristics of Transactional Deal-Making Diplomacy:

1. Bilateral over multilateral: Preference for direct state-to-state negotiation over multilateral institutions or regional organizations.

2. Personalistic intermediation: Deployment of non-traditional, often business-oriented intermediaries rather than career diplomats.

3. High visibility, rapid signature: Priority placed on achieving announced agreements and public acknowledgment rather than on the institutional embedding of agreements.

4. Reputational leverage: Reliance on personal credibility, reputation, and demonstrated resolve to influence negotiating partners' assessments.

5. Economic integration as binding: Emphasis on creating mutual economic interests (arms sales, investment) as mechanisms for maintaining alliance commitment.

6. Minimal institutional constraint: Reduced role for bureaucratic review, international law, or multilateral consensus-building in shaping agreements.

Strengths of This Paradigm:

• Velocity of decision-making and reduced friction from bureaucratic processes
• Ability to respond rapidly to emerging situations without institutional delay
• Creation of direct stakeholder constituencies (defense contractors, technology firms, sovereign wealth funds) with economic interests in the relationship
• Flexibility to craft creative solutions unconstrained by institutional precedent
• Political domestically, as Trump's supporters value the visibility of "wins" and the apparent rejection of traditional diplomatic niceties

Structural Vulnerabilities:

• Reversibility: Lack of institutional embedding means agreements depend on continued Trump administration commitment; successors may not honor them.
• Credibility erosion: Repeated unfulfilled promises reduce the perceived reliability of American commitments.
• Fragility under stress: Personal relationships and informal arrangements collapse rapidly when context shifts.
• Accountability deficit: Lack of institutional review and formal documentation creates ambiguity and dispute.
• Incapacity for follow-through: Massive institutional reductions (State Department, USAID) reduce capacity to monitor, implement, and sustain agreements.
• Sole-dependency on Trump: If Trump departs office or becomes incapacitated, the entire architecture of personal relationships and intermediaries becomes suspect to other actors.
• Backlash from exclusion: Career diplomats, multilateral institutions, and allies excluded from negotiations become sources of resistance to implementation.

VII. The Arc of Trump's Presidency: From Ambition to Constraint

Eight months into his second term, Trump's presidency traces an arc from expansive ambition to increasing institutional constraint. The early months involved rapid assertions of executive authority—tariff threats, military actions, ideological confrontations. However, as the term has progressed, the gaps between announcement and implementation have become evident.

What Trump hopes to get from his approach is wins. He relishes big announcements, and he often changes the definition of success. But by his telling, he and the U.S. always come out ahead. However, observers note that "it's not the deal. It's the next day. And how do you protect American prosperity and security as these conflicts and these very difficult regional dynamics continue to play out? It's never easy as just the art of one deal."

The challenge Trump confronts is one inherent to the American presidency: the transition from campaign rhetoric and executive assertion to the grinding reality of implementation in a system with institutional constraints, separation of powers, and international actors with their own interests and veto power.

VIII. Synthesis: Toward a Refined Theory of Transactional Diplomacy

The Original Proposition Reconsidered

Earlier analysis noted that Trump's leadership represents a collision between show-business style and the realities of statecraft. This observation remains valid but requires refinement. The collision is not merely between aesthetics and substance, but between two fundamentally different time horizons and mechanisms of accountability:

• Entertainment and real estate: Immediate market perception; reputation within a circumscribed community; ability to exit unsustainable situations and rebrand.
• Geopolitical statecraft: Multi-decade timeframes for policy effects; reputation across multiple international audiences with divergent interests; inability to exit situations without incurring costs; institutional constraints that bind successors.

Trump's approach works within the former domain. It struggles within the latter.

The Measure of Leadership Reconsidered

The original conclusion proposed that "the true measure of leadership lies not in the boldness of their proposals but in their ability to navigate the complex interplay of political institutions, economic forces, and public expectations."

This requires updating. In the era of deal-maker diplomacy, the measure of leadership lies specifically in:

1. The durability of agreements: Do they survive changes in administration, shifts in regional context, and the inevitable frictions that emerge post-signature?

2. The institutional embedding of outcomes: Are agreements backed by institutional mechanisms for monitoring, dispute resolution, and enforcement? Or do they collapse at the first sign of stress?

3. The alignment of announcement with implementation: Do stated goals translate into measurable policy outcomes? Or does each new crisis displace previous initiatives?

4. The credibility of commitment: Do allied and adversarial actors believe that American pledges will be honored? Or does repeated non-follow-through erode the perceived reliability of American guarantees?

By these metrics, Trump's second term presents a mixed to problematic record.

The Probable Future Trajectory

Three scenarios are possible for the remainder of Trump's second term:

Scenario 1: Consolidation through Institutional Reconstruction. Trump recognizes the implementation gaps and begins investing in institutional capacity to convert announced deals into durable outcomes. This would involve rehabilitating the State Department, creating formal monitoring mechanisms, and shifting from the "announcement" phase to the "implementation" phase. Probability: Low. It would require Trump to acknowledge the limitations of his approach and invest in institutions he has ideologically opposed.

Scenario 2: Acceleration and Scope Expansion. Trump doubles down on the transactional model, announcing still more deals, peace accords, and restructured alliances, while paying diminishing attention to whether earlier initiatives are actually implemented. The presidency becomes increasingly performative, with the gap between announcement and reality widening. This maintains domestic political satisfaction among Trump's base (who value the imagery of strength and deal-making) while international credibility erodes. Probability: Moderate to high. It aligns with Trump's demonstrated preferences and psychological profile.

Scenario 3: Crisis-Driven Reorientation. A major geopolitical crisis—escalation in Ukraine, Chinese military action regarding Taiwan, Iranian nuclear breakthrough, or Middle East war—forces Trump to recognize the insufficiency of transactional diplomacy. Responses to genuine security crises require sustained institutional capacity, alliance coordination, and credible commitment. If such a crisis occurs, Trump may be forced into a more traditional mode of governance. Probability: Moderate. Geopolitical surprises are inherent to international relations.

IX. Conclusion: The Art of the Deal vs. the Architecture of Durable Peace

The central tension animating Trump's second term is the collision between the "art of the deal"—rapid negotiation, personal charisma, headline-grabbing announcements—and what might be termed the "architecture of durable peace"—institutional embedding, multi-stakeholder consensus, sustained follow-through, and the grinding work of implementation.

Trump excels at the former. The evidence regarding his capacity for the latter remains ambiguous. Eight months into his presidency, the headlines are numerous but the durable outcomes are few. The announcements have been grand, but the implementations have been modest. The promises have been expansive, but the fulfillments have been partial.

For any president, but particularly for one who has deliberately dismantled much of the diplomatic infrastructure through which statecraft operates, the ultimate test is not whether bold proposals can be announced, but whether they can be sustained. In the new politics of deal-maker diplomacy, success will be measured not by the number of peace deals signed, but by how many survive; not by the number of trade agreements announced, but by how many enhance bilateral commerce; not by the boldness of diplomatic rhetoric, but by the durability of geopolitical outcomes.

Trump's second term will ultimately be judged not by the spectacle of announcement, but by the substance of achievement. To date, the record suggests that the gap between the two remains substantial. Whether that gap can be narrowed in the remaining years of his presidency depends on whether transactional deal-making can evolve into institutionally anchored statecraft—a transformation that remains uncertain and, on present evidence, unlikely.

In this sense, the real art of the Trump presidency will not be the art of the deal, but the art of the possible: the capacity to navigate, within the constraints of international law, allied skepticism, and institutional inertia, a pathway from grand ambition to sustainable reality. To date, that art remains underdeveloped.