The Curveball President

Image Source: How to play baseball, a manual for boys – Public Domain

Last week, in a fit of blue-suit pique, Donald Trump threw a curveball, reversing his take on ideologically indoctrinated North Korea and flicking signals at Kim Jong Un with the glee of a kid discovering a laser pointer.

Remember Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a very different sartorialist—more dark commando chic than preppy shine? He was saying on August 9 that another 30,000-50,000 North Korean troops were about to be sent to Russia to fight Ukraine?

Zelenskyy didn’t dish out evidence, or a timetable, and his claim was brushed off by Pyongyang as “groundless,” but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Fact: North Korean troops are already fighting Ukrainians.

“We never forget until we die!” runs one of Pyongyang’s more memorable slogans. Does it follow that North Koreans chant this in Russia’s Kursk region, just northeast of Sumy, where this fighting has been taking place? Or—and I say this with sympathy—are they more anxious souls than party-line sloganeers?

As for Trump and Korea, Trump literally halted the US-South Korean Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, describing North Korea as “unthreatening and respectful”? This, while recharging the bromance with Kim Jong Un and huffily berating South Korea for declining to support his increasingly disesteemed war against Iran.

At times on the world carousel, Trump appears afflicted by a kind of brittle willingness to break every status quo within reach. Quite something, when generations of American Foreign Service officers have been educated and trained to believe that South Korea stands on the so-called side of the angels.

Effectively hurling invective at a treaty ally facing a nuclear-armed antagonist—particularly while Pyongyang slow-waltzes militarily to the dirge of Moscow—is not only beyond comprehension, it is supremely dangerous. In fact, a diagnosis of strategic incoherence may be more in line. The exercises ended a full six days early.

For the record, the international case against Kim Jong Un’s regime includes crimes against humanity—political imprisonment, torture, executions, forced labour, sexual violence, disappearances, persecution and starvation. Nothing to see here? Evidently not, at least from the Oval Office.

But should we close friends of America be surprised? Russia already represents a break with post-1945 American foreign-policy tradition, while American presidents have routinely done deals with enemies. Maybe the real curveball is Trump’s willingness to use American leverage against Ukraine as Russia continues its illegal invasion in violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Meanwhile, a tightly restricted Pentagon told Congress last month that the $400 million set aside for Ukraine will take until 2029 to work its way through the system—by which time AI will probably be running everything anyway.

One of the few benefits of the snug relationship between Washington and Moscow came at the weekend with the apparent success of Donald Trump’s intervention to secure the Russian release of American military veteran Robert Gilman. He had spent more than four years in prison on disputed assault charges and was described as deathly ill. His alleged victim in the original case was a Russian police officer.

Initially, Trump suspended military assistance to Ukraine, then in July 2025 announced that the United States would start shipping defensive weapons again as Russian attacks intensified. In May, Putin had appeared, at least to Trump, to be open to negotiations, but quickly doubled down again. At the weekend, Trump was even accused of returning to freezing Zelenskyy out.

In other words, Ukraine policy has undergone enough reversals to warrant an enquiry. It is swing-door diplomacy. As for the word “ally,” fellowship has become follyship. This actually connects Korea with Canada and Europe. Traditionally, Washington might have conducted bruising trade negotiations with its pals, but did so while deliberately—even proudly—ring-fencing the security relationship.

Now, an ally’s military protection, trade treatment and willingness to support unrelated US operations have become bargaining chips in the same negotiation. There are no boundaries, no insulation. It is smash and grab. That means help with the smashing, or risk being grabbed.

Canada is a striking example. As folk well know, in 2025 Trump launched a tariff war—and an over-personalised tiff—with, politics aside, what should have been seen as one of America’s closest buddies, imposing 25% tariffs and later raising duties on some Canadian goods to 35%. Washington says Canada has long discriminated against American products. This year the administration nevertheless threatened another escalation, to 50%. Negotiations came tantalisingly close to a deal before collapsing amid last-minute US demands that Carney said went too far, prompting him to suspend the talks. So now 50% duties have kicked in on some $20 billion of Canadian goods, existing US tariffs remain elsewhere, and Canada has promised retaliation in kind. Even this side of the Atlantic, it seems tiresome and petty.

Iran is an enormous reversal in the Trump playbook, one so easy to overlook because Trump was always a hawk about Iran. But being hawkish and entering a prolonged American war in the Middle East are two different things. Strutting about with a puffed-out chest full of Queens, New York City, indignation cannot disguise the fact Trump spent years mocking previous presidents who were trapped in Middle Eastern wars. In today’s direct war with Iran, his war, the US is nearly six months in, with eighteen US service members killed and approximately 775 wounded. “Everything breaks,” as Graham Greene noted in The Destructors.

So on Iran, Trump has not reversed hostility towards Tehran. What he has reversed is the “maximum pressure without another endless Middle East war” part of Trumpism. His latest diatribe against Tucker Carlson, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie “Traitor” Greene on Truth Social shows exactly this. Reuters, reporting earlier in the conflict, had already warned that the Trump administration was facing the escalation and exit-strategy problems that Trump had spent years ribbing his predecessors for. Writers here saw it coming too.

Trump’s China policy is Reverse Central too. It has shown far more surface-level camaraderie—never a truly bad thing—than his first term suggested. But wasn’t Trump the big-gun architect of an American hard line on Beijing? Yet to get a broader deal with Xi, Trump’s second administration seems to have given up on a technology straitjacket. In fact, in July 2025, weren’t Americans told the administration was pausing additions to the technology-export-control regime built up under Biden and, by February 2026, was easing AI-chip controls?

Talking of China, TikTok is a clear example of Trump reversing Trump. His first administration attempted to ban it. On returning to office, he delayed enforcement of the divest-or-ban law and pursued a pretty cosy arrangement that would allow the Chinese-owned service to continue operating in the United States.

Trump’s approach always seems to be to make deals case by case, rather than form lasting alliances. An ally that refuses him can become an immediate target. An adversary whose leader he believes he can negotiate with can suddenly receive concessions and unusually friendly treatment, delivered with a kiss on both cheeks.

That produces a really upside-down situation. Tariffs on Canada while negotiating with China? Pressure on Ukraine while courting Russia? Punishment of South Korea while courting North Korea? Criticism of NATO allies while seeking agreements with Moscow? “You can’t fight in here! It’s the War Room!” as President Merkin Muffley said in Dr. Strangelove. “We got attacked,” said Carney.

And Korea makes the contradiction all the thornier because North Korea is simultaneously becoming more useful militarily to Russia. Zelenskyy’s 30,000-50,000 figure might remain an allegation but the broader Russia–North Korea love-in is real. So reducing allied exercises is about as curveball as you can get. “The most transcendental president in the history of our great country,” declares a passing out Karoline Leavitt. “It’s a complete normalisation of something completely abnormal,” points out Jeffrey Sachs. “Move along, move along,” sings The All-American Rejects.