Two days ago, the president of the United States declared his intention to assume long-term ownership of the Gaza Strip, turn the coastal enclave into a real-estate-development heaven, and permanently remove its Palestinian inhabitants to other countries. The administration has already walked this proposal back, but not before touting the president’s “out of the box” thinking—a phrase that suggests ignorance of where, exactly, the box is.

The immediate social-media reaction of many Palestinians in Gaza was defiant: They do not intend to leave their homeland, although it is largely uninhabitable after nearly 16 months of a ferocious war. Many Gazans are furious with Hamas for the ruin it has brought to the Palestinian national project, and almost all said that they would love to see Gaza become a developed, prosperous, and secure home for the Palestinian people. But they also see Trump’s imperial plan as still more punishing blowback from the October 7 attack.

Trump is right to see Gaza’s potential. Twenty years ago, under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel withdrew its settlements from the Strip, which was to be the first building block of Palestinian statehood. Gaza had a short-lived airport and plans for a seaport, offshore gas drilling, and development projects that would teach new skills and breed sustainability and self-sufficiency. Palestinians had an opportunity to create effective self-governance in Gaza and demonstrate what the West Bank, too, could become without the Israeli occupation.

[Read: Trump’s wild plan for Gaza]

Instead, Hamas has led Gaza to its destruction. The October 7 attacks led to the meaningless loss of tens of thousands of lives; the Strip has been razed and strewn with ordnance, and billions of dollars in aid money squandered, while Hamas proclaims divine victory for its resistance project. If Trump really means to take over this field of ruins, he could offer a stern proposal for dispensing with Hamas’s power and make clear that the United States will become responsible for recycling Gaza’s wreckage, disarming its unexploded munitions—many of which are American-produced—and providing drinking water to its people, much as Washington did for Yezidi communities persecuted in northern Iraq by “Islamic State” terrorists. The United States bears some responsibility for the apocalyptic destruction visited upon Gaza, after all, having provided Israel with much material support.

Trump opted instead for an outlandish and offensive proposal of forced displacement, land theft, and colonization. Many Arab and Gulf nations have condemned Trump’s plan and reiterated their commitment to the Palestinian people’s right to remain on their land. Saudi Arabia responded to Trump’s “real-estate solution” by emphasizing its commitment to the two-state solution, saying it would not normalize relations with Israel unless a Palestinian state is formed.

The United States is unlikely to commit tens of thousands of troops to battling Hamas in Gaza, with all of the consequences that would entail. But the announcement itself, made in the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Washington, is sure to inflame anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism in the region. Trump’s rhetoric in this regard both belittles the Palestinian people’s attachment to their homes and undermines Israeli security.

An American threat to take over Gaza and annex the territory will not be an effective negotiating tactic with Hamas or other Palestinian players. And no Arab country will participate in the forced displacement of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip. The Gulf countries are having to reiterate their commitment to the Palestinian people in a manner that puts them in a difficult position vis-à-vis normalization and the Abraham Accords. Even Netanyahu initially seemed to tread carefully by not fully endorsing the idea but praising Trump for his “fresh” thinking.

If what Trump really meant to do was to shake up the stalemate in Gaza by refusing the ordinary terms of engagement, he could have proposed some constructive measures. With Arab support, the U.S. could push Hamas into signing a 50-year truce with Israel. Trump could persuade the wealthy Arab countries to finance a transitional police force for Gaza that includes elements of the Palestinian Authority, in order to challenge Hamas’s monopoly on power. Maybe the Palestinian Authority could be enjoined to help rebuild and transform Gaza. Certainly, the United States can contribute rubble-removal equipment and help dispose of unexploded munitions before Hamas recycles them into new weapons.

[Read: Nobody wants Gaz-a-Lago]

But behind all of these efforts should be an iron-clad guarantee, through a binding United Nations Security Council resolution, of Palestinians’ right to repopulate the Gaza Strip. The Trump administration could address the people of Gaza in a speech acknowledging their pain and suffering—and promising U.S. support for a transformed Gaza so long as its people seek to live in peace and prosperity next to their Israeli neighbors.

Actual fresh thinking could lead to a reconstruction plan for Gaza that doesn’t activate the same old mechanisms that enabled Hamas to siphon off aid and resources in the past. A lawless grab for land and power, however, won’t do that—it will just delegitimize the United States and degrade its potential to do good in the world.

Can Jewish space lasers protect America? At first glance, President Donald Trump seems to think so. The 2024 Republican Party platform had just 20 planks, consisting of only 277 words. Twelve of those words were: “BUILD A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY.” Since taking office, Trump has moved to make good on that pledge. On January 27, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised swift action on the subject. That night, Trump signed an executive order titled “The Iron Dome for America,” turning the plan into policy.

In actuality, what Trump is proposing looks very little like Israel’s Iron Dome. His executive order calls for a space-based interception system to counter “ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles.” Iron Dome is a land-based array that mostly targets unsophisticated short-range rockets and mortars fired by terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel supplements this system with several other layers of missile defense, including David’s Sling and Arrow 3, which did most of the work repelling Iran’s aerial assaults on the country last April and October. Later this year, Israel is also expected to roll out Iron Beam, a laser-based system that can down projectiles for a fraction of the cost of Iron Dome’s interceptors—provided that it isn’t raining.

Many of these systems were developed with American partnership, and some could perhaps be adapted for deployment in the United States—although, as a land mass surrounded by oceans, the U.S. homeland has very different defense needs than the tiny Israeli state. But the point of Trump’s “Iron Dome for America” is not its feasibility. The system doesn’t have to work—or even exist—for it to serve the president’s interests.

[Read: The costly success of Israel’s iron dome]

A singular self-promoter, Trump excels at cutting through the cacophony of American politics with bold, blunt, and often cinematic images—such as “Iron Dome for America.” At a time when civil discourse is scattered across innumerable media platforms, attention is arguably a public figure’s most important resource, and Trump knows how to monopolize it. As when the president promised draconian tariffs against Mexico during his first weeks in office only to fold before they went into effect, he has figured out what our sclerotic political system actually rewards—brash bombast, not results—and governs accordingly, performing toughness rather than achieving outcomes.

This talent for theatricality is actually a big part of how Trump became president in the first place. In 2015, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas launched his own presidential bid as a harsh critic of illegal immigration, promising in a detailed 4,700-word policy platform to “secure the border once and for all.” Yet Cruz failed to gain traction, because he was bigfooted by a political outsider who had no policy experience but unmatched show business savvy. Trump promised to “build a wall and make Mexico pay for it” and rode that mantra to the presidency—after which the wall was never completed and Mexico did not pay for it.

Given Trump’s exceptional instinct for indelible images, that he landed on the Iron Dome as his latest gimmick is no surprise. For both Israel’s supporters and its detractors, the country’s missile-defense system emblemizes the technological frontier of warfare, thanks to countless photos and videos of its dramatic mid-air interceptions of enemy projectiles. As someone who made his name in real estate and television by manipulating people’s perceptions, Trump intuitively grasped the power of the Iron Dome in the popular imagination, and crudely co-opted it. Whether the system’s details make sense for America is not particularly important. For his purposes, the symbolism supercedes the substance.

Ronald Reagan, himself a former actor, also understood that a grand missile-defense project would appeal to the public consciousness. Critics derided Reagan’s plan as “Star Wars,” but its futuristic feel was precisely what made it so captivating, which is why the project consistently polled well, despite never coming to fruition.

Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative was a fanciful eccentricity in an otherwise robust governing agenda. But for Trump, flashy contrivances such as Iron Dome for America are the agenda. Unlike Reagan, who developed a broad political philosophy over his years in public life, Trump has few real principles and little interest in the nitty-gritty of legislation. He cares less about long-term outcomes than about being seen to be driving events. This is why he prefers to rule through grand pronouncements and executive actions, even though these are often ephemeral and can easily be tied up in litigation or overturned by a successor.

[Read: Trump doesn’t believe anything. That’s why he wins.]

Such indifference to end results might seem like a recipe for disappointing one’s supporters. But Trump is betting that in today’s chaotic information and political environment, appearing to care about issues that voters care about will be more important than actually delivering on them. And he has reason to be optimistic: Trump’s electoral coalition depends on people who don’t closely follow politics; many of them are less aware of the policies a politician implements than the image he projects. Trump, ever the performer, has mastered the art of marketing himself to the masses, and has used this skill to transform American politics.

In 2016, Cruz had a punctilious 25-point plan to curb illegal immigration; Trump had a sensational slogan about making Mexico pay for it—and trounced him. President Joe Biden’s economic policies delivered major gains for low-wage workers; Trump’s proposed tariffs are essentially a tax on those workers, but they voted for him over Biden, because Trump appeared to be vigorously fighting for them. Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency is a basket case run by people with little government experience, and is less likely than a commission staffed by experts to effectively curb federal spending without ugly unintended consequences. But DOGE is also a far more visible endeavor, fronted by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. The Abraham Accords were mostly a symbolic handshake between Middle Eastern countries that had never fought a war against one another, but Trump’s branding and ceremony made the agreements into something more.

Again and again, Trump has managed to transmute political performance into the appearance of political achievement. Whether it’s promising a border wall or an Iron Dome, he may not be America’s most competent president, but he is its greatest showman, and in our broken political system, that might be enough to maintain his dominance over our collective attention and affairs of state.

Few of Donald Trump’s foibles have gone undissected, but one glaring thing remains underappreciated: He does not care about U.S. national security.

Once you consider Trump’s record from this perspective, many of his past and present actions become more coherent. (The political scientist Jonathan Bernstein recently made a version of this point on Substack.) Why else would a president—to choose a few examples—nominate Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard for his Cabinet, haphazardly store highly classified documents on a ballroom stage, or publicly call on Russia to hack a former secretary of state’s emails?

This is not to say, as some of Trump’s critics have, that he is against American national security. It doesn’t mean he’s a Manchurian candidate, a saboteur trying to tear down the United States on behalf of some foreign adversary—Trump appears to have come by his hostility to rule of law and the Constitution on his own. Rather, he’s simply indifferent, just as many of Trump’s most audacious lies are less intentionally misleading than completely uninterested in truth.

[David A. Graham: What Trump did in Osaka was worse than lying]

“Trump is the only thing he’s interested in,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser during Trump’s first term, told me. “He’s not really interested in domestic security, either, or anything else.”

Nor is this to say that Trump’s appointees don’t care about American national security. Tulsi Gabbard, his nominee to be director of national intelligence, has a very strange collection of views that she seems to honestly feel would improve America’s position in the world. Her lengthy meeting with the now-deposed Syrian butcher Bashar al-Assad appears to have been prompted by sincere but misguided convictions.

Other Trump appointees also hold views that may diverge from “the blob,” as detractors sometimes describe the foreign-policy establishment, but people like National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy–Designate Elbridge Colby are viewed as serious, thoughtful people with a command of their fields.

[Read: Trump’s plea for Russia to hack the U.S. government]

Pete Hegseth, too, seems to care a great deal about the future of the country—but Hegseth is plainly unqualified to be secretary of defense, and a president who cared about national security would not put him forward to lead the Defense Department. Hegseth has never run any organization near in size and complexity to the Pentagon; the ones he has run, he’s run into the ground. Many eyewitness accounts suggest he has, or has had, serious issues with alcohol abuse. (Hegseth denies any drinking problem and says he will not drink as secretary.) None of this even gets into his serial adultery and past accusations of sexual assault. (He has denied any wrongdoing.) His primary qualifications for the nomination are that he looks good on TV and that he’s been a consistent cheerleader for Donald Trump.

A president who cared about national security would not have publicly called for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails during the 2016 campaign. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said; Kremlin operatives promptly tried. Nor would he defer so egregiously to Vladimir Putin, blaming “U.S. foolishness and stupidity” for strained Russo-American relations. He would also not summarily dismiss DHS advisory committees and work to dismantle key cybersecurity bodies simply because he was angry that they undermined his lies about the 2020 election.

[Read: Trump blames bad relations with Russia on everything but Russia]

A president concerned foremost about national security does not systematically alienate key allies, attempt to intimidate them, or question whether he’d stand by basic treaty obligations, such as NATO’s Article 5. Nor would a president who was interested in national security withhold duly appropriated funds to a key ally like Ukraine in the hope of obtaining a personal political favor. He would not use the military as a prop, whether in creating a show at the border or cinematically calling off strikes on adversaries.

A president focused on national security would not abscond with dozens of boxes full of highly sensitive national-security documents, storing them mixed up with golf shirts and newspaper clippings and leaving them on a stage in Mar-a-Lago, unsecured. (He would also not, as federal prosecutors alleged, refuse to return them when subpoenaed. Trump denied this.) Nor would he pardon violent rioters convicted in an assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump has revoked security details for Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and his former adviser Brian Hook, all of whom worked in his first administration. Bolton told me he wasn’t shocked, because when he resigned from the White House in 2019, Trump immediately ordered protection removed. “Normally, somebody in that job gets protection for three months, six months—there’s no set formula,” he said. “But because you have information you don’t want your adversaries to get, it’s not a perquisite. It’s for the protection of the government.”

[Read: Why the president praises dictators]

Caring deeply about national security is not the same as being good at it. U.S. history is littered with examples of catastrophic choices made by conscientious officials. The architects of foreign policy in the George W. Bush administration truly believed that toppling Saddam Hussein would improve security in the Middle East and American interests. They were wrong. Conversely, Trump’s first term saw some foreign-policy wins, including the Abraham Accords and the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Other gambits that seemed more aimed at personal glorification—or a Nobel Peace Prize—such as his summit with Kim Jong Un flopped.

Even if Trump’s approach does sometimes produce wins, however, he is more motivated by pique, personal benefit, attraction to autocratic leaders, or pursuit of adulation. Those, more than a calculation about what’s best for the nation, are what guides Trump.

When Donald Trump completes his once-unthinkable return to the White House, he’ll face a world far more violent and unsettled than when he unwillingly gave up power four years ago.

And his very presence behind the Resolute desk feels destined to destabilize it further.

Trump has offered mysterious plans to bring quick ends to the wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East. He has antagonized allies and mused about a return to an age of American imperialism, when the United States could simply seize the territory it wanted. He and his advisers have threatened trade wars and allied themselves with movements that have eroded democracies and supported rising authoritarians.

And Trump is again poised to push an “America First” foreign policy—inward-looking and transactional—at a moment when a lack of superpower leadership could embolden China to move on Taiwan or lead to renewed conflict in the Middle East, just as the region seems on the doorstep of its biggest transformation in generations.

“Trump is less of a surprise this time but will be a test. The international system has baked in that Trump is not an instinctive supporter of alliances, that he will be inconsistent,” James Stavridis, a former supreme allied commander of NATO, told me. “Allies and adversaries alike are going to know that nothing is free; everything is a negotiation.”

[Read: How ‘America first’ became America alone]

Trump, Biden officials ruefully note in private, will inherit a strong hand. He will take the helm of a healthy economy and will become the first U.S. president in decades to assume office without a large-scale military deployment in an overseas war zone. And the grueling conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza—which Trump has demanded end immediately—both appear to be at inflection points, with war-weary sides showing a willingness to talk.

The president-elect has said there will be “hell to pay in the Middle East” if Hamas hasn’t released the hostages seized on October 7, 2023, by the time he is inaugurated. After months of negotiations by President Joe Biden’s team, a breakthrough appears at hand to pause fighting and release some hostages.

The moment has come during the incumbent’s final days in office, yet Trump has been quick to take credit—the deal was made with input from his Middle East envoy—even as a permanent resolution to the conflict remains uncertain. And his intervention does seem to have played a key role in achieving a breakthrough. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared eager to start Trump’s second term on the incoming president-elect’s good side while Hamas may have been spooked by his bombast. But as the cease-fire slowly unfurls in the weeks ahead, Trump’s tempestuousness could just as easily endanger the fragile deal.

During his reelection campaign, Trump repeatedly proclaimed that he would end the war between Russia and Ukraine “within 24 hours,” a claim he has since softened. Indeed, nowhere will his swearing-in be more nervously watched than in Kyiv. Trump, of course, has long derided NATO, the alliance that has propped up Ukraine. Moscow has made some halting advances, despite a last-ditch surge of aid to Ukraine from the Biden administration. And the president-elect’s desire for a quick, negotiated end to the conflict seems likely to ratify some of Russia’s territorial gains.

Trump’s White House and the MAGA-ified House of Representatives have shown no appetite to send substantial aid or military equipment to the front, and although Europe will gamely try to pick up the slack, Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself will suffer without American support. Russia’s advantage in manpower—bolstered by the North Korean troops it is using as cannon fodder—will only expand, and Russian President Vladimir Putin may grow more confident that he can simply win a war of attrition.

[Read: Trump is facing a catastrophic defeat in Ukraine]

One senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the incoming administration, identified Trump’s long-standing deference to Putin as a grave concern, particularly if Russia’s aggression sets off NATO’s mutual-defense pact. “If Trump gives in to Putin an inch, he’ll take a mile,” the official told me. “If he turns his back completely and encourages him to move beyond Ukraine, think how much more costly it will be if Article 5 gets triggered. Then we have American skin in the game.”

Divisions are already emerging in Trump’s orbit as to the best approach to Ukraine and beyond. Steve Bannon, the right-wing provocateur and first-term Trump aide, has argued against globalism. Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who has become Trump’s most influential informal adviser, has used his fortune and social-media reach to prop up right-wingers in the U.K. and Germany who are eager to walk away from Kyiv. That echoes the approach of the incoming vice president, J. D. Vance.

But not all of Trump’s team is in lockstep. The secretary-of-state nominee, Marco Rubio, has been a NATO defender, and Mike Waltz, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, has argued forcefully in favor of tougher sanctions on Moscow’s energy sector to strangle Putin’s government economically.

Those divisions feel familiar. Trump’s first-term diplomatic and national-security teams—initially stocked with Republican stalwarts whose views were far closer to GOP orthodoxy than those embraced by MAGA—often found themselves feuding among themselves. Both camps were frequently frustrated by a president who had few consistent desires other than a need for flattery.

The result was a haphazard foreign policy. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un started out on the receiving end of “fire and fury,” only to later receive what Trump called “beautiful letters.” China went from foe to friend and then back again. And even as his administration levied tough sanctions against Russia, Trump continually cozied up to Putin, siding with the dictator over his own U.S. intelligence agencies in Helsinki.

[Read: No more Mr. Tough Guy on China]

That unpredictability, although it brought chaos before, could work to Trump’s advantage on the world stage this time around, his new crop of advisers believes. Would any foreign adversary dare test Trump if they can’t anticipate his response? Trump himself leaned into the idea in October, when he told The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board that he would not have to use military force to prevent Beijing from blockading Taiwan, because Chinese President Xi Jinping “respects me and he knows I’m fucking crazy.”

It’s far less calculated than Richard Nixon’s “madman” theory of the case—far more born of Trump’s own whims and ego—but the end result, his advisers argue, could be the same.

And that, to put it mildly, was on full display during the transition.

Maps showing the familiar view of the Western Hemisphere, but with the U.S. borders cartoonishly expanded, have become popular right-wing memes. Suddenly, Greenland is part of the United States. Upon closer examination, so is the Panama Canal. And Canada—our friendly, polite neighbor to the north—is now the 51st state.

There are debates even in Trump World as to how serious any of these efforts at territorial expansion might be, and all agree that a healthy dose of trolling was involved in Trump dispatching Donald Trump Jr. to Greenland or calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “governor.” But foreign capitals have long learned to take the elder Trump both literally and seriously.

Trump’s desire for Greenland—based on its strategic location and abundant resources—has rattled not only Denmark, which governs the island, but also other NATO members, which are aghast at the incoming American president’s refusal to rule out using military force to seize the island. Similarly, Trump’s threats toward Panama and his bullying of Canada—including warnings of sweeping tariffs—have again sent a clear message to the world: Under its 47th president, the United States cannot be counted on to enforce the rules-based order that has defined the postwar era.

[Read: The intellectual rationalization for annexing Greenland]

A Trump-transition spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In the Middle East, Israel’s response to October 7 created a humanitarian crisis in Gaza but also decimated the Iranian proxies that have served as buffers for Tehran for decades, leaving the regime newly vulnerable.

“Iran is now at the weakest point since 1979,” Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said on Monday. “There is a cease-fire in Lebanon and the possibility of a new political future with a new president. Russia and Iran’s lackey in Syria, [Bashar al-Assad], is gone.”

In his first term, Trump withdrew the United States from a nuclear deal with Iran, implemented a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign, and brokered the Abraham Accords, which further isolated Tehran. He authorized the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the general who directed Iran’s militias and proxy forces around the Middle East. He’s now filled his Cabinet with Iran hawks, including Waltz—which could put him at odds with Gulf allies who seem more inclined to try for a détente with Tehran.

The only certainty is more uncertainty. And the president-elect was quick to embrace the chaos when asked by a reporter at a news conference last month about his plans for Iran.

“How could I tell you a thing like that now? It’s just … you don’t talk about that before something may or may not happen,” Trump said. “I don’t want to insult you. I just think it’s just not something that I would ever answer having to do with there or any other place in the world.”