When U.S. President Donald Trump served Chinese leader Xi Jinping chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago in 2017 while casually informing his guest that the United States had just launched 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria, it captured something fundamental to his approach to foreign policy: unpredictability.
What kind of leader conducts diplomacy that way? An unpredictable one. For a time, that impulsiveness was arguably Trump’s most potent foreign policy asset, a genuine strategic superpower, a wildcard that confounded adversaries and allies alike.
As Trump travels to Beijing this week for what may be the most consequential diplomatic encounter of his second presidency, it is worth asking whether that unpredictability remains operative — and whether it has remained an asset or transformed into something more corrosive.
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