Pattern emerges from Trump’s latest Twitter rant

As the presidential tweets ricochet from one world hot spot to another, a Trump Doctrine has emerged: Claim matchless strength, suffer no slight and counter-punch harder than you are hit — at least verbally. US President Donald Trump’s searing all caps response to a relatively routine Iran provocation is the latest example of Trump’s refusal to show weakness, continuing a pattern that includes showdowns with North Korea, China, and Nato allies, with Russia the notable exception. Trump’s tough-guy rhetoric has become a defining characteristic of his overseas affairs, as have the relatively modest results. His tweet warning of “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE” on Monday sparked a fresh day of foreign policy confusion. The tweet was reminiscent of Trump’s brash warning of “fire and fury” for North Korea last year, part of an exchange of bravado in which he and Kim Jong Un’s Government compared the relative size of their nuclear buttons. White House officials now cast those exchanges with Kim as a negotiating tactic to bring the mercurial autocrat to the negotiating table. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wouldn’t rule out that the latest tweet about Iran was a similar negotiating gambit. “I’m not going to get into the President’s strategy. But I think he’s very clear about what he’s not going to allow to take place.” The Iran tweet came on the heels of a frustrating week for a White House reeling from denunciations of Trump’s treatment of Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. Critics were quick to seize upon his Iran threat as an attempt to change the subject. Sanders said: “The President has the ability, unlike a lot of those in the media, to actually focus on more than one issue at a time.” The all-caps shot across Iran’s bow appeared to be prompted by a speech by President Hassan Rouhani, who said Americans “must understand that war with Iran is the mother of all wars and peace with Iran is the mother of all peace”. Senator Dianne Feinstein, (D), tweeted that Trump’s “obsession with looking tough on Twitter is weakening our standing on the world stage and seriously jeopardising our national security.” For all of Trump’s diplomatic bluster, there is one nation with which he has tended to pull his punches: Russia. While the Trump Administration has enacted tough sanctions on Russia, Trump has repeatedly sought to tighten ties to Putin.