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[There is no pursued and adhered to grand strategy here. No moral vision or guiding principles. Only reelection and looking good for the cameras (and the dictator knows this and skillfully milks it to the max). It can be proven seven ways to Sunday. But it will get you suspended or even banned on this forum, so that’s just the way things are.]

I’d disagree. Trump puts on this servile, eager-to-please, world’s greatest salesman act. But in reality, he’s installed THAAD in South Korea and beefed up freedom of navigation operations in the Far East. He’s improved relations with Taiwan and pushed through arms sales that were stalled under Obama, because Obama was, just like Carter, eager to hand Taiwan over to China. He’s withdrawn from arms control treaties with Russia that Russia has been flouting for many years. Under Trump, the frequency of B-52 flights that ensure the US retains the ability to vaporize Russia from strategic bombers has been upped. That’s a big shot in the arm for nuclear readiness. And the modernization of the nuclear force that has repeatedly been delayed finally got going under Trump.

My impression is that the glad-handing is who Trump is - his conceit is that he can win anyone over. And this conceit isn’t affected by actual results. However, he doesn’t let policy be set by atmospherics. Note that sanctions on Korea are probably the tightest they’ve ever been.

Bottom line - there’s a lot of stuff the media is slinging at Trump that just isn’t true. He’s yielding on a lot of stuff that gives America’s adversaries face, but not the substance of the sanctions against them. The G-8 meeting is just crap - his policies have got Russia’s economy in a vise that is getting tighter and tighter. He’s trying to play the Russia card vis-a-vis China, just as in previous decades, Nixon played the China card vis-a-vis Russia.