Foreign policy What will the new Trump world order look like?

uring the first Trump term, Richard Moore, then the political director of the UK Foreign Office and now the head of MI6, has admitted that half of Britain's diplomats woke up each morning dreading what they might read on the president's Twitter feed.

- Patrick Wintour

The sheer unpredictability of Trump's caprice, and his faith in his charisma, made it hard for diplomats to operate. It would often take feverish consultations with Trump's senior aides, including some in the Pentagon, before a plan - such as a premature withdrawal of 2,500 US troops from Afghanistan - could be finessed.

Now, for all the pro forma congratulations, that sense of foreboding is back. Although only 4% of the American electorate said foreign policy was the most important issue to them in the election, for those watching from abroad it was the all-consuming preoccupation.

That is hardly surprising, as Trump represents an injection of highly combustible material into an already explosive world. Two wars are raging, one now including North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia, and the other still capable of pitting Iran against Israel. And a third with China is looming. In the eyes of Republican foreign policy thinkers, that is at least two wars too many.

Yet, extraordinarily, Trump's campaign left few clues as to how he will conduct foreign policy. Often the proposals he referenced were mere headlines, such as ending the war in Ukraine in 24 hours; outlandish, such as deporting 10 million migrants; or contradictory, concerning committing to Nato and suggesting Russia does whatever it wants to European freeloaders.

Apart from that, there is a broad intent to make tariffs as much as sanctions the central part of the US foreign policy armoury. It is hard to claim it amounts to a serious prospectus.

At one level, this is surprising, as so much of Trump's analysis of America's domestic ills derives from his analysis of the failures of US foreign policy. Indeed, the link between foreign and domestic policy is a preoccupation of the small group of foreign policy experts closest to him, not least the vice-president-elect, JD Vance.