Some of these are ethical, such as not violating the rights of other people and not supporting or engaging in aggressive conduct generally. Others are partly ethical and partly prudential, such as not wasting taxpayer's money on foreign adventurism and limiting the influence of arms dealers and the like on our political system. But one overriding prudential reason for a non-interventionist foreign policy is to avoid becoming entangled in foreign intrigues and conflicts where we lack control over our involvement and the outcome.

For all his "America First" bluster, President Donald Trump seems to understand none of these, and it is the third that I will focus on here. His apparent belief that he can control other countries and the outcomes of our involvement in their wars and schemes is problematic, because despite his foreign policy failures thus far, it is likely that he will continue the pattern of intervention that he has established in his second term.

The recent Israel-Iran rollercoaster saw Trump step into an international conflict and promptly lose control over it. He seems to have believed a few threats would convince Iran to give up uranium enrichment, but when Israel launched air attacks on Iran, Trump responded by joining in and bombing the facilities he had claimed he would negotiate over with the Iranians.

Trump was thus drawn into armed conflict by the Israelis' independent decisions, and when Trump didn't get the "unconditional surrender" he wanted from Iran, he declared a ceasefire, claiming that Israel and Iran had agreed to this. Neither Israel nor Iran said they had agreed to a ceasefire and instead continued to pound each other with missiles and air raids. Trump reacted angrily to the continued fighting, commenting that Israel and Iran "don't know what the fuck they're doing." Israel finally stopped when it claimed it had achieved its military objectives.

Watching this unfold gave the impression that there had never been an agreed-upon ceasefire and that Trump believed he could force one by declaring it unilaterally. Regardless of whether he invented the ceasefire or convinced Israel to relent after the fact, Trump seemed surprised that the two sides didn't want to stop fighting, and that perceptive failure is a key to understanding Trump's deficiencies in foreign policy.

Donald Trump seems to regard the leaders of foreign countries as akin to market actors looking to make beneficial deals, and since peace is more conducive to profit than destruction, he assumes that rational actors would choose peace. Unfortunately, international politics doesn't work that way at all. The leaders of governments around the world are not New York real estate developers. Israel and Iran want victory over their enemies, not peace. For them deals are just intermediate stepping stones to the ultimate political and military victories they really desire. Whenever the United States gives them an opportunity, they will take it, whether it's Israel urging the U.S. to bomb Iran, or Iran getting a temporary respite from being on the losing end of an air war with Israel. At the moment, there is a break from active fighting, but there is no reason to expect it to last.