OPINION: Ratings, Not Reasons
Published 8:10 am Wednesday, January 21, 2026
American foreign policy has finally embraced its true metric: ratings. Strategy, legality, and outcomes remain part of the script, but only as supporting material. Under Donald Trump, the projection of power has become indistinguishable from programming. When domestic numbers dip, foreign tension is renewed. This is not governance. It is season management.
In earlier eras, presidents worried about wars becoming quagmires. Today, the concern is simpler and more immediate. Will the crisis trend? When legal documents resurface, when Epstein-related questions refuse to disappear, when polls soften and donors grow restless, the response is not explanation but escalation. Nothing crowds out subpoenas quite like a naval deployment.
Trump’s preparation for this role is extensive. He has spent decades perfecting the appearance of decisiveness while remaining unburdened by detail. From casinos to reality television, he learned that success is declared, not measured. Foreign policy merely scales that lesson. The globe becomes the boardroom. The Pentagon becomes the production studio.
Venezuela offers the clearest example. Nicolás Maduro’s capture unfolded less like diplomacy than like a storyline imported from another show and dropped into the main plot for immediate drama. The justification shifted with each news cycle: drug trafficker, authoritarian strongman, regional threat, enemy of democracy. Each rationale lingered just long enough to blunt criticism before being replaced. Doctrine, in this framework, is whatever fits on the chyron.
The Caribbean now functions as a permanent set. Warships provide establishing shots. Military exercises supply constant background footage. Warnings are issued with deliberate ambiguity, serious enough to sound resolute, vague enough to avoid commitment. Officially, this deters adversaries. Practically, it deters silence.
Supporting characters rotate predictably. Colombia remains perpetually on probation. Cuba is revived as a Cold War antagonist because familiar villains require no explanation. Mexico oscillates between indispensable partner and existential threat, depending on which framing polls better that week. Consistency is sacrificed to pacing.
Even Greenland has reentered the narrative. Once dismissed as a curiosity, renewed interest in the island now passes as strategic thinking. Geography and mineral wealth are discussed in transactional terms. Sovereignty, in this worldview, is not a principle but a starting position.
History intrudes only when unavoidable. The record of U.S.-backed regime change producing instability rather than order does not lend itself to triumphant storytelling. Guatemala, Chile, Iraq, and Libya offer cautionary lessons that slow the plot and complicate the message. They are therefore minimized.
The urgency of escalation has a domestic explanation. Another impeachment, even without the prospect of Senate removal, would dominate the campaign, fracture party unity, and redirect attention from strength to conduct. Foreign confrontation offers a more favorable frame. It casts the president as commander rather than defendant.
The irony is complete. Trump campaigned on ending endless wars and restoring domestic focus. In practice, his administration has normalized endless brinkmanship. Diplomacy is patient and multilateral, and it rarely produces applause. Escalation is immediate, unilateral, and highly shareable. One yields agreements. The other yields clips.
The costs are treated as secondary. Military spending grows. Alliances strain. Latin America becomes more wary. Global norms weaken. At home, governance becomes reactive, shaped less by deliberation than by the next urgent development.
Congress still retains the authority to interrupt this dynamic. Budgets can be constrained, oversight enforced, and unauthorized military action checked. Whether legislators choose to exercise those powers will determine if American foreign policy remains anchored in principle or drifts fully into performance.
What is being normalized is dangerous. War becomes distraction. Escalation becomes messaging. Foreign lives become expendable elements in a domestic drama. Television logic rewards attention, not resolution. Foreign policy, however, does not end when viewers change the channel.
Van Abbott is a long time resident of Alaska and regular opinion writer for the Juneau Empire. He has held management positions in government organizations in Ketchikan, Fairbanks, and Anchorage. He served in the Peace Corps in the late sixties as a teacher.
