ANALYSIS: TRUMP FOREIGN POLICY SCORECARD — WHAT THE FDD REVEALS IN JUNE 2026

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies as a critical conservative barometer

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is not a left-wing organization. It is a Washington think tank, broadly Republican in its sympathies, hawkish on national security questions, fundamentally convinced that weakness toward Iran, Russia, and China costs more than strength. When the FDD criticizes the Trump administration — and it does so in June 2026 with a regularity that demands attention — it is not partisan reflex. It is a strategic judgment from people who share Trump's objectives but contest his methods on certain key files. Its Trump Administration Foreign Policy Tracker, published monthly, is a valuable measuring instrument precisely because it escapes the dynamics of partisan opposition.

In June 2026, the FDD's Foreign Policy Tracker paints a picture of the Trump administration's foreign policy that is simultaneously more nuanced and more worrying than what the official White House communications present. On Iran, the diagnosis is brutal: the memorandum of understanding of June 17 offers Tehran uncontrolled access to oil revenues, with no escrow, no ceiling, no reporting requirement — a "massive liquidity injection" that could finance the regime's rearmament. On Ukraine, the conclusions are mixed: support exists but lacks the strategic clarity that would allow Kyiv to plan long-term. On China, the pressure is real but risks generating targeted retaliation against allies that complicates the coalition.

Reading a mid-term scorecard: the tools of rigorous analysis

Analyzing the foreign policy of an ongoing administration is a perilous exercise. Events are recent, information partial, judgments provisional. But certain patterns emerge with sufficient clarity for an honest columnist to name them. Trump's foreign policy at mid-2026 is characterized by three constants: an exceptional capacity for military escalation that generates real pressure on adversaries, a propensity for rapid arrangements that don't resolve structural problems but create negotiating spaces, and an institutional management of alliances that weakens multilateral structures in favor of direct bilateral relationships. These three constants simultaneously produce results and risks. Both deserve to be named precisely.

What I propose in this analysis is an assessment across six geographical files — Iran, Ukraine, China, the Middle East, NATO, and the American domestic front — drawing primarily on the analyses and assessments of the FDD and other documented primary sources. The objective is not to assign grades — it is to understand the mechanisms and trajectories. Because in six months, some of these trajectories will have either confirmed or contradicted what we can see today. And that is when we will truly be able to speak of a verdict.

I read the FDD Foreign Policy Tracker for June 2026 with particular attention. What strikes is the consistency of the critiques — not ideological alarm cries, but precise technical questions about concrete mechanisms. General License X without escrow on Iranian oil. The absence of a reporting mechanism on purchases of enriched Iranian uranium. The silence on Iranian ballistic missiles in the MoU. These critiques come from people who want Trump strong against Iran, not from his political opponents. That deserves to be taken seriously.

What the MoU resolves — and what it leaves open

The US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding of June 17, 2026 has two certain merits: it stopped the direct military strikes that had intensified since February 28, 2026, the date of the first American-Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear installations. And it reopened a transit corridor in the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure by Iran had disrupted the global oil market for months. These two results are real and concrete. Denying their importance would be dishonest. The oil price fell after the signing — a sign that markets believed in the deal, at least initially.

But the blind spots are numerous and documented. First, Iran's ballistic missile program — which constitutes Tehran's principal military threat to its neighbors and to American forces in the region — is not mentioned in the MoU. Second, Iran's proxy networks — Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen — are not part of the negotiations. Third, and this is the most technical but most crucial point: the question of the storage of enriched nuclear material — Iran is estimated to hold enough highly enriched uranium for at least 10 bombs according to expert estimates — is deferred to the 60-day negotiations. Sixty days to resolve what diplomats have not resolved in twenty years.

General License X: an economic concession without guarantees

General License X issued by the U.S. Treasury on June 22, 2026 authorizes for 60 days the production, sale, and delivery of Iranian crude oil, petrochemical products, and petroleum products. The FDD, in its analysis of June 23, 2026, identifies five major absences in this text: no escrow mechanism for Iranian funds, no restriction on the use of revenues, no ceiling on authorized volumes, no approved list of buyers, and no reporting requirement on transactions. These five absences mean that Iran can receive billions of dollars in oil revenues over 60 days without Washington knowing how much, from whom, through what financial pathway, and for what purposes the funds will be used.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) controls significant portions of the Iranian oil sector. General License X covers precisely these sectors. Which means, in plain language: the Trump administration has just authorized transactions that will benefit, at least partially, an organization that Washington itself designates as a terrorist organization. This is a contradiction that Trump does not name in his speeches. The FDD names it explicitly. And it is right to do so.

There is a difference between being tough on Iran and being effective on Iran. Trump has been undeniably tough — the war, the strikes, the naval blockade. But General License X without a control mechanism looks less like toughness than haste. The haste to announce a victory before the conditions for a real victory are met. That impatience has a strategic cost that victory speeches cannot erase.

The paradox of real but increasingly invisible support

The Trump administration's Ukraine policy is perhaps the hardest of all to read. On one hand, arms transfers continue — the situation on the ground in June 2026 is not that of an abandoned Ukraine. Air defense systems, artillery munitions, and drone systems continue to flow, even if the timing and conditions of deliveries are regularly sources of tension. On the other hand, in Trump's public speeches, Zelensky is mentioned less and less, the war is less and less present in presidential narratives, and declarations about resolving the conflict have become increasingly vague.

The FDD's Foreign Policy Tracker for June 2026 notes this tension: support for Ukraine exists but lacks the strategic clarity that would allow Kyiv to plan long-term. Zelensky said in early June: "Our patience is not infinite." This declaration must be read as a diplomatic signal addressed to Washington as much as to Moscow. It says: we need to know what you will do if the front collapses further, if attacks on our cities intensify, if Putin decides to escalate. And to these questions, the Trump administration has not provided clear public answers in June 2026.

Putin, the Istanbul protocols, and the diplomatic trap

At the same time, the Foreign Policy Tracker documents a serious diplomatic threat: Russian peace proposals conditioned on the 2022 Istanbul protocols, which the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) analyzes on June 23, 2026 as equivalent to a demand for Ukrainian capitulation. These protocols would notably require a freeze of currently occupied territories, permanent neutrality of Ukraine, and severe limitations on its armed forces. Accepting this framework means recognizing Russia's annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories — a de facto capitulation that Kyiv categorically rejects.

The question for the Trump administration is therefore: will it continue to support Kyiv until the conditions for a peace that is not a capitulation are met, or will it yield to the temptation of a quick settlement to free up diplomatic bandwidth for other files? Trump's June 23 speech, which moves quickly past Ukraine, does not answer this question. That silence may be the most important signal of that entire day.

A Ukrainian soldier somewhere on the Pokrovsk front, in the mud, under fire, with his 200th Russian assault attempt of the day to repel — let's call him Alexei, because he exists in that reality thousands of times each day, even if I haven't met him — that soldier deserves decision-makers in Washington to have a clear answer to the question: how far will you support us? If that answer doesn't come soon, the question posed by Ukrainian resistance will no longer be strategic. It will be existential.

The trade deficit reduction: partial victory with side effects

Trump claims a 67% reduction in the trade deficit with China. Even accepting this figure with the methodological reservations mentioned, American commercial pressure on Beijing has produced real effects. The tariffs imposed — notably the 25% on heavy trucks — have modified import flows. The Kuala Lumpur negotiations (May 2026) and the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing resulted in a tariff freeze until November 2026. These results are documented. The question is whether this pressure has produced a structural retreat by China or a temporary repositioning while waiting for more favorable conditions in Beijing.

The worrying side effects are twofold. First, China's June 22, 2026 response — a ban on purchases by Chinese government agencies from 46 American defense firms including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing Defense — represents a targeted escalation on the defense sector that will directly affect already signed contracts and weaken certain Washington allies who depend on the same supply chains. Second, Chinese sanctions against 10 US rare earth firms, including MP Materials Corp — operator of the only active rare earth mine in the United States — directly target the supply chain for American defense technologies. These targeted strikes show that Beijing has carefully studied American vulnerabilities.

The Chinese military threat: beyond tariffs

The FDD's Foreign Policy Tracker for June 2026 notes with concern the Chinese military escalation in the context of trade tensions. China publicly displayed its DF-17 hypersonic missile for the first time on CCTV in June 2026, in a demonstration clearly designed for psychological pressure on Washington. Its nuclear stockpile has reached 620 warheads according to the SIPRI report published in June 2026 — versus 350 in 2020, a growth of 77% in six years. These figures are not in Trump's speeches. They deserve to be.

Trump's commercial policy creates pressure on China but also generates an acceleration of Chinese rearmament — a phenomenon that experts call the security dilemma: each American pressure reinforces the conviction in Beijing that it must accelerate its military buildup to never again be in a position of vulnerability before Washington. The spiral is real. It is not a reason to lower the guard against China — but it demands that the next steps be anticipated with clear eyes.

620 Chinese nuclear warheads. That figure is in the SIPRI report. It is not in Trump's June 23 speech. I'm not saying it should be — a president can't fit everything into a speech. But I note that when we celebrate the reduction of the trade deficit with China without mentioning the 77% growth of its nuclear arsenal in six years, we give an incomplete picture of an adversary who, for its part, forgets nothing.

Arab-Israeli normalization: an unachieved ambition

Trump publicly called on Saudi Arabia and Qatar to join the Abraham Accords once the confrontation with Iran is resolved. Neither has shown readiness to commit in June 2026. The reason is structural: the war in Gaza — still unresolved at this date, with ceasefire negotiations blocked on the question of Hamas disarmament — makes it politically impossible for any Arab government to publicly normalize its relations with Israel. The FDD June Tracker notes that this Trump ambition remains suspended pending the resolution of interconnected files the administration has not yet managed to unblock simultaneously.

Hezbollah in Lebanon remains a destabilizing factor. Despite American-Israeli strikes that have weakened its military capabilities and leadership, the movement has not been dismantled. It has adapted. Ceasefire resolutions have been negotiated and violated several times. The FDD analysis of June 8, 2026 is unequivocal: as long as Hezbollah is not fully disarmed — a condition Lebanon alone cannot impose and the international community lacks the political will to force — the stability of Israel's northern border remains precarious. And a precarious northern border compromises any regional normalization dynamic.

Gaza: the knot no one cuts

The situation in Gaza remains one of the most complex files of the current Trump term. The American peace plan for Gaza has progressed slowly according to the June Tracker, blocked on the question of Hamas disarmament. Trump cannot announce success on this front without risking that the terms of the deal appear as capitulation before a terrorist organization. Hamas, for its part, uses its resistance capacity as leverage in negotiations, knowing its political survival depends on not being perceived as having capitulated.

This deadlock has consequences for the entire regional picture. The expanded Abraham Accord is conditional on a resolution of Gaza — or at least a suspension of the file that allows Arab states to normalize without appearing to abandon the Palestinians. Neither is in sight in June 2026. This is a real limit of Trump's Middle East policy: he has changed many regional parameters, but he has not untied the fundamental political knots that have blocked normalization for decades.

Gaza. Every columnist who touches this subject knows they are entering a rhetorical minefield. I'll be simple: civilians suffer. Negotiations stall on abstract political questions while real people die or survive in inhuman conditions. Trump is trying to resolve this. He hasn't yet. Honesty demands saying both things.

The 5% pressure produces results but creates fractures

Trump's NATO policy in June 2026 produces measurable results. The alliance's decision to adopt the target of 5% of GDP in defense spending by 2035 — announced at the defense ministerial of June 18, 2026 by Hegseth — is historic. Never had NATO set such an ambitious target. And according to data cited by Secretary General Mark Rutte, Europe and Canada increased their defense investments by 90 billion dollars in 2025, an increase of more than 20%. This is not a Trump invention — it is a documented reality that, at least in part, results from the pressure he has been exerting on his allies since his first term.

But Trump's method on NATO also generates documented friction. The decision to return American troops in Europe to pre-2022 levels — an effective reduction of one combat brigade and 5,000 additional forces according to Hegseth's statements — creates real concern in countries bordering Russia, notably the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania. These countries have increased their own defense spending precisely to compensate for their exposure to the Russian threat — they experience the reduction of American presence as an ambiguous signal, somewhere between the carrot (you must take care of yourselves) and the stick (if you don't do it fast enough, we will pull back further).

Conditional commitments and the survival of Article 5

The most fundamental question Trump poses to NATO — and which he formulates with increasing explicitness since June 2026 — is that of the conditionality of Article 5. By conditioning American participation in collective defense on compliance with spending commitments, Trump strikes the Alliance's doctrinal core. Article 5 of the Washington Treaty stipulates that an attack against one member is considered an attack against all. It is not a commercial contract with performance conditions — it is an absolute political commitment.

If Trump suggests that countries failing to meet the 5% of GDP target cannot count on American defense in case of attack, he undermines the very essence of the deterrence that NATO is supposed to exercise against Russia. Russia — and this has been its calculus for years — seeks to identify the weak links in the Alliance, the countries whose NATO membership would not be unconditionally defended by Washington. If Trump confirms that these weak links exist, he hands Putin a strategic card of inestimable value. The FDD notes this risk in its June 2026 analysis without characterizing it as imminent — but without ignoring it either.

Article 5. I grew up in an era when this clause was the ultimate guarantee — implicit, non-negotiable, absolute. If you're in NATO, America defends you. Period. Trump is making this guarantee conditional. Maybe he's right that allies who don't pay their share deserve less than exemplary ones. Maybe. But at the moment Putin looks at a map of Europe and decides where to test his limits, a conditional Article 5 is an invitation. And invitations of that kind have a tragic history.

A method that breaks conventions to create spaces

Looking across all six files, a common thread emerges in the Trump administration's foreign policy at mid-2026: what might be called disruption diplomacy. Trump does not operate within conventional institutional frameworks — he breaks them, creates a crisis, then negotiates from a position that did not exist before the disruption. This is what he did with Iran: war, blockade, then memorandum. With China: tariffs, escalation, then bilateral summits. With NATO: disengagement threats, then compromise on spending targets.

This method has real advantages. It forces actors that were comfortably installed in status quos costly for America — and for the West — to reposition. It generates results that conventional diplomacies could not produce. But it also carries a cost: each disruption erodes American predictability a little further, and that predictability is a fundamental strategic asset. When allies don't know with certainty what Washington will do tomorrow, they begin developing alternative plans. These alternative plans weaken alliance cohesion. This is a tension that the Trump method generates structurally, and which the FDD's Foreign Policy Tracker documents implicitly in each monthly edition.

The FDD as critical conservative conscience: what it says about Trump

The fact that the FDD — a think tank that shares Trump's fundamental objectives on Iran, China, and Russia — regularly criticizes the execution of his foreign policy says something structural about this man and his administration. The FDD's critiques do not bear on the objectives: preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, containing China, supporting Ukraine and Israel. These objectives, the FDD fully shares. The critiques bear on the mechanisms: General License X without oversight, the MoU that leaves open the missiles and proxies file, NATO conditionality that weakens deterrence.

This distinction is important for any honest assessment of Trump's foreign policy: he is not on the wrong track on the broad orientations. But on the execution details — which are precisely where major agreements fail or succeed — his administration accumulates compromises that contain the seeds of future problems. This is the cold assessment of a conservative, pro-American observer. It deserves to be heard by those who support Trump as much as by those who oppose him.

I've been reading the FDD for years. What I respect in their analyses is consistency: they apply the same analytical criteria to every president, Republican or Democrat. When they say Trump mismanaged General License X, it's because they would have said exactly the same thing if Obama or Biden had signed that text. This methodological consistency is rare in American political commentary. And that is precisely why their critiques of Trump deserve more attention than those of partisan opponents.

What Trump has changed structurally

Setting aside contestable figures and prematurely claimed victories, let's look at what is structurally different in the world in June 2026 compared to January 2025, the start of the term. First: Iran has suffered direct military strikes on its nuclear installations and military infrastructure — this is a major geopolitical fact, unprecedented since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Whatever the final negotiated outcome, the fact that the American and Israeli militaries struck Iran directly redefines Tehran's strategic calculus for years to come. Second: NATO has adopted a defense spending target of 5% of GDP — a level nobody would have believed possible as an official target just two years ago.

Third: China has had to manage simultaneously commercial pressure and a demonstration of American military resilience in the Middle East — which complicates its strategic calculus on Taiwan and the South China Sea. Fourth: emerging technologies — quantum, AI, cryptography — have been placed at the level of national strategic priorities by the orders of June 22, 2026, with concrete investments following the declarations. This structural scorecard is real. It does not guarantee long-term success on each of these files. But it represents a transformation of the strategic landscape that even Trump's adversaries must acknowledge.

What remains open and dangerous

Against this positive scorecard, the open risks are significant. Iran could break the MoU within 60 days and resume strikes — or, conversely, conclude a superficial agreement that authorizes it to quietly reconstitute its military capabilities while sanctions ease. Ukraine could be forced into a peace that isn't one, if the Trump administration decides that its other priorities require an accelerated settlement. China could decide that American pressure has reached a critical threshold and respond with a military action against Taiwan — a scenario that no trade agreement neutralizes. And alliances — NATO, Indo-Pacific partnerships — could continue to weaken if American conditionality becomes the norm rather than the exception.

These risks are not certainties. They are open trajectories that decisions over the next six months will influence decisively. The FDD's Foreign Policy Tracker for July, August, and September 2026 will say whether the mechanisms of the Iran deal have been strengthened, whether support for Ukraine has clarified, and whether NATO policy has found a balance between pressure and cohesion. It is this tracking over time — not mid-term assessments — that will say whether Trump's 2026 foreign policy was a success or a failed gamble.

Mid-term assessments are always provisional. But certain patterns are already readable. Trump has changed the balance of power with Iran, China, and NATO. These transformations have a cost for alliances, a cost for institutional coherence, and a human cost that victory speeches never mention. This provisional assessment is honest. And honest is all I can offer in the face of a history that is still being written.

The War Powers Act and the constitutional limit of presidential war

The War Powers resolution adopted by the Senate on June 23, 2026 by 50-48 votes — with the support of four Republican senators — is a political signal that the FDD's Foreign Policy Tracker has not yet had time to integrate into its monthly analysis, but which deserves to be read in the context of this assessment. It is the first time that both chambers have approved a concurrent resolution ordering a president to end military hostilities since the War Powers Act was created in 1973. This vote says that even in a Republican Congress, the war with Iran without legislative authorization creates real institutional tensions.

This constitutional tension will not disappear with the June 17 MoU. If the 60-day negotiations fail and Trump resumes strikes on Iran, Congress will have to decide whether this War Powers Act resolution is binding — a question that American constitutional lawyers have debated since 1973 without clear consensus. The administration maintains that the president has inherent constitutional authority to protect American interests without legislative authorization. But four Republican senators voting with Democrats on a War Powers Act resolution say this interpretation has political limits, even if it doesn't yet have clear legal limits.

Polls as a mirror of political legitimacy

The Reuters/Ipsos poll published on June 23, 2026 — only 24% of Americans consider the war with Iran to have been worth its cost, 50% that it was not — measures something fundamental: the perceived legitimacy of a policy. Trump can argue that reducing the Iranian nuclear risk justifies all the human, economic, and political costs incurred. But in a democracy, foreign policies that lose popular legitimacy create constraints on future actions. A president whose approval is at 34% according to that same poll, and whose management of the cost of living is approved by only 22%, has reduced political room for additional ventures.

This domestic constraint is visible in the June 23 speech: Trump insists on domestic economic victories — tax cuts, trade deficit reduction — precisely because he knows that foreign policy is not what earns him points in public opinion right now. This is an administration in the process of rebalancing its communications between an external front that drags on and a domestic front that demands tangible results for American households.

Only 24% think the war with Iran was worth the cost. That's a figure that should haunt Trump — but which visibly doesn't affect his rhetoric. He proclaims victory. Public opinion says: not really. This gap between the presidential podium and the felt sense of citizens is the symptom of a governance that has lost contact with the real human costs of its strategic decisions. Gas prices remain higher than before February 28 for most Americans. That is not abstract.

Paris, Berlin, Ottawa: between forced admiration and structural unease

NATO's European allies read Trump's June 2026 scorecard with a double gaze. On one hand, the pressure on defense spending has produced the intended effect — the 90 billion dollars increase in 2025 is real. On the other hand, the partial withdrawal of American troops from Europe, the expressed conditionality of Article 5, and the priority given to Middle East and China files send a signal that Europe is no longer automatically America's top security priority. This is not a rupture — it is a rebalancing. But a rebalancing that forces European governments to accelerate their own autonomous defense capabilities, which Trump calls — and this is the paradox — a success.

Canada must rapidly decide whether it can hold its commitment to bring its defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 — a target announced by Mark Carney that represents approximately 150 billion dollars per year. For a Canadian economy modest in size relative to American ambitions, this is a major political commitment that will fundamentally change the government's fiscal priorities. Trump has secured that his allies take their defense seriously. This success does not make him a good ally in the traditional sense. But it makes him a catalyst for change.

The relationship with Kyiv: the ultimate test of Trump's scorecard

For pro-Ukraine observers — and I include myself in that category — the ultimate test of Trump's foreign policy scorecard will not be the Iran deal, nor the Chinese tariffs, nor even the NATO targets. It will be what happens to Ukraine. If Trump ends his term with a sovereign, territorial Ukraine integrated into Western security structures, and a Putin constrained to borders he can no longer threaten by force — that will be a historically positive scorecard, even if the method to get there was chaotic and costly for allies.

If Trump accepts a deal that abandons Ukrainian territories, neutralizes Ukraine geopolitically, or leaves Putin with sufficient leverage to resume aggression in ten years — that will be a historic failure, regardless of what was accomplished on other fronts. Ukraine is the test of whether the West holds its promises in the face of an aggressor who sovereignly violates the territory of an independent nation. And that test, Trump has not yet passed or failed — it is still in progress.

I'll return to this scorecard in six months. And the first question I'll ask will be: what happened to Ukraine? Not to the Iran deal, not to the tariffs, not to the quantum orders. To Ukraine. Because that is where Western foreign policy plays out in what it has most fundamental: the defense of the right of nations to exist without being conquered by their stronger neighbors. If Trump wins that battle, I'll be the first to acknowledge it.

Taiwan in the FDD list: six months of monitoring, zero major slippage

The FDD's Foreign Policy Tracker covers seven domains — and among them, American policy toward Taiwan is probably the most important long-term. In eighteen months of a second term, Trump has maintained a policy of support for Taiwan that has translated into arms sales, declarations supporting the island's autonomous defense, and a defense posture in the Indo-Pacific that has not weakened. The Hegseth administration at the Pentagon has maintained freedom of navigation patrols in the Taiwan Strait, even during periods of tension with Beijing. The FDD notes this continuity positively.

The question that the FDD Tracker of June 2026 cannot resolve is the following: will this continuity hold if China decides to really test American resolve — not with rhetorical incursions, but with military action in the Strait? The American response to such a test is what will ultimately define the credibility of deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. Trump has maintained the posture. He has not yet been tested on substance. And in strategic policy, deterrence is only credible if it is tested and the response is convincing.

Taiwan. That word should be present in every assessment of Trump's foreign policy, because it is there that perhaps the most decisive stakes of his presidency will play out. Not in Iran, not even in Ukraine. In Taiwan, if China decides to strike. And no tracker can predict whether Trump will have the resolve that will be needed on that day. That is the fundamental uncertainty that all analysts carry, and that nobody can resolve with data.

Tariffs, sanctions, export restrictions: Trump's economic weapons

The FDD Tracker documents a dimension often underestimated in Trump's foreign policy: the systematic use of economic tools as instruments of geopolitical pressure. Tariffs against China, sanctions against Iran, export restrictions on advanced technologies (semiconductors, chip manufacturing equipment), controls on Chinese investments in the United States — all of this forms an arsenal of political economy that the administration mobilizes with a consistency that no recent administration had maintained as long. The FDD, which generally supports a hard line on China and Iran, acknowledges the short-term effectiveness of this approach.

The limits of this economic arsenal are also documented in the June 2026 Tracker: China has responded to American restrictions with its own controls on rare earths — a card that Beijing had never played so directly. The 46 American defense firms sanctioned by China on June 22 represent an escalation that could weaken American military supply chains in the medium term. And the economic war with Iran — oil blockade, financial sector sanctions — has contributed to Iranian economic degradation without producing regime change. These limitations do not contradict the scorecard — they nuance it.

Economic warfare. It's the tool Trump has brought to its most systematic level of use in recent American history. It's also a tool that works better against weak economies than against strong ones. Against Iran, it worked. Against China — a 17 trillion dollar economy — the verdict remains open. The FDD Tracker for December 2026 will tell us whether the sanctions bit or whether Beijing managed to route around them sufficiently.

Arms deliveries: the figures behind the declarations

The FDD's Foreign Policy Tracker for June 2026 documents American arms deliveries to Ukraine since the start of Trump's second term. The scorecard is mixed. On the positive side: deliveries of precision munitions (ATACMS, JDAM-ER) have been maintained, albeit at a more irregular pace than under Biden. Patriot systems have been kept in service with American technical support. Intelligence transfers (SIGINT, GEOINT, targeting data) have continued, enabling Ukraine to strike targets in depth on Russian-controlled territory.

On the gaps side: combat aircraft promised (F-16s) have been delivered in insufficient numbers to establish Ukrainian air superiority. Delivery timelines for armored vehicles have lengthened. And discussions about a possible Ukrainian NATO membership are on hold — a Ukrainian priority that Trump has never explicitly embraced. These gaps are documented in the FDD Tracker and echo the FDD's concerns about the sustainability of American support for Ukraine in the context of Iranian distraction.

The FDD Tracker on Ukraine. I read it with particular attention, because every line represents weapons that arrive or don't arrive in the hands of Ukrainian soldiers. The abstract figures in the Tracker have names — Alexei, Dmytro, Oksana — somewhere on the front at Pokrovsk or Kherson. That is why these analyses matter beyond academic circles. They matter in the real world.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies: who funds, who analyzes, for whom

Using the FDD's Foreign Policy Tracker as an analytical source imposes an obligation of transparency: who is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, how is it funded, and what are its ideological orientations? The FDD presents itself as a non-partisan think tank focused on American national security policy. In practice, its positions are generally aligned with a hard conservative line on Iran, China, and Russia, and skeptical of multilateral agreements that sacrifice security objectives on the altar of diplomatic compromise. The FDD had been a critic of the 2015 JCPOA from the start — a position whose caution the events of 2026 have partially validated.

This orientation does not disqualify the FDD's analyses — it contextualizes them. When the FDD criticizes the June 17, 2026 Iranian deal as insufficient on the nuclear question, it does so from an evaluation grid that sets the bar very high on verification and denuclearization. This grid is legitimate. It is not the only one. Other analysts — more disposed to compromise, more focused on managing risks than eliminating them — arrive at different assessments of the same deal. The honest reader of the FDD must consider both the quality of its analysis and its ideological lens.

The FDD is not the absolute truth on American foreign policy. But its method — applying the same analytical criteria to every administration, without partisan favoritism — is a standard too few institutions respect. That is precisely why its critiques of Trump on General License X deserve to be taken seriously, even by those who approve of his general direction. Analytical honesty doesn't choose sides. It chooses rigor.

What the FDD scorecard ultimately says

The FDD's Foreign Policy Tracker for June 2026 paints the portrait of an administration that has changed the rules of the global diplomatic game — with the advantages and risks that entails. Trump's objectives are coherent and on several points shared by observers who are not his political allies. Execution is uneven — sometimes brilliant in its calculated brutality, sometimes negligent in the details that make all the difference between a lasting agreement and a forgotten piece of paper. The mid-term scorecard is neither black nor white: it is a work in progress, where some frescoes are successful and others too fresh to know whether they will hold.

For the West, the lesson of this scorecard is clear: rely on Trump's power when it is aligned with our interests, distinguish ourselves from it when it is not, and above all — never cease maintaining our own capabilities and our own alliances in a state of independent functioning from Washington. Because a conditional ally, even if the most powerful in the world, is an ally on which long-term security cannot be built. The quantum orders are good news. The rebellious War Powers Act is a signal. Ukraine waits. And history has not finished being written.

Provisional scorecard: Trump has transformed the balance of power with Iran, China, and NATO. These transformations have a cost for alliances, a cost for institutional coherence, and a human cost that victory speeches never mention. This provisional assessment is honest. And honest is all I can offer in the face of a history that is still being written.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between verified facts and interpretive analysis. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under Sources, never here.

Primary source families used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

Secondary source families: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under Sources.

Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.