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Henry Nao once wrote an interesting article in Commentary magazine where he argued that Barack Obama’s foreign policy was like a jigsaw puzzle, while George W. Bush’s traditional approach was like a chessboard. In recent years, I have often wondered what President Donald Trump’s game is.
Today, as Operation Epic Fury in Iran appears to be winding down, it has become clear that Trump is playing foreign policy like a giant game of geopolitical poker, and that he holds the winning hand.
What Nao said about Obama’s style is that, under his “leading from behind” approach, every nation in the world, friends and enemies alike, holds a piece of the global puzzle, and if we all put ourselves down in the right place, the world’s problems will be solved.
FILE PHOTO: Cargo ships in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen north of Ras al-Khaimah, near the border of Oman’s Musandam governance, amid the US-Israel conflict with Iran, in the United Arab Emirates, on March 11, 2026. (REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo/File Photo)
The problem with the jigsaw puzzle approach is that countries like Russia and China, to say nothing of Iran, have very different ideas about the finished picture that should be presented, so the pieces don’t quite fit.
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In the chessboard approach to foreign policy, as used by both Bush administrations, major nations control space on the board by holding or intimidating it from afar. In times of war, sometimes there are allies, but generally, the goal is to maintain balance.
It is this global balance that Trump rejects and has led him to eschew the chessboard in favor of the risky game of poker. He considers the last 40 years of global balance as a time when the United States was misused.
Trump’s expressed desire to find Greenland is a perfect example of his worldview. You know, like everyone else, that when push comes to shove, it will be the American taxpayer funding the defense of an important Arctic island against Russia and China, so why should Denmark control it?
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It is in Iran, through Operation Epic Freedom, that we see the president’s style of geopolitical poker at its most liberal. His decisions have become “antes.” His threat to destroy Iran’s civilization forced their leaders to push their most valuable asset, the Strait of Hormuz, into the middle of the table.
Pro-Khamenei and anti-Khamenei protesters clash in Washington Square Park in New York, NY on Friday, March 6, 2026. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israeli military strike in Tehran. (Rashid Umar Abbasi of Fox News Digital)
Trump knows two things here. The other, as he likes to say, holds better cards. Two, and perhaps more importantly, you have an almost infinite stake. He didn’t hesitate to accept the two-week suspension, because he can end it whenever he wants. Any day can be a bridge and electricity day.
Trump’s bullied critics insist that Iran has won the war. But let’s look at what America has achieved here, or simply speaking, the pots won by Trump.
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Ayatollah Khamenei and 150 or so of his closest friends in the government are dead, Iran’s military is in crisis, and its nuclear program, whatever is left of it, has been further discredited.
Most importantly, this past month, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have been at war with Iran. If I had told you that would happen when Trump came down the golden escalator, you would have laughed at me.
Some say this was a failure because Trump did not follow through. But last month, he told the Iranian people, “we will remove your leaders and the rest will be up to you.” We did that, and whether the people there are able to stand up and expel the government, as has always happened, is up to them.
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Trump does not want eternal war, and we are not getting it. It remains to be seen, but there is a good chance that a military dictatorship is still better than a death cult theocracy.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Cross Hall of the White House on April 1, 2026 in Washington, DC. Trump used a prime-time speech to inform the nation of the war on Iran. (Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)
Like any good poker player, Trump knows how to bluff on the world stage, and even if he folds one hand, it always gives him important information about his opponent, be it Iran, or NATO.
What Trump is really doing is resetting the world order away from one where the United States finances its decline in influence, to one where we control what we pay for.
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The president is willing to increase the global balance to achieve this goal because he believes it is precisely that balance that is holding America back.
Trump will not play a slow game of foreign policy chess where draw is the norm, and he will not pretend to play jigsaw with our dedicated enemies. Instead, Trump will continue to play the hand the voters have dealt him, and he has a lot of cards left to throw down.
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