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Signal Chat Blunder Shows Pitfalls of Trump’s Ad Hoc Approach to Foreign Policy

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WSJ

Mar 26, 2025 11:05 AM IST

The administration has struggled to translate Trump’s promise of quick results into early wins.

WASHINGTON—Texts by President Trump’s advisers about whether to attack Houthi militants in Yemen underscored the ad hoc nature of the administration’s national security deliberations, a mode that has sometimes left allies bewildered and his own aides at odds.

US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz at the White House in Washington, DC., (REUTERS File) PREMIUM

US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz at the White House in Washington, DC., (REUTERS File)

Other presidents have relied on the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council staff to develop and filter options in an orderly manner. The Trump team has operated in a far less orthodox fashion, one that stems from the president’s impatience with debate and skepticism of bureaucracy. Many of his top advisers, few of whom have held senior positions before, share that perspective.

That has proved a hindrance at times for Trump, who entered office this year promising a swift end to the war between Ukraine and Russia, peace in Gaza, a quick halt to Iran’s nuclear program, the acquisition of foreign territory, and an economic boom delivered by tariffs.

When national security adviser Mike Waltz created the “Houthi PC small group” on Signal earlier this month, it appeared meant for routine updates to Trump administration officials involved in deliberations on whether to strike Houthi militants.

It quickly evolved into something more serious—a chat group on a nongovernment app where over the next two days Waltz and other members of the national security team debated by text whether to launch the attack. The exchanges became public after Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to the group.

Trump insists the Signal chats didn’t derail U.S. strikes on the Houthis. “The attack was totally successful,” he told reporters Tuesday, defending Waltz and his team for overseeing the military operation.

Yet the administration has achieved few early breakthroughs, partly because of a policy-formulation process that disregards international complexities in favor of threats and sweeping actions, undergirded by Trump’s insistence that his dealmaking skills will yield results where more cautious administrations have fallen short.

Trump’s shunning of conventional foreign policy thinking has included his notion to remove Gaza’s nearly two million Palestinians to develop the shattered enclave into “Riviera of the Middle East.” It is likewise behind his threat to take over the Panama Canal and his vows to acquire Canada and Greenland.

Instead of pushing back against his ideas, as senior officials often did in his first term, Trump’s current advisers have been much more compliant.

Trump’s ad hoc style has yielded successes. He has secured the release of hostages from Russia, Belarus and Afghanistan, relying on a hostage negotiator who hasn’t left his private-sector job. Trump has pressured Ukraine to be more open, at least publicly, to a peace deal with Russia, though it meant greater mistrust between Washington and Kyiv and growing alarm in Europe about the U.S.’s reliability as an ally.

It took an unheard-of public Oval Office shouting match with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump warned he was in a weak negotiating position and dismissed him from the White House to achieve even that limited result.

Distrustful of the so-called “deep state” of bureaucrats and career public servants, Trump’s team sidelined government agencies even before he returned to the White House. His campaign resisted informing the FBI that it had been hacked separately by China and Iran. After winning the election, it stripped the bureau of performing background checks on incoming senior officials.

Once in office, Trump hired special envoys for Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, choosing diplomatic novices in some cases and sparking turf battles with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, among others, over who drives decision-making.

The lack of coordination has often manifested in contradictory policy messages—confusing allies and adversaries about where Washington stands. The Signal messages revealed by the Atlantic showed that Vice President JD Vance, fiercely loyal to Trump in public, disagreed with his boss on the wisdom of imminently striking the Houthis.

“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance wrote the group of 18 senior officials, saying European allies benefited more from trade in waterways threatened by the Houthis than the U.S. He would support whatever the team decided, he continued, “but there is a strong argument for delaying this a month.”

After a message from Waltz about how the U.S. might charge European allies for the strikes, Vance replied to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: “If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

The National Security Council and Vance’s office didn’t respond to questions about Trump and Vance’s disagreements, or about whether Trump had discussed the pros and cons of an attack in a formal meeting with his advisers.

Other signs that Trump’s aides are sometimes operating at cross-purposes abound.

On March 17, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters U.S.-brokered negotiations between Ukraine and Russia were on “the 10th yard line of peace.” But that same day, Rubio told Fox News Radio, “We’re not close to peace,” though he said progress toward a resolution had been made.

Trump’s advisers also seem at odds over Iran. In an interview published this weekend, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told Tucker Carlson that Trump wants “a verification program so that nobody worries about weaponization” of Tehran’s nuclear material. In other words, Iran could continue its nuclear work but would need to halt any efforts toward constructing a bomb, an objective Iran has long denied pursuing.

But Waltz offered a different message during a Sunday interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” program. Asked whether Trump sought to keep tabs on Iran’s nuclear work or see it eradicated completely, Waltz replied: “full dismantlement.”

“That is enrichment, that is weaponization, and that is its strategic missile program,” he said. “This is the full program. Give it up, or there will be consequences.”

Trump has wavered on the shape of his April 2 “reciprocal tariffs” on other nations. Initially, he declared that the U.S. would match all duties charged by trading partners on that day, as well as tariffs on sectors like automobiles, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors he repeatedly said would be enacted. On Monday, Trump signaled he might soften his previous threats.

Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com

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