I have to say up front that I consider Obama's handling of foreign policy was disastrous at almost every level, so I think almost anyone would have been an improvement.
MacManiac, as navy man you must have looked on in dismay as China started building new islands in the South China Sea, no? It struck me as a patently obvious attempt to push for hegemony over the busiest sea lanes in the world. The Chinese knew what Obama wanted more than anything else from them was an environmental agreement, and they played him like a fiddle. Xi agreed (in principle!) to stop increasing emissions some time around 2031, and Obama essentially left him alone in the sandbox. If even I figured out a decade ago that the ultimate flash point was likely to be maritime, I'd have thought it must be obvious to the swells in Washington, but the previous administration did little but watch as Xi extended his reach..
The Chinese have always seen themselves as a maritime power, and controlling the South China Sea, which handles a huge percentage of global transit, would change global dynamics in substantive ways. Trump has taken Xi on directly and indirectly. Previous Presidents have complained about currency manipulation, but never did anything about it. Trump has put Xi off balance, which scares a lot of diplomats, who are all about protecting the status quo. That may seem safer, but it also inhibits positive change. The whole thing is a work in progress, but here again he's moving the needle. Xi really likes Mar-a-Lago, btw. Did you know that he's the one who asked that their first meeting take place there and not in Washington? There were other reasons for that original choice, of course, but I think he may have requested that their next meeting take place there too. It certainly doesn't hurt that Trump's granddaughter can sing and dance in Chinese.
Ditto on moving the needle with Kim Jong Un. Although their last meeting stalled out, and there will be all sorts of posturing in its wake, Trump has done more to change Kim Jong Un's trajectory than any of our previous presidents. They all eventually caved in and sent the food with which the Kims propped up their regimes. Trump even persuaded the Chinese to stop shipping coal to NK, which while largely symbolic, was still more than anybody else had managed to get them to do. South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who was not originally a Trump fan, is in Washington right now, I believe, for consultations. He has certainly welcomed the space that Trump has created for further discussions on the Korean Peninsula, and Kim Jong Un is considerably further away from launching rockets willy nilly than he was when Trump took office.
On the other side of the globe, Obama was willing to sacrifice almost every other interest to sign an agreement with Iran before he left office. He crossed a lot of red lines to get that deal done, and we still don't know what else he agreed to in the secret side deals. Iran is a bad actor, and they were in breach before the ink dried. In the aftermath of the Libya debacle, or in the midst of it, the Revolutionary Guards were stealing huge quantities of major weaponry, and dropping it off in Sudan for safe storage. BTW, Kim Jong Un was reported to view Obama's "kinetic exercise" in Libya as a cautionary tale, in re what happens to dictators who give up their nukes.
Trump has changed the whole dynamic in the Middle East. Taking down ISIS, without permanently setting off Russian and Turkish trip wires was no small achievement. Instead of focusing on brokering an Israeli/Palestinian resolution, as so many Administrations have spun their wheels trying, without success, to do, he did something new. He recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, which other Presidents had shilly shallied around, and he encouraged regional "stake holders" to take a more active part in their own defenses, particularly vis a vis Iran. The Israelis and the Saudis have even been doing some joint operations, which is certainly a first.
I don't know if you have any particular hot spots in mind, but those are a couple of the places where I think President Trump has already made a positive difference, as I see things. The picture is more mixed in Europe, but I think he may actually end up revivifying NATO, much to a lot of folks' surprise. I wonder if people generally are aware of how steady the stream of heads-of-state visiting the Trump White House has been.
I'll just arbitrarily stop here, and say again, thanks for asking, and hope you don't regret it!
