A transactional kind of foreign policy is coming to define the grand strategy of the Trump presidency, as Washington moves to engage rivals at Moscow and Beijing not as adversaries, but potential collaborators or cooperators, deserving of a seat at the negotiating table.

This strategy began to come into focus last week when Secretary of State Rubio and the new national security advisor, Michael Waltz, held talks with Russian officials in Riyadh to begin hammering out a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. 

The meeting, which excluded President Zelensky — who had a tumultuous date with President Trump and Vice President Vance at the White House on Friday — was meant to pave the way for a summit between Trump and President Putin, and it marked the most extensive contact between their two countries since the fighting began just over three years ago. 

Ending the war in Ukraine, Mr. Rubio said, could “unlock the door” for “incredible opportunities” to partner with Moscow on issues of common interest “that hopefully will be good for the world and also improve our relations in the long term.” In a show of amity, Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, subsequently told reporters, “we not only listened, but also heard each other.” 

For decades, American foreign policy has aimed to isolate its enemies and defend its allies with blood and treasure, preserving the international order built after World War II. Guided by these principles, President Biden had committed $65.9 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s offensive in 2022. 

Yet to Trump, it is Zelensky, not Putin, who is “gambling with World War III” and incapable of pursuing peace in Ukraine, according to the testy meeting that took place at the Oval Office. The Trump administration is now shifting priorities to work directly with Moscow — a sharp reversal of the status quo that is prompting an outcry from much of the foreign policy establishment, yet applause from the “realists,” which is emerging as the term favored by veterans of the libertarian and, in some instances, isolationist school of thought.

“We can be very fierce rivals,” a Harvard professor of government and a former assistant secretary of state, Graham Allison, tells the Sun of America’s posture on the world stage. “As in the Olympics, where I do my best and you do your best. But at the same time, I have to cooperate with you in certain areas, too.”

That was the lesson learned by President Kennedy from the Cuban Missile Crisis. Though his advisors tended to recommend force and to refuse compromise, Kennedy recognized the need for communication and diplomacy with the Soviet Union, including the establishment of a “hotline” with the Kremlin. He asserted that “nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war,” which could be “a collective death-wish for the world.”

To take another historical example, President Reagan helped herald the end of the Cold War in assuming Prime Minister Thatcher’s optimism that “we could do business together” with the Soviet party boss, Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1985, Reagan met Gorbachev in Geneva to begin a dialogue of disarmament, in which the American famously asserted that “a nuclear war cannot be won and therefore can never be fought.”

Such reconciliation might be unfeasible today with Mr. Putin, who has long lamented Russian weakness he sees in the collapse of the  Soviet Union and is intent on reversing the influence the United States has gained in Europe. Yet in American leadership there are parallels: “Like Reagan, Trump is very self-confident about America,” Mr. Allison says. “He thinks that with appropriate leadership, America can compete and win.” 

Realists tend to regard even rivals as rational actors, with whom they can find mutual interests or equilibrium to establish a period of peace among great powers. Though it doesn’t appear that Trump is guided by a consistent grand strategy, he has expressed a conviction that he can do business with Putin and President Xi, or all both at the same time: In December, Trump posted on X that “China can help” with the pursuit of peace in Ukraine.

Alternatively, pursuing diplomacy with Moscow could help drive a wedge between Putin and Xi. That’s what a professor of international relations at Notre Dame and self-described “card-carrying realist,” Michael Desch, tells the Sun. “If China is the most likely peer competitor and the most serious challenger to the United States, why would you want to push Russia and China together?” 

Mr. Desch points to President Nixon’s groundbreaking trip in 1972 to the People’s Republic of China as part of a triangulation strategy that effectively isolated the former Soviet Union and ultimately hastened the end of the Cold War.

Other developments under the Trump administration that are aligned with the realist foreign policy agenda include calls for $50 billion in budget cuts to the American military, opposition to expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the retraction of foreign aid to war-ravaged countries. “Certain things that realists have advocated, which previously seemed unthinkable, are now thinkable,” Mr. Desch says.

Yet as the Trump administration embraces diplomacy and restraint, it’s uncertain whether Messrs. Xi or Putin will be willing to establish a relationship that is more cooperative than confrontational. A deal takes two sides to be successful. 

“Trump’s transactional policy might work in theory, but for Beijing and Moscow this confrontation with Washington is ideological,” a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Ivana Stradner, tells the Sun. “Of course, they will show willingness to collaborate economically with the US as they know that President Trump wants to be perceived as a ‘deal maker,’ but they will continue with their strategic deception to undermine Washington.”

Trump’s strategy could also hit roadblocks within the GOP establishment — though few have publicly criticized his dismissal of Mr. Zelensky — and within his own administration. “Trump has too many foreign policy hawks in his administration who will never accept spheres of influence arrangements with China and Russia,” a professor of intelligence and national security at Texas A&M’s school of government, Christopher Layne, tells the Sun.

Yet Messrs. Rubio and Waltz were once neoconservatives advocating for foreign interventions with a more Manichean view of democracy versus despotism. Now, they’re negotiating with people like Sergey Lavrov. 

It might not be that Trump is departing from the mainstream foreign policy of the GOP, given that the party is changing with him. That is, in the direction of realism and restraint, America First, or “strategic self-discipline,” as Mr. Layne calls it. “Trump has a golden opportunity,” he says, “to fundamentally reshape American foreign policy.”