So any strategic benefits are tiny while the costs are substantial: Trump has just helped ISIS recruiters. He has angered Iraq, France and others battling ISIS. He’s started a new argument in the Middle East, which long distracted the United States. Most alarmingly, he has undercut our claim to stand for larger principles — freedom, rule of law, even basic competence.

This undermining of both American values and interests has been an early theme of the administration. And the ultimate beneficiary is not likely to be ISIS. Although it poses serious threats, it is not a serious rival to the United States. The ultimate beneficiary is instead likely to be America’s biggest global rival: China.

China remains far less powerful than the United States. But it has come a long way. Its economic progress and its ambitions, combined with the size of its population, mean that China has become the world’s only other potential superpower.

Some degree of a rising China is inevitable — and welcome, given the continued reduction in poverty that will happen. The big unknown is whether China will change as it rises, to become freer and more respectful of the rule of law, or whether China will mold the rest of the world in its current closed and authoritarian image.

Here, too, the Trump administration has set back American interests.

In another executive order, Trump pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Whatever you think about the deal’s economic effects (and there has been a lot of silliness on both the left and the right), they were likely to be modest. The United States already has few barriers to Asian imports, which is why some combination of your car, television, computer, phone and clothing comes from Asia.