Still, Trump was not sufficiently swayed. After the meeting, he informed reporters that he “wouldn’t rule out a military option” in Venezuela. Then, during a private dinner on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly with four Latin American leaders, one of whom was Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, the president reportedly brought up military intervention again. “My staff told me not to say this,” he began, before circling the table to double check that each leader was sure they didn’t want to the U.S. to oust Maduro. “Each leader,” the Associated Press reports, “told Trump in clear terms they were sure.”

Trump’s vision of toppling Maduro further muddles his already erratic foreign policy, which favors sweeping statements and skirts the consequences of unbalancing the global order. He has proposed withdrawing U.S. troops from Europe, Syria, and South Korea, for instance, but also suggested sending the military into Mexico to hunt down drug traffickers. He has said that America never should have gone into Iraq—but that while we were there, we should have “taken the oil.” He appears to favor allowing Bashar al-Assad to maintain his power, and has hinted that Russia should be forgiven for invading Ukraine, but has reportedly teamed up with Israel to help destabilize Iran with the goal of facilitating regime change in Tehran.

If there is any coherent thread running through Trump’s foreign policy, it is that the president will reward leaders he likes, and punish those he doesn’t, while expending the least amount of resources possible. The undergirding logic is not internally consistent: Trump is insistent upon saving money by decreasing the U.S. military presence around the world while demanding massive increases to the military budget. He wants the power of to vaporize enemies any time, any place, without the responsibility of nation-building or of keeping the peace. The thread, in other words, is not particularly coherent at all.

American foreign policy has always been tinged by Realpolitik—the Kissingerian philosophy of pragmatism over principles in international affairs. Still, most U.S. presidents have managed to articulate a set of ideals to justify American hegemony. They may have been hypocritical, but at least they provided allies and adversaries with a framework for understanding what sorts of actions might be out of bounds. George W. Bush invaded Iraq on the basis of faulty intelligence, and misled the United Nations about his justifications for war, but at least he went through the motions. With Trump, it is not clear whether there would be any such compunction.

Predictably, Trump’s contempt for international norms has vindicated America’s critics and empowered rival strongmen around the world. Maduro, for instance, has long claimed that the U.S. has its eyes on Venezuela’s oil reserves, and has enjoyed stoking deep-rooted rumors that the U.S. is preparing an assassination plot against him. Under Barack Obama, such demagoguery would have seemed paranoid—even unhinged. Now, when Maduro rambles about foreign plots against his crumbling regime, his people might believe him. Venezuela is, in fact, in desperate need of new leadership. It’s people are starving and its economy has collapsed. When America should be finding ways to work with Venezuelans to find a political solution, Trump has instead given Maduro a reason to rally a disaffected population to his side. As Maduro’s son roared last summer, after Trump said he “wouldn’t rule out a military option” for Venezuela, “If the United States sullies the soil of our homeland, our rifles will reach New York and we will take the White House.”