President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.
Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”
When pressed further about whether his administration needed to abide by international law, Mr. Trump said, “I do.” But he made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States.
“It depends what your definition of international law is,” he said.
He made clear that he uses his reputation for unpredictability and a willingness to resort quickly to military action, often in service of coercing other nations. During his interview with The Times, he took a lengthy call from President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, who was clearly concerned after repeated threats that Mr. Trump was thinking of an attack on the country similar to the one on Venezuela.
“Well, we are in danger,” Mr. Petro said in an interview with The Times just before the call. “Because the threat is real. It was made by Trump.”
The call between the two leaders, the contents of which were off the record, was an example of coercive diplomacy in action. And it came just hours after Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had extracted the United States from dozens of international organizations intended to foster multinational cooperation.
When asked what was his higher priority, obtaining Greenland or preserving NATO, Mr. Trump declined to answer directly, but acknowledged “it may be a choice.” He made clear that the trans-Atlantic alliance was essentially useless without the United States at its core.
The president seemed equally sanguine about whether his decision to send Special Operations forces into Caracas to remove Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela would be exploited by China or Russia. In the days since the action in Venezuela, there have been arguments that the U.S. precedent would help justify a Chinese effort to take Taiwan, or Russia’s attempt to seize Ukraine, which Mr. Putin has described as a historical part of the Russian empire, dating back more than a dozen centuries.
Asked whether he had created a precedent that he may later regret, Mr. Trump argued that his view of the threat posed by Mr. Maduro’s Venezuela was quite different than Mr. Xi’s view of Taiwan.
“This was a real threat,” he said of Venezuela. “You didn’t have people pouring into China,” he argued, repeating his oft-made claim that Mr. Maduro dumped gang members into the United States.