Perhaps the greatest change of direction in the world Zeitgeist derived from the second coming of Trump —and probably the most consequential legacy of his administration— is a prospective reformulation of US foreign policy. Together, the popular legitimacy of Trump’s second mandate, the lack of circumstantial political constraints associated with the quest for re-election, and intense geopolitical convulsion open a window of opportunity to make this happen. Such a course of action would be a departure from the inertial bipartisan trajectory followed by the US for decades after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Many mainstream media commentators disqualify this hypothetical possibility, often with contradictory criticisms. Trump is portrayed as a trigger-happy incendiary cowboy as a result of his supposed megalomania but, at the same time, he is also depicted as an irresponsible and cowardly isolationist eager to follow the metaphorical ‘ostrich policy’ or as the reincarnation of Chamberlain because of his alleged proclivity for appeasement. These misrepresentations respond to the lack of an appropriate interpretative referential logic. Therefore, it is pertinent —for diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive purposes— to overcome the narrow-minded and Manichean vision of liberal internationalism with the explanatory capabilities of theoretical models, such as political realism, geoeconomics, and classical geopolitics. The purpose of this analysis is to cover this gap in understanding by offering a higher degree of clarity as an ingredient of a better judgment through a dispassionate assessment. The following contents intend to dissect the cornerstones of Trump foreign policy.
Illiberal Hegemony as Grand Strategy
As Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer forewarned, unipolarity has proved to be an unsustainable and self-defeating model of world order. The foreign policy implemented and championed by the so-called ‘Beltway Blob’ has delivered disastrous outcomes, the most important of which is the configuration of a strategic environment that encouraged the emergence of an axis of revisionist powers such as Russia, China, Iran, and —to a lesser extent— North Korea. In turn, states like Brazil, Turkey, and Japan are assertively reactivating imperial traditions that had remained dormant for a long time. Furthermore, the rampant proliferation of anarchy has buried the promise of a rules-based order for all intents and purposes.
The world is witnessing the return of great power rivalries; the proliferation of interstate conflict; a high-tech arms race; irregular proxy confrontations; the outright violation of territorial borders; the intersection between traditional and unconventional security threats; the operational irrelevance of international institutions; the implosion of failed states; the normalization of military predation; the weaponization of pretty much all vectors of complex interdependence; and the resurrection of militant jihadism, amongst other problematic issues.
Much of Europe —whose security and defense has been outsourced to the Americans through NATO’s nuclear umbrella for generations— is in disarray due to internal political upheaval, strategic atrophy, de-industrialization, demographic trouble, and a loss of economic competitiveness. Emerging states from the Global South reclaim a higher hierarchical status through asymmetric equalizers, force multipliers, regional blocs, hedging strategies, and complex balanced alignments that increase their influence as independent participants in international politics. The new world (dis)order resembles more a wild Darwinian jungle than a peaceful Edenic garden.
As realists have long held, power is the only valid currency of the deadly arena of international politics. Despite the unwarranted illusions of the early post-Cold War era, today’s rude awakening has demonstrated the unsavory truth that political power grows —above all else— out of the barrel of a gun, the rest is pretty much commentary. Moreover, the US national interest has been harmed by the quixotic crusade to export the ‘end of history’ — liberal democracy, free market capitalism, the American conception of civil liberties and post-modern ideological concoctions — by force of arms. The idea of military interventions to engage in ‘nation building’ across the Greater Middle East has backfired by triggering chaos, sectarian carnage and even ‘imperial overstretch.’ The proverbial road to hell has been indeed paved by foolish policies and misguided intentions. Yet, the twilight of ‘Pax Americana’ does not mean the demise of the United States as a great power.
Notwithstanding the objections of mainstream commentators, Donald Trump —judging in accordance with the tangible results of his first administration— is no warmonger, dove, or isolationist. To keep things in perspective, bear in mind that Trump did order the targeted assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, though he did not engage Iran in a full-scale war, despite his willingness to checkmate the Ayatollahs. Trump certainly relies on his trademark strategic unpredictability as an asset leveraged to gain an upper hand. Yet the facts on the ground – his statements and the vision of key individuals in his inner circle – indicate that the second Trump administration will follow of a grand strategy of ‘illiberal hegemony’.
Such a behavioral approach reflects a commitment to preserve US primacy in the concert of nations through military, economic, and technological superiority. It also champions a sober path which favors ‘peace through strength’ when it comes to securing US national interests, rather than the global enforcement of collective rules for the benefit of an illusory ‘international community.’ Tellingly, figures like J. D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard have been classified as opponents of neo-Wilsonian hubris, who advocate a more realist Richelovian statecraft.
In a systemic strategic environment shaped by a polycentric balance of power, ‘America first’ means the United States as the first amongst equals in the chessboard of high politics. Apparently, it also means the dismissal of perpetual security guarantees for states unwilling to invest in their own defense and the burial of permanent entanglements in contested flashpoints half the world away. Instead, Trump and fellow travelers favor compartmentalized partnerships driven by self-interests on a case-by-case basis, as well as selective and limited interventions focused on priorities for the US national interest. Trump, aware of the need for restraint, does not intend to remake the world in America’s image and likeness. In this view —deeply skeptical of American exceptionalism— the United States is no different than any other great power in history.
A prescription derived from this way of thinking is the pursuit of transactional Faustian deals with other great powers so that rivalries can be managed in a manner that does not undermine systemic strategic instability. Clashing interests are a natural fact of political life, but there is no need to get incinerated in a doomsday scenario of nuclear Armageddon. A potential arrangement could probably take place through the negotiated redistribution of spheres of influence or the diplomatic conformation of an entente cordiale based on the pragmatic necessities of realpolitik. For example, the Trump team intends to refocus the bandwidth of US foreign policy on the Indo-Pacific, seen as the world’s major epicenter of geopolitical and economic gravity. In this theatre, the priority seems to be a policy towards China that combines elements of both deterrence and containment, but not a direct kinetic confrontation that may unleash nasty military fallout, counterproductive political effects and financial bankruptcy. The costs and risks of a Peloponnesian-like hegemonic war between the United States and China outweigh any potential gains.
High-Tech Geoeconomics is the Name of the Game
As an expression of the nationalist branch of political economy, MAGAnomics rejects free trade as the universal and timeless recipe that leads to national prosperity and wealth. According to this neo-mercantilist thinking, power and money are literally two sides of the same coin. Since both nurture each other symbiotically, choosing between one and the other is a false dilemma. In this regard, in order to ensure US economic superiority —challenged in an unprecedented way by the potentially overpowering gravitational pull of the Chinese economy— Donald Trump believes that US economic statecraft needs to rely on interventionist measures. These include the implementation of protective or punitive tariffs, acts of economic warfare, state-led ‘nearshoring’ strategies, the carrot of commercial access to the US consumer market in exchange for concessions and policies crafted to encourage the dynamism of strategic industrial sectors that deliver economic benefits and advantages that strengthen national power.
Interestingly, tariffs are typically an instrument employed by developing nations to keep at bay the heavier market power of more advanced foreign competitors. On the other hand, acts of coercion in the economic battlespace can be a functional alternative to impose prohibitive costs on an enemy without the expeditionary deployment of hard power. Concerning trade deals, they are seen by the Trumpian wing of the GOP —increasingly worried about the accumulation of commercial deficits— not as gateways for mutually beneficial economic exchanges, but as rewards or as carriers of political and strategic influence.
Trump is also determined to preserve the superior role of the greenback as the world’s major reserve currency, a positional pillar which underpins US national power. Such ‘exorbitant privilege’ is in the crosshairs of BRICS states interested in the experimental development of alternatives that can further de-dollarization. This is the contextual ecosystem in which Trump’s proposal to create a “strategic national bitcoin reserve” must be pinned down.
In his first term in office, Trump was known for its staunch opposition to cryptocurrencies. In fact, his administration managed to derail Libra, Facebook’s global private ‘stablecoin’ project before it could even take off. However, likely under the influence of Elon Musk —a self-confessed crypto-enthusiast— Trump reassessed his erstwhile dismissive position once he realized that, despite their stateless governance structures and libertarian ideological underpinnings, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin can be harnessed as reserve assets not just because of their rising exchange rates. According to a report prepared by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, the adoption and monetization of BTC may offer strategic benefits for US national security, such as the possibility to reshuffle the world’s monetary and financial systems in accordance with US interests once the dollar’s hegemony has outlived its usefulness, and as a counterweight against the eventual internationalization of the Chinese digital yuan.
Another noteworthy characteristic of the second Trump administration is its political and ideological closeness to major corporate representatives of what Silicon Valley stands for, including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Vivek Ramaswamy, amongst others. In an era in which there is an ongoing race for superiority in the field of dual-use frontier technologies, great powers are scrambling to unlock the game-changing potential of breakthroughs like AI, additive manufacturing, UAVs, nanotechnology, advanced chipmaking, semiconductors, quantum computing, the internet of things, electric vehicles, autonomous military platforms, space-based weapons, robotics and synthetic biology. Aside from its commercial success as a cradle of high-tech innovations, Silicon Valley has —since its very inception— participated in projects masterminded to serve the US national interest in matters related to national security, defense, and intelligence. In the so-called information age, enlisting the contribution of high-tech firms as national champions will be critical for the pursuit of strategic dominance in cutting-edge technological inventions. Paraphrasing the axiom that was once valid for General Motors as the crown jewel of US industry, what is good for Tesla and SpaceX is good for the United States in the race to push the known frontiers of technological developments. High-tech geoeconomics is the name of the new ‘Great Game.’
The Revival of the Monroe Doctrine
According to the Dutch American theorist Nicholas Spykman, the geopolitical perimeter of North American national security encompasses Canada, the US mainland, Mexico, Greenland, the Central American isthmus, the Gulf of Mexico and the Greater Caribbean, as well as Northern territorial sections of Colombia and Venezuela. In this respect, the administrations of previous Republican and Democratic presidents were neglectful toward a region historically seen as Washington’s exclusive backyard due to their fixation on remote corners of the planet such as Central Asia, the post-Soviet space, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific. Since nature abhors vacuums, such attitude facilitated the rise of Brazil as a regional great power in its own right, the proliferation of a ‘Bolivarian’ axis of anti-American states, a worsening security crisis in Mexico conditioned by the unchecked power of organized crime, and the presence of extra-regional great powers like Russia, China, and even Iran. From the US perspective, China’s footprint in the Americas —manifested in growing investments, economic exchanges, infrastructure projects and intelligence-gathering— is particularly problematic not by itself, but because the US has not come up with an attractive competitive counterweight.
The second Trump administration —as it seemingly prepares to rely on offshore balancing and burden-sharing in Eastern Europe, West Asia, and the Far East— intends to correct such blunder and even further US involvement in the American hemisphere to secure a sphere of influence. While Washington will no longer seek global unipolarity, despite its aspirations in the Indo-Pacific, it will likely intend to reposition itself as the sole regional hegemon in the American continent. This is the backdrop in which the nomination of Marco Rubio (future Secretary of State) and Christopher Landau (future Deputy Secretary of State) must be understood. Remarkably, the contents of Trump’s most outlandish statements reveal a heightened and expansionist interest in the Americas, the Northern Atlantic, and the Arctic, motivated by geopolitical, security and economic considerations. Examples include threats to subordinate Canada through its outright annexation as the 51st state, the enhancement of border protection, the intent to retake the Panama Canal as a strategic and mercantile asset for US sea power, the pressing need to absorb Greenland regardless of Danish objections, and a coercive approach toward Mexico in order to force compliance with US imperatives in the domains of security, trade, migration, ‘nearshoring’ policies, and the suppression of fentanyl flows. It is unclear if Trump is just trolling or engaging in negotiating tactics to forge favorable transactional deals. However, the hawkish stance toward the territorial integrity and sovereignty of fellow NATO members Canada and Denmark is quite telling about the harsh truths of a power-based order.
If this course of action accurately reflects the contents of policymaking plans, it would have mixed implications. On one hand, the revival of the Monroe Doctrine is consistent with a resurgent age of multipolar empires. In case such prospective scenario becomes true, the North American continent would operate as a Grossraum under direct US control. In this reality in which the old coexists with the new, great powers resort to outright interventionism through military might and conquest in their immediate peripheries in order to assert their regional hegemonic control and to keep strategic competitors at arm’s length. Nevertheless, it can also be read as a step towards an incremental strategic retrenchment. The walls of a self-sufficient North American geopolitical fortress —whose resources include cash, state-of-the-art conventional and nuclear arsenals, technological engines, a large pool of qualified manpower and abundant deposits of natural resources— offers a security shield that mitigates exposure to external sources of danger.
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