Donald Trump has been president for a little more than 70 days. Even so, in the world of foreign policy, the upheaval has been profound. USAID no longer exists; immigration numbers at the southern border have plummeted by over 90% since the election. Tariff wars are imminent, even with Canada and Mexico, with whom we have a free trade treaty, the USMCA, which was negotiated by Trump in 2018. The Monroe Doctrine is back with a vengeance, with Panama and Greenland in a new state of anxiety concerning their powerful neighbor.
The secretary of defense and vice president apparently agree with the president that our European allies — with the possible exception of Poland — are “pathetic.” The U.S. is also now taking a very different approach to the Russo-Ukraine war: It seems Trump will force Ukraine to accept its territorial losses without compensatory accession to NATO.
In the Middle East, Trump appears to be trying to create a broad anti-Iranian axis, coupled with strong support for Israel. And in Asia, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other officials have been sent on a grand tour of Asian allied capitals to shore up an American-led anti-China coalition.
The Trump Doctrine has been coming into focus for a while, but the leak of an internal Defense Department memo, called the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance, clarifies the matter. The full text is not available, but The Washington Post has offered excerpts. The memo states: “China is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario.”
During the Cold War, the United States prepared to fight two wars simultaneously, and after the Soviet Union collapsed, that was sequentially reduced to 1.5 wars, and then one war and a holding action. Under the Trump administration’s second term, it will be one war — with China and only China — and homeland defense. Homeland defense includes not only border security, according to the memo, but also expansion and updating of America’s nuclear arsenal, as well as an increased emphasis on missile defense and space dominance.
Making Taiwan the “sole pacing scenario” of U.S. foreign policy is quite remarkable, especially given that Americans seem quite averse to direct military confrontation with China over Taiwan. In a 2024 poll, “Just over a third of Americans favor either using the US Navy to break a Chinese blockade of Taiwan (37%) or sending US troops to Taiwan to directly aid the Taiwanese government (36%).”
The Trump Doctrine proceeds from the premise that the United States has lost hard power and must regain it despite interim sacrifice. Tariffs, a new emphasis on shipbuilding, the resurrection of American manufacturing — all are designed to increase the hard power of the United States. The Trump Doctrine also implies that involving ourselves in many geographic regions has helped sap US power, and contends that our allies are simply not doing enough to help.
More broadly, the Trump Doctrine asserts that the “rule-based order” of the post-World War II world no longer works for the United States. This was most recently articulated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, during his Senate confirmation hearings, said, “The postwar global order is not just obsolete, it is now a weapon being used against us.” Interestingly, that is the same position being taken by both Russia and China, as well.
Thus, the Trump Doctrine is a reversion back to what is apparently believed to be a surer foundation for peace: great power spheres of influence, that is, a true multipolar world that relies on regional policemen, not one global policeman, to keep the peace internationally. According to the Trump Doctrine, Europe must once again become a great power, or be under the Russian sphere of influence — the choice lies with Europe. It also appears that under the Trump Doctrine, the U.S. will be uninvolved in sub-Saharan Africa until and unless there is a threat to homeland security that emanates from that continent. The Western Hemisphere, of course, will be the suzerainty of the United States.
The two geographical areas where the coherence of the Trump Doctrine breaks down, however, are the Middle East and Asia. If the Trump Doctrine seeks regional policemen, what nation is that policeman for the Middle East? It can’t be Israel in isolation, for it is too small and also faces existential threats from neighbors. So the U.S. finds itself bombing the Houthis and threatening the Iranians, which doesn’t seem to mesh with the nascent Trump Doctrine, as the vice president accurately pointed out in the Signal chat.
The other area where coherence breaks down is in Asia. If stability derives from great powers controlling their own spheres of influence, and Russia has been permitted to seize some of the Russian-speaking territory of Ukraine to rationalize its sphere, and the U.S. is setting its sights on Greenland and the Panama Canal under a similar worldview, China may be asking itself why it is not allowed to do the same for a Chinese-speaking island not even 100 miles off its coast.
The idea behind “spheres of influence” is that each great power respects the others’ spheres, dampening the potential for great power conflict. Until and unless the Trump Doctrine’s inconsistencies regarding the Middle East and Asia are sorted out, then, it is unclear whether the United States will not still wind up in conflicts that will prove very unpopular with the American people, and which are unlikely to end with resounding U.S. victories. These inconsistencies bear continued scrutiny.
In sum, the Trump Doctrine is a return to the traditional Realpolitik view that great power spheres of influence are the foundation of international security, with the corollary that the rebuilding of American hard power, especially its manufacturing base, will be necessary to maintain the American sphere. Without American support, the rule-based international order is truly over, though it is possible to assert that it’s been over for a while but no one wanted to acknowledge that reality. Now that it’s been acknowledged in Washington, D.C., it’s time to hold the funeral. Mourning may be justified, but it won’t resurrect the dead.