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United States President Donald J Trump awaits the arrival Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on November 18, 2025. Featuring: Donald J Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 18 Nov 2025
A Trump Doctrine of heavy footsteps and many levers
Ten months into the second administration of US President Donald Trump, the most pressing foreign policy puzzle is not about the Middle East, the war in Ukraine or even relations with China. The question top of mind right now is what is going on in the Western Hemisphere, and does it reveal an emerging Trump Doctrine?
It is fair to say that Trump’s 2025 engagement with its regional neighbors was not on the market’s radar when he assumed office in January. There were, however, indicators of what was to come. In December 2024, Trump cast a spotlight on Panama, pledging to retake control over the canal to prevent the US from continuing to be “ripped off.” Trump also spoke early on about targeting regional trading partners Canada and Mexico with tariffs. In the case of Canada, these threats and musings about the possibility of a “51st state” contributed to then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation in January.
Trump’s longstanding commitment to curbing regional migrant flows and “executing the immigration laws” of the US offered another clue of what lay ahead. From the travel ban issued in the first week of Trump 1.0 in 2017, to appropriations for the southern border wall to dispatching US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the streets in 2025, Trump and his team care deeply about enforcement, who is allowed to enter the country, and who is permitted to stay in the country.
The administration’s Day 1 executive order on foreign policy built on these indicators and set forth a vision for Trump 2.0: “From this day forward, the foreign policy of the United States shall champion core American interests and always put America and American citizens first.” The “America First” isolationism of Trump’s first term was replaced with an activist, no-stone-left-uncovered approach.
A neighborhood unsettled
Despite transparency about its foreign policy ambitions, the way in which the current US administration has gone about pursuing its policy objectives in the Western Hemisphere – designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations, striking alleged narcotraffickers operating in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, moving an advanced aircraft carrier into waters off of Venezuela, reopening a military base in Puerto Rico, among other measures - has surprised many and rankled regional leaders and US allies.
In recent days, Colombia announced it would suspend intelligence sharing with the US after months of tension with the Trump administration. Colombia is not alone. Close allies in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have also halted intelligence sharing over the Trump administration’s tactics in the region and human rights concerns.
Drawing on doctrinal ghosts
To make sense of these regional developments and their fallout, analysts and watchers have called upon the Monroe Doctrine. Some have gone so far as to label the administration’s foreign policy approach the “Donroe Doctrine.”
Although pithy and appealing, the 1823 Monroe Doctrine was primarily a response to external (European) interference in Western Hemisphere affairs. Pursuant to the doctrine, the American continents would not be open to future colonization, and the US would consider any violation of this tenet to be “dangerous to our peace and safety.” It is from the Monroe Doctrine that the concept of “spheres of influence” was derived. Europe would be for Europe. Existing European colonies were also for Europe. Everything else in the Western Hemisphere was for itself, with the caveat of a “connected” and invested US standing readily by.
It would be naïve to disregard all analogies to the current landscape. The Trump administration is aware of the deep trade, economic, and security relations between countries in the region and China and Russia. In 2025, China is now South America’s top trading partner and a major regional investor. The US administration’s forthcoming National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy will both reportedly highlight the need for greater attention to the region in light of these global dynamics.
Even still, there are limits to the dispositive power of the Monroe Doctrine. The recent US overtures in the Western Hemisphere are not principally animated by the threat of external interference. Rather than the original Doctrine, the Trump administration’s strategy in the region better recalls its 1904 Roosevelt Corollary set forth by then-President Theodore Roosevelt. According to the Roosevelt Corollary, in the event of “chronic wrongdoing” or “impotence” in the Western Hemisphere it was the US’s responsibility to serve as an “international police power” for the region. The Roosevelt Corollary empowered American vast interventionism based on conditions within the Western Hemisphere itself, regardless of any external threat.
The Trump Doctrine
In a similar manner, the second Trump administration is also directing a message to the region. The US will not tolerate hostile neighbors, unfettered narcotics, and unregulated migration flows. And over the long term, the US intends to achieve better access to regional markets and natural resources like rare critical minerals to support US domestic markets and its economic agenda. To these ends, there will be force – “police power” - (war exercises, military buildups, targeted strikes), but the administration will also leverage all the tools in its portfolio from economic (tariffs, bailouts, aid suspensions and sanctions) to political (visa restrictions, renaming water bodies). Posting last week on social media, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth explained: “The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood and we will protect it.”
This is the developing Trump Doctrine: use all available means at any time to champion core American interests, and always put America and American citizens first. As defined, in each case, by the administration. But unlike Roosevelt, who aspired to “walk softly and carry a big stick,” the Trump administration has heavy footsteps and will be pulling many levers.
U.S. President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at a NATO leaders summit in The Hague, Netherlands June 25, 2025.
Three takeaways from the NATO summit
But, as the world’s most powerful military alliance moves into a new and more robust phase, here are three things to ponder.
First, this was a win for Trump.
Donald Trump’s Reality TV approach to global politics is working. The US president has leveraged his country’s awesome military power, along with his own personal unpredictability and media savvy, to command the spotlight and advance his “America First” agenda. In this world, international meetings are merely backdrops for the Donald Trump show.
At the G7 summit in Alberta 10 days ago, he wrestled control of the world’s attention by leaving early to respond to the military conflict between Israel and Iran. After bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, he announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran that he initially sought to manage in CAPITAL LETTERS on social media. Flying off to the NATO summit, he published an ostensibly private text message from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in which the mild-mannered former Dutch prime minister flattered Trump for his “decisive” bombing of Iran and insisted the president was headed to another major triumph at the meeting in The Hague.
“Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,” Rutte wrote, accurately.
Rutte in fact set up the summit as an extended ceremony of capitulation. He even called Trump “daddy” in an exchange about wrangling peace between Iran and Israel. It looked undignified, and out of step with the attitudes of European voters who are largely hostile to Trump. But it worked. The alliance is paying more for defense, and Trump now seems to be a staunch supporter of NATO again.
Note: Trump is hardly the first US president to demand that NATO members shoulder more of the alliance’s defense burden. But he is the first to get them to actually do it so decisively. The most powerful unscripted drama in the world is playing out in Trump’s favor.
Second, the rearming of Europe has begun.
Europe’s voters, accustomed to social democracies that spend a lot of money on public services, might rather their governments spend money on butter, but they have come to see that they must buy guns. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made it necessary. Last year, Putin spent $149 billion on the Russian military, 7.1% of the country’s GDP, creating a vast and menacing war machine on Europe’s doorstep. And it is not possible to be confident that Russia’s ambitions are limited to Ukraine, since Russians are engaged in sabotage and disruption actions in many countries.
Could Europe contain Russia on its own? Not anytime soon. A recent study found it would take 25 years and a trillion dollars to replace the US presence that has largely kept the peace on the continent since the end of the Second World War.
But the rearmament of the continent has already begun, most swiftly in the parts closest to Russia. Poland, which has the example of Ukraine to consider, increased defense spending by 31% in 2024, to $43 billion, straining its ability to pay. Germany spent $88.5 billion in 2024, removing a legislated debt limit to do so. It is now, for the first time since reunification in 1990, the biggest defense spender in Western Europe. France spent $64.7 billion in 2024, the UK $81.8 billion. On Wednesday, they all agreed to spend a lot more.
Third, higher defense spending is a promise but not yet a reality.
Trump is mollified, arms manufacturers are cheerful, and a clear signal has been sent to the Russians, but only time will tell if NATO members will do as they have said they will. Politicians setting targets is one thing, actually spending the money is another.
After all, there is only so much money to go around and, in democracies where voters can be fickle, it may be hard for leaders to ramp up defense spending consistently over the course of a decade.
Some of them can’t even do it now: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez showed up in the Hague with the right script, but without his checkbook, because he leads a minority government that would not be able to pass a budget if he aimed for the 5% target.
Canadian PM Mark Carney, for his part, promised Canada will hit the target, doubling its budget by 2035, but it is not clear whether voters there — or in Spain or other countries that don’t have Russian troops on their borders — will want to keep spending so much money. And by 2035, most of the current leaders will likely not be in power.
There is another wild card too: Russia. Global military spending increased at 9.4% last year, the steepest increase since the end of the Cold War, which ended when the Soviet Union ran out of money.
If history repeats itself, and Russia is unable to sustain its aggression, voters in NATO countries will no doubt find they have better things to spend on, and there will be no way to hold them to the commitments Trump won this week.
President Donald Trump raises a fist during a ceremony where he signs two executive orders that will lead to reciprocal tariffs against other countries that charge tariffs on US goods.
Is Donald Trump’s foreign policy … working?
What’s the old line about there being decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen?
Quoting Vladimir Lenin may not be the wisest move in today’s America, but it’s an apt description of the (second) first 100 days of Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
In barely three months, he’s bashed America’s closest European allies, spooked NATO into worrying about its survival, taken a chainsaw to US foreign aid programs, pulled the rug out from under Ukraine, threatened to expand US territory for the first time since the 19th century, and started a global trade war that’s pushed protectionism to its highest levels since the Great Depression.
Not bad for 100 days! But is there a method to what seems – to horrified defenders of the “US-led world order” – like so much madness? “Method” is a risky word to use with a figure as famously capricious as Trump, but there are a few basic aspects of his worldview and commitment to “America First” that are consistent and worth understanding.
No new friends (also no old friends)
First, Trump believes that the world is a place where all countries are just trying to “screw” each other. This is true not only of adversaries but, especially, of allies. (Tell me you’re a New York real estate developer without telling me you’re a New York real estate developer.)
The mutual screwing occurs in an endless chain of zero-sum transactions between countries in which hard power and cold cash are all that matters. Deficits or defense umbrellas are ripoffs. Alliances based on “values” are silly. Soft power is a useless conceit, a virtue signal, a kind of “Geopolitical wokism.”
It’s a (multipolar) jungle out there
Second, there are various great powers in this world, and each has its own sphere of influence. The largest of these are the US and its chief rival China, but Russia is up there as well. You do not, in Trump’s view, mess with another power’s sphere of influence, and you do not waste time trying to win over countries of marginal economic or strategic value beyond your neighborhood. You put your country, to borrow a phrase Trump uses a lot, “first.”
Once you grasp that, for Trump, the world is a transactional and increasingly multipolar jungle, it actually explains a lot about his foreign policy.
It tells you why he doesn’t seem to care that much about Ukraine (he sees it as Russia’s sphere) or Taiwan (ditto for China) or why he’s OK slashing foreign aid (soft power is silly). It explains why he wants a piece of Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal (all have immense strategic and economic value within Washington’s own sphere of influence, especially if conflict is coming with other powers.) And of course, it tells you why he loves to love tariffs – a crude but effective tool for unleashing America’s immense economic power
Hard power dreams, soft power missteps
All of this is a big rupture with the longstanding idea that the US, as a hegemon, gets more than it gives by providing security, market access, or development assistance to vast parts of the world.
But taken on its own terms, is Trump’s foreign policy ... working? The evidence is mixed. Many of his objectives – restore America’s lost manufacturing capacity, confront China, and force Europe to carry its share of the defense burden – can make sense on their own. But, taken together, the overall policy is still a mess of conflicting impulses.
Trump wants to isolate and pressure China, but he’s simultaneously wrecking relations with Europe, Washington’s most natural ally against Beijing. He wants to maintain technological supremacy over China, but his immigration and education policies are scaring the world’s best minds away from America.
He wants to use tariffs to restore manufacturing – which, by definition, almost requires leaving them in place for a long time. But he also wants to use them to extract tactical concessions on trade and defense – which means not leaving them in place for a long time. Which is it?
And while he is right to force the West to confront the problems of Biden’s well-intentioned but poorly defined Ukraine policy, his pledge to end the war “within 24 hours” is already 2,376 hours overdue. Browbeating Ukraine while pleading with Vladimir Putin on social media is not exactly a foreign policy to be reckoned with.
It’s still early days to be sure. But whether the decades that have happened in these 100 days are a real revolution against the long-established order of US foreign policy, or a a tangle of disruptive but ultimately confused impulses remains to be seen.