The world has rarely looked so dangerous. The need for a strong and assertive American foreign policy has never been greater. For that reason, a second Trump term built on “peace through strength” will be welcomed not only by American voters but also by the free world at large.
What will a Trump foreign policy in his second term, look like? As the Biden presidency flounders, that’s the question foreign leaders from the NATO summit this past week to capitals in Africa, Latin America, and East Asia—not to mention dictators in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran—are asking themselves.
Some have tried to read the tea leaves left from Trump’s first term. However, the world has changed drastically and for the worse since he left office in January of 2021, and America’s strategic position has sharply deteriorated after three and half years of Joe Biden in the White House. We’ve seen the catastrophic abandonment of Afghanistan, Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine, and Hamas and Iran attacking Israel. We’ve seen our southern border collapse thanks to illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartels. America has been a largely passive spectator to China’s inexorable pressure on Taiwan as well as the Philippines. At the same time, Beijing’s influence in the Global South has gone unchecked—including in our own Latin American backyard.
We’ve seen a Russian nuclear submarine moored in Havana harbor, Iranian missiles attacking shipping in the Red Sea, and Vladimir Putin openly embracing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. The possibility of World War III has never loomed larger. How Trump manages to reassert American leadership in a dangerous world will be a crucial part of his second-term legacy.
So, while the just-released Republican Party platform paints Trump’s outlook on the world in broad strokes (“Restore Peace in Europe and the Middle East” and “Strengthen and Modernize our Military”), a more detailed picture is contained in the recent Foreign Affairs article by former Trump National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, who is also a likely choice for Secretary of State. Entitled “The Return of Peace Through Strength,” it advances seven key principles that will guide a new Trump administration.
The first is there will be no more apologies for promoting American strength and national purpose, which remain the single greatest sources of peace and stability around the world. O’Brien writes, “As [Trump] proclaimed to the UN General Assembly in September 2020, the United States was ‘fulfilling its destiny as peacemaker, but it is peace through strength.’”
The second is rejecting the globalist agenda that has animated too much of U.S. foreign, defense, and trade policy. That agenda has not only enabled China’s ambitions for global hegemony but opened the floodgates to millions of illegal immigrants. “Trump has never aspired to promulgate a ‘Trump Doctrine’ for the benefit of the Washington foreign policy establishment,” O’Brien explains. “He adheres not to dogma but to his own instincts and to traditional American principles that run deeper than the globalist orthodoxies of recent decades.”
The third principle concerns China. While President Biden and his team talk of expanding cooperation with the most dangerous threat to U.S. interests since the USSR, a Trump administration will return to pushing back against Beijing on everything from trade and Taiwan to refreshing and expanding our alliances in the Indo-Pacific. It will mobilize a strategy for checking Chinese influence in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. In short, what was the hallmark of the first Trump administration—standing up to China—will be even more important in the second.
Fourth, Trump will reapply maximum pressure on Iran in order to halt its support of terrorist groups across the Middle East, from Hamas and Hezbollah to the Houthis, and to neuter its nuclear weapons program. The Biden policy of reversing Trump’s successful sanctions on Iran and appeasing Tehran will come to an end. At the same time, Trump will increase U.S. support to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to contain Iran’s influence.
As for Europe, a new Trump administration will pursue a policy that both constrains Vladimir Putin and strengthens NATO while working to end the war in Ukraine. “Although critics often depicted Trump as hostile to traditional alliances, in reality, he enhanced most of them,” O’Brien writes. “His pressure on NATO governments to spend more on defense made the alliance stronger.”
The sixth key principle is rebuilding America’s military, including investment in high-tech weaponry and procurement reform—goals that are as important to our allies as they are to our own national security. Both policies will open the door to working with trusted allies on an “Arsenal of Democracies” for the twenty-first century akin to the Arsenal of Democracy that won World War II—and which will be an optimal way to strengthen strategic partnerships in Europe and Asia, including Japan, South Korea, and India.
Finally, a Trump administration will seek out stronger links with free-market-oriented democracies around the world (e.g., Hungary, Poland, Argentina) and support dissident and democratic movements in totalitarian countries (e.g., China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran). The populist revolution currently sweeping Europe, of which the Trump first term was a harbinger, offers opportunities for the United States to forge a new global partnership based on free markets, individual freedom, and economic growth instead of the dictates of globalist elites.
The world has rarely looked so dangerous. The need for a strong and assertive American foreign policy has never been more imperative. For that reason, a Trump second term built on “peace through strength” will be welcome not only to American voters but to the free world at large.
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