The Deep and Dangerous Roots of Trump’s Foreign Policy
He wants to reconstruct America’s sphere of influence along 19th century lines.
In Donald Trump’s second inaugural address, his familiar zero-sum worldview was on full display: “We will be the envy of every nation,” he declared, “and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.”
But amid all his talk of “America’s decline,” Trump advanced an ambitious and startling
vision of American power. This vision is a strange mix of 19th century expansionism and 21st century futurism. Trump announced that “we will pursue our manifest destiny into the
stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”
But he also falsely claimed that “China is operating the Panama Canal” and vowed:
“We’re taking it back.” Trump has meanwhile spent the past few months insisting that
“control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” and suggesting that Canada should
become the 51st state.
It’s unclear whether Trump’s sudden interest in territorial aggrandizement is just bluster or a genuine declaration of intent. But one line from his inaugural address suggested that he’s serious: “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.” Some of these horizons are closer than others—we shouldn’t expect to see Americans on Mars or an attempt to annex Canada anytime soon. But Trump’s fixation on Greenland and Panama should be taken seriously.
It’s difficult to imagine Trump taking his talk of “manifest destiny” and a “growing nation” to its logical conclusion—military action in the Western Hemisphere (though he explicitly hasn’t ruled it out). Instead, Trump will likely impose economic pressure and other forms of coercion on Panama to pursue some kind of deal, whether it’s lower usage fees or a diplomatic agreement regarding Chinese influence (Chinese companies operate ports and other infrastructure around the canal). Trump has already demonstrated a willingness to turn the screws on countries in the hemisphere with his recent declaration that he would inflict 25 percent tariffs on Colombia—a threat he dropped after President Petro caved to his request to accept deported migrants. Meanwhile, Trump is threatening Denmark with tariffs if it refuses to negotiate over his proposed acquisition of Greenland.
As Trump shows off his toughness by threatening a NATO ally and a tiny Central American country, there are two other spheres of interest he’s less interested in: the ones around Russia and China. He has repeatedly promised to end the Ukraine war in “24 hours,” and he has long been critical of American support for Kyiv. He has derided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as the “greatest salesman of all time” and suggested that Washington is sending too much aid. He has blamed Zelensky for the war, and he selected a vice president who once declared: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”
Trump will likely oversee a withdrawal of American support for Europe. Despite the significant defense investments NATO allies have made since the beginning of the Ukraine war, Trump will always demand more—he now says allies should spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense, far more than the United States does and an unrealistic target over any reasonable timeframe (the current target is 2 percent). Over the summer, Vice President J.D. Vance wrote an op-ed which argued that Washington has “provided a blanket of security to Europe for far too long.” While Trump sounds like a 19th century imperialist when it comes to America’s immediate sphere of influence, he sounds like a 20th century isolationist when it comes to Europe.
This will have real consequences. Putin believes he can outlast Ukraine on the battlefield, particularly with a new U.S. administration that’s much less sympathetic to Kyiv. He may be right, as Ukraine’s disadvantage in manpower and industrial capacity makes it heavily reliant on international support. While Europe will attempt to fill the America-sized void in aid, it won’t be enough—and many governments will view the lack of American aid as their own cue to wind down support.
Trump’s attitude toward China’s sphere of influence mirrors his attitude toward Russia’s. In a 2024 interview, he said the United States is “no different than an insurance company” and claimed that “Taiwan doesn’t give us anything” in exchange for being part of the American security umbrella. He argued that Taiwan should spend 10 percent of its GDP on defense, quadruple what it spends now. He observed that “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away” from the United States, while it’s “68 miles away from China.” Just as he can understand why Moscow wouldn’t want pro-Western democracy on its “doorstep,” he can understand why Beijing would feel the same way. For Trump, it’s all about power and proximity.
During his inauguration speech, Trump said: “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.” But Trump’s actions have little to do with lofty ambitions about making peace—rather, they stem from how he believes power should operate in the world. His focus on the United States’ traditional sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere—while ignoring its obligations to embattled democracies around the world—conjures up memories of the Monroe Doctrine, of violent American hegemony on this side of the Atlantic, and of imperialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Earlier this month, Trump said he understood Putin’s opposition to Ukrainian membership in NATO: “Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that.” His comments demonstrate that he believes it’s only natural for a powerful dictatorship to exert control over a neighboring democracy. On this view, Ukraine’s proximity to Russia matters more than its self-determination.
Throughout most of history, this was how the international system operated. Powerful countries dominated their regions, and there was little their weaker neighbors could do about it. For hundreds of years, this system produced an endless boom-and-bust cycle of expanding and contracting empires. Shifting borders used to be a fact of life. But after World War Two, the United States and its allies developed a set of rules, norms, and institutions to constrain aggression and facilitate cooperation between countries. This system is often referred to as the liberal international order, and Trump’s opposition to this order has been one of his only consistently held political positions over the years.
To Trump, it’s inconceivable that American foreign policy would have anything to do with abstract values like freedom and democracy. There’s only one variable that matters in the international system, and that’s power. Protecting Ukraine from its more powerful neighbor is a fool’s errand, because it violates the natural law of the international system: big countries have every right to bully smaller ones into submission.
Trump is threatening to abandon what has been a central pillar of U.S. foreign policy over the past 80 years—the idea that a rules-based international order is a greater engine of stability and peace than the anarchic system that preceded it. While the United States hasn’t always observed the rules it helped to set, the system has largely functioned as designed—it has secured economic prosperity on a vast scale, facilitated democratization around the world, and reduced great power conflict. We take it for granted that a war between, say, Germany and France is inconceivable, but this is among the greatest political victories in the history of Europe.
To the extent that the United States has a sphere of influence today, it’s not over the territories in the Western Hemisphere. The idea that the United States is a “growing nation” that has the right to steal land and force other countries to do its bidding is a couple of centuries out of date. The United States now shares a sphere of influence with the entire liberal democratic world. This is a world that the United States helped to build, and it has grown dramatically since World War Two because successive American leaders have painstakingly maintained it. If Trump succeeds in dragging the United States back to the 19th century world of lawless, unilateral imperial aggression, he won’t just undermine the liberal democratic idea across the globe. He will soon discover that he has made America’s true sphere of influence
much smaller.
Matt Johnson is an essayist and the author of How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment.
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