Trump’s foreign policy: unconventional methods, traditional goals

Trump’s tactics may be disruptive and coercive, but the goal of preserving American economic, technological and strategic dominance is deeply rooted in US foreign policyWhat if Donald Trump’s foreign policy is not as chaotic as it looks? Last year, I argued that beneath the spectacle, contradictions and unpredictability, Trump’s foreign policy had an internal logic. But I stopped short of calling it strategy. Today, I am more convinced that there is one – grand strategy in fact. Consider the pieces. Greenland. Panama. Canada. Venezuela. Iran and Hormuz. Tariffs. Critical minerals. Reindustrialisation. Pressure on allies to carry more of their defence burden. And, increasingly, China. Viewed separately, these can look like disconnected episodes. Put them on the same map and a pattern begins to emerge. No conspiracy is required. Nor a secret master plan. Nor is the direction entirely implicit. Elements of it are set out explicitly in the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy. The question is whether interests, opportunities and events are increasingly moving in the same strategic direction. They do. Once seen, the pattern is difficult to unsee. It did not begin with Trump But this did not begin with Trump. In 1948, George Kennan, one of the architects of America’s Cold War strategy, observed with unusual candour that the United States possessed about half the world’s wealth with only 6.3 per cent of its population. The task of America, he emphasised, was to devise relationships that would allow it to maintain this “position of disparity” without jeopardising its security. The world has changed profoundly since then. So has American policy. The methods changed. The purpose changed much less: American preponderance remains the strategic constant. And preponderance has never been merely military. It is economic, technological, commercial and financial too. This, after all, is what predominant powers do. Britain did it before America. Others did it before Britain. History also records what eventually happened to them. America nevertheless did something remarkable after 1945. It embedded its enormous power in institutions and alliances from which others also benefited. The resulting Pax Americana has been described by scholars as both hegemony and hegemonic stability. Benign to many. Hegemony to others. The Marshall Plan helped rebuild Western Europe. Europe and Japan prospered under an American Cold War security umbrella. That umbrella also allowed Europeans to spend more on butter and less on guns. The US supplied dollars, markets, investment and security. The dollars also bought American goods. Prosperity and strategy reinforced each other. American leadership worked because others had a stake in the system too. The difference with Trump may therefore lie less in what America seeks than in how openly and coercively he seeks it. Take Greenland. It is Arctic geography, missile defence, emerging sea routes and critical minerals. Panama is a strategic artery between two oceans. Canada means energy, uranium, minerals and Arctic space. Venezuela brings enormous oil reserves back into the strategic equation. Then look east. Hormuz and Malacca are links in the same energy chain. Much of the Gulf oil bound for Asia passes through these maritime chokepoints. China remains heavily dependent on these sea lanes. The United States, by contrast, enjoys enormous domestic energy production, favourable geography and unrivalled global naval reach. Add Suez, Bab el-Mandeb and emerging Arctic routes and an old strategic truth reappears: whoever can protect – or deny – access to the arteries of global commerce possesses enormous leverage. Power beyond the battlefield Twenty-first-century power extends beyond geography. Semiconductors. Artificial intelligence. Quantum computing. Rare earths. Supply chains. Financial clearing. Capital markets. And above all, the dollar. After Nixon severed the dollar’s link to gold in 1971, the emerging petrodollar system further reinforced its global role. The dollar-centred financial system gives Washington a form of power no aircraft carrier can provide. Tariffs, too, can be more than protectionism. They can redirect investment, restructure supply chains and turn access to the enormous US market into strategic leverage. The pieces begin to connect. The pieces begin to connect Secure the Western Hemisphere. Protect strategic resources and maritime access. Rebuild industrial capacity. Preserve technological superiority and energy abundance. Make allies carry more of the security burden. Protect the dollar. Prevent China from acquiring enough economic, technological and military power to overturn the strategic balance. Even apparently separate conflicts can alter the strategic balance in Washington’s favour. Russia, heavily committed in Ukraine, has fewer resources elsewhere. Europe, confronted again by the Russian threat, is rearming, carrying more of its own defence burden and buying more US materiel – benefiting the American defence-industrial base. Regional confrontation has also weakened the ability of Iran to project power. And regional powers assuming greater responsibility in the Middle East can reduce demands on Washington. None of this proves that these outcomes were scripted in advance. Nor does China explain every American action. Personality, domestic politics, ideology, opportunism and plain miscalculation remain part of the menu. Grand strategy does not require choreography. Trump’s methods are unconventional, but the underlying US grand strategy has endured across administrations and eras. The price of primacy But therein lies the paradox. American primacy was never sustained by material power alone. There was soft power too: culture, universities, technology, ideas and the promise of opportunity. The old joke captured the contradiction: “Yankee go home – but take me with you.” Allies sought American protection. Governments accumulated dollars. Investors put their money into American markets. Underlying much of this was trust – the intangible tangible. And immensely consequential. Power was reinforced by legitimacy and, critically, consent. As allies are increasingly treated as clients to be pressured, markets used as instruments of coercion, economic dependence turning into vulnerability, and rules made negotiable according to power, the search for alternatives begins. Allies are hedging. Diversifying. Building alternative supply chains. Exploring other payment systems. Strengthening regional arrangements. Reducing dependence upon the United States. Even shifting gold reserves out of North America, as France and the Netherlands have recently done. Historically, the pattern is hardly new. Predominant powers have always sought to preserve their predominance. By overreaching, they can also accelerate their own decline. The ancient Greeks had a word for it: hubris. The problem, therefore, is not that there is no grand strategy. There is. The danger lies elsewhere. The methods used to preserve American primacy are already helping to erode the trust, legitimacy and consent that made it sustainable. America may win many of the transactions. The larger question is whether, in so doing, America weakens the very system on which its indispensability rests.