Posted on 02/26/2026 2:19:30 AM PST by texas booster
Trump’s strategy prizes preemptive deterrence over drift or isolation, exploiting leverage to sap rivals, steady allies, and avert the cascading conflicts that metastasized under Obama and Biden.
Critics of Trump’s second-term foreign policy—the usual Left and some on the neo-isolationist Right—claim it is recklessly herky jerky and guided by no consistent grand strategy.
Yet, in both the first Trump administration’s National Security Strategy paper and its second-term update, he clearly disdained ground wars abroad, nation-building, and isolationism.
A better description of U.S. strategy across Trump’s two terms in office might be called Jacksonian or preemptive deterrence.
That is, Trump’s foreign policy neither ignores nor merely reacts to crises.
Instead, it seeks out favorable cost-benefit scenarios to weaken its strategic enemies and bolster its friends.
The aim is to preclude the outbreak of major wars of the sort that were common during the Obama and Biden years.
Those two administrations projected indifference abroad and anemic deterrence. As a result, four major theater conflicts broke out during their tenures: the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, the 2014 absorption of much of the Donbas, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the 2024–25 Middle East theater war.
Some telling first-term examples of the Trump grand strategy were the lethal strikes on Iranian general and terrorist mastermind Qasem Soleimani and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The 2018 demolition of a Wagner Group force in Syria and the 2018–19 bombing of ISIS into irrelevance also restored a deterrent U.S. presence in the Middle East.
Trump’s first-term warnings to China and Russia, respectively, not to move on Taiwan or invade Ukraine, were effective—as were ultimatums to North Korea to cease its reckless missile launches.
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
Biden’s own cognitive decline and his policies of open borders, therapeutic woke/DEI Pentagon initiatives, and uncertainty over who was in charge of U.S. foreign policy also confirmed an image of an America adrift at home and abroad.
Trump’s second-term strategy has focused on diminishing the power and influence of China, weakening Russia while offering it an eventual out by détente/reset with the West, and neutering Chinese–Russian terrorist client states.
Compare the following:
Trump’s confrontation with Panama about its de facto violations of the spirit and the law of the Panama Canal Treaty eroded China’s effort to absorb or control the canal. In Venezuela, the removal of the Maduro Marxist government and the restoration of the Monroe Doctrine restored U.S. predominance in the Western Hemisphere—again, at the expense of China. Closing the U.S. southern border, stern warnings to the Mexican government, and efforts to stop Chinese shipments of raw fentanyl to the cartels have likewise damaged China’s Western Hemisphere efforts. The diminution of the Iranian nuclear threat, and perhaps soon even the theocracy itself, with the end of the Assad regime in Syria—both terrorist states supported and aided by North Korea, Russia, and China—also restored American preeminence in the Middle East. Record U.S. oil and gas production lowered world prices at the expense of Russia and the Middle East. Interrupting embargoed oil shipments from Venezuela and Iran has weakened Chinese influence and nearly strangled Cuba. Passive-aggressive, tough-love talk with NATO members encouraged (or enraged) Europeans to raise their NATO spending targets from 2 to 5 percent and expand the alliance with strategically valuable members like Finland and Sweden. Trump’s appeal to Europe’s self-interest (and its innate anti-American chauvinism) helps the region rearm and deter Russia, while freeing up U.S. assets for an increased Western profile in Asia and the Pacific. Efforts to strangle the Cuban and Iranian governments will starve their respective anti-Western surrogates and their own terrorist efforts in Latin America and the Middle East—once more to China’s chagrin. Pivoting the defense budget toward both weapon quantity and quality, prioritizing battlefield efficacy over social agendas, and expanding the number of defense contractors will increase American lethality. Quietly continuing aid to Ukraine to ensure it does not lose the war, while appealing to Putin that it is in his self-interest to cut his catastrophic losses, could restore Russian triangulation with the West vis-à-vis China. The Trump domestic economic, social, and cultural counterrevolution has encouraged the spread of conservative, pro-American governance in South America, Japan, and soon Europe as well—with negative consequences to China.
The media has fixated on Trump’s tariffs and his provocative tweets. Meanwhile, he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have already done more to hinder China and its terrorist clients and proxies than any administration in memory.
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Trump’s confrontation with Panama about its de facto violations of the spirit and the law of the Panama Canal Treaty eroded China’s effort to absorb or control the canal.
In Venezuela, the removal of the Maduro Marxist government and the restoration of the Monroe Doctrine restored U.S. predominance in the Western Hemisphere—again, at the expense of China.
Closing the U.S. southern border, stern warnings to the Mexican government, and efforts to stop Chinese shipments of raw fentanyl to the cartels have likewise damaged China’s Western Hemisphere efforts.
The diminution of the Iranian nuclear threat, and perhaps soon even the theocracy itself, with the end of the Assad regime in Syria—both terrorist states supported and aided by North Korea, Russia, and China—also restored American preeminence in the Middle East.
Record U.S. oil and gas production lowered world prices at the expense of Russia and the Middle East. Interrupting embargoed oil shipments from Venezuela and Iran has weakened Chinese influence and nearly strangled Cuba.
Passive-aggressive, tough-love talk with NATO members encouraged (or enraged) Europeans to raise their NATO spending targets from 2 to 5 percent and expand the alliance with strategically valuable members like Finland and Sweden. Trump’s appeal to Europe’s self-interest (and its innate anti-American chauvinism) helps the region rearm and deter Russia, while freeing up U.S. assets for an increased Western profile in Asia and the Pacific.
Efforts to strangle the Cuban and Iranian governments will starve their respective anti-Western surrogates and their own terrorist efforts in Latin America and the Middle East—once more to China’s chagrin.
Pivoting the defense budget toward both weapon quantity and quality, prioritizing battlefield efficacy over social agendas, and expanding the number of defense contractors will increase American lethality.
Quietly continuing aid to Ukraine to ensure it does not lose the war, while appealing to Putin that it is in his self-interest to cut his catastrophic losses, could restore Russian triangulation with the West vis-à-vis China.
The Trump domestic economic, social, and cultural counterrevolution has encouraged the spread of conservative, pro-American governance in South America, Japan, and soon Europe as well—with negative consequences to China.
Trump’s approach combines Hamiltonian promotion of US economic and financial strength with a Jacksonian focus on enhancing US national interest and power. This is a potent combination that is reversing America’s trajectory of decline that our corrupt and stupid establishment had set for the country.
DJT is not playing any game. He had already achieved victory in the greatest game where he built a corporate giant development organization and became a billionaire flying in a gold plated 767. He’s bored with that achievement, handed a beer to Melania and said, “Watch This”... Then he descended the golden escalator and that’s where we’re at now.
He’s doing whatever he can to build America in a similar way that he built his Trump organization. He knows how to do it. He surrounded himself with experts and managed them. That is what he does. In his first administration he chose poorly from the pool of pundits and talkers who back stabbed him and steered him into a telephone pole. Having learned that lesson in the second administration he chose better.
This is just the first year. Hold tight there’s three more to come!
VDH always has a way of bringing the scattered elements into a cohesive whole. The problem is that those to need to understand it the most won’t bother to read.
In their simple view it is just too complicated. They get their understanding from MS NOW, CNN and the rest of the resistance media.
Perhaps the best part of this excellent VDH article is the summary at the end: that we tend to be fixated on tariffs when Trump and Rubio are doing way more than that for foreign policy. It’s easy to overlook that.
You are correct in pointing to Trump’s business and entertainment success as providing the basis for his success in politics. And he is better in his second term, hardened and wiser due to the 2020 election steal and the Democratic effort to destroy him and his family. If Trump manages to keep GOP control of Congress in the midterm, his record may well make him one of our greatest presidents.
So much of it depends on his personality, and the minute he’s out of office, the bad actors are going to start right in again. I hope whoever follows him has the same approach.
My friend, who is a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, pointed out day before yesterday that “Donald Trump and Elon Musk both went to Penn.
Trump’s degree from the Wharton School of Business is no slouch of a credential. It puts a lie to those here who constantly deride the higher education they lack
Things do seem to be reaching a culminating point.
The nonsense is in fact not global. The nonsense is European that has infected American liberals. At root, Euro Globalism is in fact an attempt to create a defense to the world wide pervasiveness of Americanism.
There is no globalism in Asia
I watched a video last week of an interview with a Russian man in some out of the way Russian small town. He was commenting on the cost and lack of food to eat. Here he was in the Russian boondocks wearing a Nike sweater. It was probably a knockoff but the fact of Americanism bled through.
Things American have value all over the world for what they represent rather than just what they are. That is Americanism. Euro Globalists hate it.
Most billionaires gain their wealth by a single lucky gold strike in business. Trump though made his money one deal at a time in the ruthless and chancy world of real estate development. No wonder the Europeans squeal.
Common nonsense wherever it can be found to be interfering with the common sense of MAGA. There’s too much allowable variation in what common sense is supposed to be. Make common sense great again.
I think if there is a ‘great game’ that Trump is playing, it is a game of legacy making. In order to be great you have to do great things. And that is what he is doing. Another poster tried to frame it as ‘hamiltonian and jacksonian’. But that is much too narrow a view. If either of those approaches did not accomplish his goal he would abandon it and you’d see him doing Teddy Roosevelt or Andrew Jackson, or whatever approach is necessary to accomplish his goals. In my opinion that goal is to establish America as the undisputed global leader in a global community. The idea is that in America we take care of our own business and we look out for our own interests. Finished is the post WWII convention that Americans must engage in 3rd World nation building. We are finished with bending over to give advantages to global competitors. If they can’t compete then they will be finished too.
IF we can motivate the congressional republicans to clean up the elections then that will be the Trump legacy.
Mr. Hanson, the commercials at the web site you post your articles are so disrubtive I think I’ll just quit reading them til you can fix that.
I will suggest you check out YouTube for the daily Signal by VDH. If you really like him you can subscribe and get it all when you want it.
Here’s a sample
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnq7XYxHNCY
What a great sentence.
Those who don't think Trump has a great strategic brain need to look at his real estate development efforts. Seeing the air above the Tiffany building as an opportunity to make a fortune. Or nailing a proposal for the Old Post Office in DC and turning it into a Trump hotel - this is one of the best located properties in DC and will still be occupied in an economic downturn after everything else is empty, bankrupted and boarded up.
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