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Posted on 02/26/2026 6:37:53 AM PST by MtnClimber
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.
However, the ensuing Biden administration’s skedaddle from Afghanistan, its mixed prewar signals to Putin, and the pathetic efforts
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
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Not a pro-American, “MAGA” one.
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