Daniel DePetris: The good and the bad in Donald Trump’s national security strategy

On the greater part days the words Donald Trump and strategy don t fit in the same sentence Combined they re an oxymoron in the truest sense After all strategy denotes a well-thought-out plan with concrete goals realistic techniques of achieving those goals and a set of principles that serve as an anchor as the president goes about the job Trump however is the personification of an anti-strategy president whose version of a well-crafted policymaking process is writing a long screed on his Truth Social media platform Even so every president necessities to publish a national defense strategy during their term Trump did so in his first term and that document stressed great power competition at every opportunity President Joe Biden committed his own strategy to paper citing China as an aspiring global hegemon that the United States needed to cooperate with when feasible and contain when needed Trump s second-term strategy published last week goes beyond that relatively uncontroversial theme by stressing U S sovereignty and power above all other considerations There are particular items in Trump s national measure strategy that are positive and frankly refreshing It ditches the rules-based order pablum we often hear from U S politicians ad nauseam a construct that elevates universal values and suggests that international politics are governed by a set of hard-and-fast laws rules and conventions But the world doesn t work like that power and interests not the United Nations charter govern how states behave And the United States a country that wrote the rules after World War II isn t exactly shy about abandoning those rules when it suits our agenda If you don t believe me just look at the war in Iraq which wasn t authorized by the U N Prevention Council or Washington s backing for chosen nasty autocrats who are deemed strategically significant rightly or wrongly At least we re no longer pretending a rules-based order exists Moreover Trump s overall goals in the strategy are quite conventional In the Western Hemisphere the Trump administration seeks to make the lives of cartels drug traffickers and human handlers miserable preserve its superior position in the region relative to other non-hemispheric powers such as China and Russia and ensure strategic locations such as the Panama Canal are secure In Europe U S representatives are pressing the issue of burden sharing and incentivizing Washington s European allies to take more responsibility for their own prevention In East Asia the United States hopes to maintain a stable balance of power with China whose own military capability is exceedingly more impressive than it was a decade earlier And in the Middle East striking peace agreements is the primary objective It s hard to see why anyone would have an issue with any of this Yet to describe the White House strategy document as all roses would be a gross oversimplification as well The White House and the president himself preach the value of noninterventionism in other states domestic politics but this is hard to square with Trump s incessant meddling in foreign elections Before Argentines went to the polls in October Trump endorsed Argentine President Javier Milei s party and threatened to revoke a billion bailout package if the results weren t to his liking they were In November days before Hondurans were set to vote for a new president Trump waded in and endorsed Nasry Tito Asfura a right-wing politician And again Trump used his favorite tool coercion If Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras we will be very supportive Trump wrote Nov If he doesn t win the United States will not be throwing good money after bad because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country no matter which country it is The votes in this tight race are still being counted Trump s strategy in Latin America is also working at cross purposes with his lofty objectives As the national shield strategy stresses the United States aims to get more Latin American countries to buy into the U S sphere of influence That s all well and good But U S initiatives in the hemisphere are complicating precisely what the Trump administration wants to achieve Trump s decision over the summer to institute arbitrary tariffs on Brazil Latin America s largest market in an attempt to coerce Brazilian President Luiz In cio Lula da Silva into dropping the prosecution of his political adversary Jair Bolsonaro has been incredibly counterproductive First the economic pressure failed to push the Brazilian administration into dropping Bolsonaro s event Second with the U S arena more expensive the tariffs accelerated transaction activity between Brazil and China which while not a bad thing in its own right is still indicative of the Trump administration s often-unsophisticated ham-fisted approach And third the U S economic penalties have provided Brazilian foreign initiative authorities with even more reason to pursue a multivector foreign approach that doesn t fully align with Washington The ongoing U S strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean aren t doing the U S any favors either Sure there are chosen countries in the region such as Trinidad and Tobago as well as the Dominican Republic that are supportive of the Trump administration s militarized war on drugs But the vast majority are firmly opposed due to the moral aspects involved as well as the actions ineffectiveness on a more practical level Colombian President Gustavo Petro has feuded with Trump over what he calls state-sanctioned murder and Colombian intelligence officers have reportedly limited counternarcotics cooperation with Washington in response Brazil is aghast at the tactics And Mexico one of the largest part significant U S counternarcotics partners in the world has no intention of lending a hand in these strikes The good news Trump s second national prevention document could have been much much worse It also could have been better Whether it matters at all will be determined by Trump s maximum to see it through Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune Related Articles Thomas Friedman Trump s not interested in fighting a new Cold War He wants a new civilizational war Clive Crook An old-fashioned cure for fading trust in authorities Marc Champion Why Russia loves the new US national assurance strategy Pierre Lemieux The increase in polarization mirrors the advance of cabinet James Stavridis Five reasons why the boat strike debate matters for the US