Ionut Popescu
Is there a grand strategy behind all the dramatic moves in President Trump’s close to 100 days in office? Despite appearances and what many foreign policy experts argue, the answer is yes. Whether this Trump Doctrine will be successful remains to be seen. Still, its principles are sound, and they are grounded in the well-established realist tradition of American foreign policy exemplified by Alexander Hamilton, Theodore Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon.
The Trump administration’s grand strategy rests on three mainstream realist principles: an international system dominated by great power competition, a national interest-based foreign policy of realpolitik (or what they call “America First”), and a powerful appreciation for geoeconomics and the role of financial power in global politics.
After a brief period (the so-called post-Cold War era) of general international amity and low levels of tension among great powers, it is apparent we are now once more in a new era where realist thinking and behavior is dominating world politics, from military competition to trade relations to technological advances. Over the past decade, two geopolitical trends have emerged. First, China is on a quest for regional and, eventually, global hegemony. Second, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is destabilizing European security and the global economy.
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