The U.S. president’s “Donroe Doctrine” represents a deep break from modern national security thinking.
Donald Trump is now the first U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to believe the principal threats to the U.S. aren’t in far-away regions or stem from far-away powers. | Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images
Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s From Across the Pond column.
U.S. President Donald Trump loves the 19th century.
His heroes are former presidents William McKinley who “made our country very rich through tariffs,” Teddy Roosevelt who “did many great things” like the Panama Canal, and James Monroe who established the policy rejecting “the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs.”
These aren’t just some throw-away lines from Trump’s speeches. They signify a much deeper and broader break from established modern national security thinking.
Trump is now the first U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to believe the principal threats to the U.S. aren’t in far-away regions or stem from far-away powers — rather, they’re right here at home. For him, the biggest threats to America today are the immigrants flooding across the country’s borders and the drugs killing tens of thousands from overdoses.
And to that end, his real goal is to dominate the entire Western hemisphere — from the North Pole to the South Pole — using America’s superior military and economic power to defeat all “enemies,” both foreign and domestic.
Of course, at the top of Trump’s list of threats to the U.S. is immigration. He campaigned incessantly on the idea that his predecessors had failed to seal the southern border, and promised to deport every immigrant without legal status — some 11 million in all — from the U.S.
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