Francis P. Sempa
President Donald Trump’s foreign policy appears to be based on the idea of spheres of influence and an even balance of power across said spheres. Each has a rich historical pedigree. Trump has reinvigorated the Monroe Doctrine by prioritizing Western Hemispheric security and recognizing that Russia and the nations of Western and Central Europe have a greater interest in Ukraine and Eastern Europe as a whole than does the United States. He also recognizes that in the 21st century, given the shifting global balance of power, the Indo-Pacific is more important to U.S. security than Europe or the Middle East.
The shifting global balance of power is most evident with the rise of China and India, a development that the Atlanticists in the United States and Europe refuse to recognize. The Trump administration has rightfully discarded Wilsonian doctrine—which emphasizes abstract values—in favor of foreign policy realism, which focuses on concrete national interests. American blood should be reluctantly spilled, and American treasure should be expended sparingly, only in the service of concrete American interests. That is what an America First foreign policy is all about.
In his last major iteration of his global geopolitical concept, Sir Halford Mackinder wrote in 1943 in Foreign Affairs about the rise of what he called the “Monsoon powers” of China and India, which he hoped would create a balanced globe of human beings based on spheres of influence. More than two decades earlier, Mackinder wrote Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919) to guide the statesmen at Versailles in their efforts to establish a lasting peace after the cataclysm of the First World War. Mackinder’s advice to the statesmen of the West was to temper their democratic ideals with an understanding of geopolitical realities. His advice, needless to say, was not heeded, and twenty years later an even more destructive global war was fought.
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