The Case for Trump’s Second-Term Foreign Policy

Robert C. O’Brien

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Peace Through Strength Is Delivering Stability and Security

U.S. President Donald Trump speaking to reporters in West Palm Beach, Florida, October 2025Elizabeth Frantz / Reuters

ROBERT C. O’BRIEN is Chairman of American Global Strategies, a geopolitical advisory firm. He served as U.S. National Security Adviser from 2019 to 2021.More by Robert C. O’Brien

Last year in Foreign Affairs, I outlined a framework for a second Trump administration foreign policy that would restore the “peace through strength” posture that prevailed during Donald Trump’s first term as president. This vision of “America first” stood in stark contrast to the foreign policies pursued by the Obama and Biden administrations and the approaches advocated by influential Democratic strategists during the 2024 presidential campaign. Broadly speaking, they believe that the United States is in decline, and that this process must be skillfully managed through a variety of steps: unilateral disarmament (via gradual but significant cuts to military spending that harm readiness); apologizing for putative American excesses and misdeeds (as when, in 2022, Ben Rhodes, who had served as a deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration, wrote that “historians will debate how much America might have instigated” Russian President Vladmir Putin’s aggressive acts, asking whether the United States had been “too triumphalist” in its foreign policy); appeasement (including ransom payments to Iran thinly disguised as humanitarian sanctions relief); and the partial accommodation of the desires of U.S. adversaries (as when, in January 2022, President Joe Biden suggested that Russia would face less significant consequences if it launched only a “minor incursion” into Ukraine instead of a full-scale invasion).

In 2024, having experienced 12 years of foreign policies predicated on these views, in contrast to four years of Trump’s “America first” foreign policy, the American people overwhelmingly chose strength over managed decline and went with Trump. Ever since, Trump has been using U.S. economic, diplomatic, and military power to deliver on every aspect of his foreign policy agenda. He has demonstrated that strength begets peace and security.