In words and actions, key foreign policy decision-makers within the Trump administration seem to be signaling a shift away from the United States’ global leadership role. If borne out, these changes are likely to usher in a new tripolar international system in which the United States, Communist China, and revanchist Russia divvy up spheres of influence. The result? A more dangerous world for Americans everywhere.
This month, Politico reported that the draft version of the coming National Defense Strategy places securing the Western Hemisphere above countering threats posed by China, Russia, Iran, and other global adversaries. Defense strategies, by definition, set priorities for the Pentagon as it determines how to allocate limited military assets. While previous blueprints—including one published by the first Trump administration in 2018— have focused on countering China, the latest one reverses the emphasis on America’s foremost geopolitical adversary.
If enacted, the defense plan would codify the Trump administration’s shift away from a U.S.-led world order. From withholding military aid to Ukraine to signaling an end to security assistance programs for NATO allies preparing to defend against Russian aggression, Donald Trump’s Department of Defense seems to be making it clear: The days of America playing a forward defense and acting as the guarantor of the liberal world order are waning. Instead, the administration has signaled plans to focus on a goal-line defense in our own neighborhood.
In an interview last week with his former Fox & Friends Weekend co-host, Rachel Campos-Duffy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth articulated the rationale behind the Pentagon’s new approach. “We’re going to put America first. In this case, the Americas first—our hemisphere,” he said. “We’ve projected power for a long time in far-flung places that had a nebulous connection to our own security in the homeland. We’re securing the homeland.”
The world order this strategy would undermine is one the United States has largely grown accustomed to, and potentially taken for granted. In the aftermath of World War II, the United States invested billions through the Marshall Plan to rebuild, unify, and bolster like-minded democracies in Western Europe to counter oppression and deter aggression from the Soviet Union. During this time, American wealth, prosperity, and power all flourished, leading to the collapse of the USSR after it failed to compete with U.S. cultural and economic dominance. In other words, this sizable investment in Marshall Plan dollars paid off not only by creating a global system that made Americans richer but also by avoiding the cost in blood and treasure of a war with Russia. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been the undisputed global power—economically, militarily, diplomatically, and culturally.
This period has also been a time of relative peace for the United States and the world, despite histrionics about “forever wars.” Since the start of the postwar global order, America has suffered roughly a quarter of the deaths in all conflicts that it did during the single war that preceded it. That the conflict in Ukraine marks the first large-scale European war since 1945 is simultaneously a testament to the stability of the U.S.-led order, an indicator of just how heinous Russian actions are, and a somber harbinger of what may come if the existing order is deserted.
Just like nature, global order abhors a vacuum. The spaces left open by receding American influence will be filled, most likely not by like-minded and allied countries, but by competitors seeking to carve out their modern empires. China has been slowly pressing forward in its efforts to exert more power abroad, both close to home in maritime territorial disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines, and further afield, with its Belt and Road Initiative and its “string of pearls” strategy.
Russia, under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, seems driven to reverse what he has called the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century—the breakup of the Soviet Union—by re-establishing Russian dominance over eastern and central Europe, potentially including countries that joined NATO after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Putin has not been timid about testing the limits and resolve of the alliance and American commitment to it. Just last week, Russia launched a swarm of drones at NATO member Poland.
Allowing these bad actors to carve up their respective spheres of influence may seem like common sense to the isolationists and restrainers at the Pentagon—it is cheaper in the short term to do less than to do more. But it is far easier to pay the cost to maintain what one already has than to attempt to claw it back later or to live in a world beholden to the will of others. China and Russia are currently pushing against the edges of American influence in an attempt to expand their range and power, but we will not end those provocations by letting them get nearer to U.S. soil. Instead of pushing back against Chinese maritime bullying in the Philippines, we may find ourselves doing it off the coast of Hawaii. Instead of helping European allies prevent Russian subterfuge, cyberattacks, and assassinations, we may find ourselves playing whack-a-mole on the periphery of the Western Hemisphere.
This new defense framework also makes conflict more likely rather than less by signaling weakness, or at least disinterest, where the United States had previously demonstrated resolve. The concept of strategic ambiguity—that the United States will not declare in advance what actions we might take in response to aggression against Taiwan, leaving China to weigh a potential overwhelming American response as it determines if the cost of action is worth it—may not officially end, but it will likely become less effective. Instead of believing that America will defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack, Beijing will likely come to the opposite conclusion, and rightly or wrongly, fail to regard a potential military confrontation with the U.S. as a serious deterrent. Perception shapes reality, and the perception of a weak, feckless, and passive United States will create a reality we do not like. Weakness begets aggression, and tepid resolve welcomes those who would take advantage of the confusion.
The reported language of the National Defense Strategy reflects a much more restrictive version of American power or influence than even what the president and those close to him had indicated during the initial months of his second term. Pentagon restrainers had previously outlined a move away from America’s traditional defensive presence in Europe and the Middle East, nominally to preserve combat power for a potential conflict with China. But signaling that we might even de-emphasize preparations to defend Taiwan in order to prioritize a war on drug-smuggling banana boats is tipping the needle toward more de-facto isolationism.
This path, if continued, leads toward a global order rife with uncertainty and danger—for the United States in particular and for the world as a whole. Rather than a system in which international norms are observed, backed by the might and influence of the world’s strongest military and largest economy, the receding U.S. influence creates a void to be filled by Russia in Europe and Central Asia, by China in the Pacific and Africa, and to a lesser but concerning extent, by Iran in the Middle East. Countries will find themselves in one of three spheres, dominated by powers acting on craven self-interest, in which “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
We will woefully miss the day when the U.S., through maintenance and vigilance, enjoyed an order that upheld free trade and fostered the continued expansion of human liberty. If we wish to remain a superpower, we should choose to act like one.
