Nor promotion of democracynor defense of the human rights nor swords on guard against China y Russia. The new National Security Strategy of Donald Trump is something of a refreshing exercise in honesty, particularly for those who think that USA has twisted those noble principles to suit convenience for decades. In any case, the document presented last week by the White House raises the biggest breakup in eight decades with the principles of liberal order that Washington has sponsored since the end of World War II. Instead it approaches the world as a business opportunitycomplains Latin America as his own, he lashes out Europa with the obsessions of the extreme right and makes the immigration the great demon of American security.
The new strategy also draws attention for the accommodative stance it adopts towards Russia y China. It no longer speaks of an era marked by “great power competition”as this same document said eight years ago, during his first presidency. Nor does he describe them as revisionist powers “bent on shaping a antithetical world to the values and principles of the United States.” In the new strategy he breaks with the old dynamics of confrontation and makes it clear that Trump is not interested in a new cold war. “The activities of other countries will only be our concern if they directly threaten our interests,” the document states.
American continent
The new National Security Strategy not only puts the American continent in the center of the Trump Administration’s prioritiesbut claims it as his exclusive sphere of influence. Not very different from what Russia does in its neighborhood and in line with what the Republican has been doing in his second term, with the claims over Greenland or the pressure on Venezuela and Colombia. “The United States will reaffirm and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western hemisphere”. It is “America for Americans”, the old doctrine of the early 19th century that the United States used first to expand territorially and then to dominate the continent during much of the 20th century. In a return to the past, Trump now recovers a “neo-imperialist stance”as defined by the Brookings Institute.
The document points out the illegal migrationthe flow of drugs and the penetration of powers from other latitudes – read mainly China— as the main threats emanating from the region. “We will deny our competitors from outside the hemisphere the ability to position (military) forces” or “control “vital strategic assets”he says explicitly. At the same time he targets the natural resources of the continent, which calls for development together with its regional allies. And it orders its embassies to track business opportunities, “especially large government contracts”.
And unlike the non-interventionist tone that the rest of the document exudes, here it openly talks about resorting to use of force to “defeat the cartels”, as it is already doing in Venezuela with the apparent purpose of overthrowing its Government.
Europa
Europe is, along with Latin America, the region that comes out worst in Trump’s new strategy. It is no longer—along with its Asian partners—the vital ally of the United States to prevail in the 21st century, but rather the visceral object of its phobias. He describes it as a continent “in decline”“lacking self-confidence” and “suffocated” by regulations and a European Union that the one he accuses of “censoring freedom of expression” and “repress political opposition.”
The document maintains that Europe is exposed to a “civilization erasure” for their immigration policies, reproducing the Great Replacement conspiracy theorypopular among white supremacists and neo-Nazis. A theory, according to which, a “globalist elite” would be conspiring to replace the white population of Europe with people from other latitudes. “He is to the right of the European extreme right,” the former Swedish prime minister recently wrote, Carl Bildt.
The new strategy also calls for openly supporting the “European patriot parties”essentially the extreme right, an “interference” condemned by Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council.
Russia and China
In the new world envisioned by Trump, the great authoritarian powers that overshadow the US and challenge the Western model are no longer necessarily a problem. “In this new order, the great powers reach agreements and look the other way when necessary instead of containing their respective ambitions,” write ‘Axios’ analysts David Lawler and Zachary Basu.
Russia is only mentioned in passing in the document, where it appears as an exclusively European problem. And he essentially says that if Europe considers it an “existential threat” it is because it “has lost confidence in itself.” It also accuses its leaders of having “unrealistic expectations about the war in Ukraine and not respond to the desire for peace of its populations. His objective, he maintains, will be to seek peace in Ukraine and “reestablish “strategic stability with Russia”an end that the White House wants to translate into lucrative business with the Kremlin. This week its spokespeople welcomed the new strategy, stating that “it is largely consistent with our vision”.
Regarding China, he talks about containing potential aggression from Beijing in the china sea with the collaboration of its Asian allies, which it urges to spend more on Defense. But to a large extent, the entire focus is economic. “We will rebalance the economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and equity to restore the economic independence of the United States.” And regarding Taiwan, it is committed to maintaining the ‘status quo’ and preventing a potential conflict.
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