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Opinion | Trump’s blunt interventions risk undermining US interests
From Venezuela and Iran to Greenland and Canada, US interventions and threats risk spillovers and retaliation – as history shows
Reading Time:3 minutes
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For all his bombast, few could have imagined the sound and fury with which Donald Trump has taken to foreign policymaking in his second presidential term.
Over the past 12 months, the US president has laid bare American ambitions to lay claim to territories within its near periphery deemed to be of strategic significance. From Greenland – a mineral-rich autonomous territory of Denmark – to Panama, a critical maritime trade choke point, the White House has made its geopolitical appetite clear.
Some – Trump included – have termed his foreign policy the “Donroe Doctrine”, an allusion to the world view espoused by his predecessor two centuries ago, James Monroe, who firmly held that any intervention by a non-American power in the western hemisphere constituted a hostile act against the US.
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Yet this interpretation runs into two issues.
First, Trump’s ambitions are by no means confined to the western hemisphere. From striking alleged Iranian nuclear sites in Operation Midnight Hammer in June last year to brashly inserting himself into the Thai-Cambodian and Indo-Pakistani conflicts as a self-branded peacemaker, the president is not shy about wielding America’s vast military wherewithal in achieving his objectives.
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Second, calling it a doctrine presumes too much intentional calculation and premeditation on Trump’s part. Doctrines require consistency. From his prevarications over tariffs to mood swings over Ukraine, Trump is consistently inconsistent.
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